•The paper aims to explore the operational implications of social media use on emerge management agencies.•We followed engaged scholarship recommendation in framing the research agenda with participants.•We used workshops as a live research method for data co-creation.•We identified six areas that pose serious challenges to emergency management agencies.•We theorize these challenges as tensions and accordingly identify future research agenda. The use of social media and Web 2.0 platforms is proliferating and affecting different formal and highly structured organisations including public safety agencies. Much of the research in the area has focussed on public use of social media during an emergency as well as how emergency agencies benefit from the data and information generated by this process. However, there is little understanding of “what are the operational implications of this public use on emergency management agencies and how does social media either positively or negatively impact these operations”? In order to progress research into this topic, we chose an engaged scholarship framework to shape a research agenda with the active participation of stakeholders. Hence, we conducted a series of workshops primarily involving over 100 public safety practitioners working in the area of disasters and emergency management who work in public safety agencies, humanitarian organisations, volunteering online platforms and volunteer groups in addition to 20 academics working on this area of enquiry. The findings highlight six different challenges that emergency responding organisations currently face in relation to social media use. We conceptualise these challenges as creating six operational tension zones for organisations. We discuss these tensions and their implications for future research and practice.