
To date, most entrepreneurship research has emphasized its benefits, leading to a skewed view of entrepreneurship and neglecting a full consideration of a range of negative outcomes, side effects and hazards ( Bandera et al., 2020). As a result, businesses also had the opportunity to reach customers through social media, which led, among other things, to an increase in the importance and growth of social media marketing ( Mason et al., 2021 Syaifullah et al., 2021).

The pandemic caused society to rely more heavily on digital technologies and social media platforms to stay in touch with one another. This has also led to the development of many new entrepreneurial strategies to circumvent the negative consequences of the pandemic ( Sadigov, 2022). The importance of digital technologies, and social media, in particular, has increased significantly since the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic ( Modgil et al., 2022 Fritsch et al., 2021). Social media platforms offer advantages and chances for businesses from various industries and are becoming an integral part of business strategies ( Secundo et al., 2021). Looking at the digital development of European enterprises, it is striking that one in two businesses uses social media as an online advertising tool ( Eurostat-Database, 2019). As part of these digital technologies ( Nambisan, 2017), it is social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter have created new foundations for entrepreneurial activity ( Sawy and Bögenhold, 2022 Troise et al., 2022 Fischer and Reuber, 2011).

In recent years, digital technologies have increasingly become a basic prerequisite in the field of marketing and entrepreneurship ( Kollmann et al., 2022 Sahut et al., 2021 Olanrewaju et al., 2020), creating both new entrepreneurial opportunities ( Davidsson, 2015) and digital entrepreneurial ecosystem ( Sussan and Acs, 2017). The full terms of this licence may be seen at Anyone may reproduce, distribute, translate and create derivative works of this article (for both commercial & non-commercial purposes), subject to full attribution to the original publication and authors. This article is published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) licence.

Copyright © 2022, Alina Sawy and Dieter Bögenhold.
