Wednesday, 02 November 2022 at 16:00-17:30 Zoom

A presentation by Airi Freimuth (PhD candidate at the Department of Business Administration of TalTech).

Social media platforms comprise billions of users and stakeholders that use those platforms for pleasure, business, education, politics etc. Social media platforms are the main platforms that are targeted by data breachers. Moreover, due to the increase of recent data breaches, the scientists believed that social media platforms are not paying enough attention to ensure the safety of their databases.

Proponents of blockchain technology state that the technology offers a solution to data security and validity issues in social media platforms. Centralized storage of information is no safer than the servers on which the data is stored. Practitioners have moved to blockchain technology to create alternative social media platforms that aim to be safer for all the stakeholders.

Blockchain technology creates trust among stakeholders. Lack of trust creates limited stakeholder engagement. Moreover, scientific literature lacks of clear classification of blockchain stakeholders.

The aim of stakeholder theory is to achieve a win-win outcome. However, implementing blockchain technology can be expensive for the stakeholders and the stakeholder engagement’s output remains unknown.

Airi Freimuth, PhD candidate at the School of Business and Governance, Tallinn University of Technology. She is supervised by Adjunct Prof. Linda D. Hollebeek and Associate Prof. Iivi Riivits-Arkonsuo and the topic of her project is “Customer engagement in service/product innovation: the stakeholders’ interplay”. She received a bachelor's degree in social sciences from Estonian Business School and a master's degree in marketing from Tallinn University of Technology. She has been working as the for Venden Group (Saku Läte in Estonia) for more than 10 years as a Head of Marketing and she is also responsible for different IT-projects and innovation management. Her research focus is mainly on stakeholder engagement and innovative technologies from a marketing perspective.