Does social media usage matter? An analysis of online practices and digital media perceptions of communication practitioners in Europe

• Public relations practitioner's personal and professional social media usage.
• Practitioners with a high level of usage of social media give more importance to social media channels.
• Active employees and consumers on the social web are more relevant gatekeepers for organizations.
• The divergences in age are progressively diminishing with regard to professional use.
• Right social media strategies and instruments are not being used.

A key aspect for understanding and explaining online communication is the micro level of communication practitioners’ social media usage and their general attitudes towards digital platforms. This paper investigates how public relations practitioner's personal and professional use of social media is related to their perceptions of social media. A quantitative methodology was applied to perform this research. A population of 2710 professionals from 43 European countries working on different hierarchical levels both in communication departments and agencies across Europe were surveyed as part of a larger transnational online survey. Results show that practitioners with a high level of usage of social media give more importance to social media channels, influence of social media on internal and external stakeholders and relevance of key gatekeepers and stakeholders along with a better self-estimation of competences. Issues about diverse levels of overestimation of social media use, application and importance in the professional arena are also debated.