I Want to Be Your Friend: The Effects of Organizations’ Interpersonal Approaches on Social Networking Sites

Publics tend to use social networking sites mainly for interpersonal communication purposes. Corporate communication focusing on promotional activities, thus, might create negative sentiments toward the organization within those platforms. This experimental study examined the effect of organizations’ interpersonal approaches to communication (e.g., nonpromotional messages, high interactivity) in social networking sites using real and fictitious companies. Our results suggest that publics consider corporate activities in social networking sites more negatively when they perceive those platforms as a personal space. However, publics evaluate an organization more positively when it is highly interactive with its publics on these platforms. Finally, publics who perceive the platform as a personal space have a more positive attitude toward the organization when the organization is both highly interactive and employs nonpromotional messages.     

An exploratory study on content and style as driving factors facilitating dialogic communication between corporations and publics on social media in China

Global corporations publicize on social networking sites (SNSs) to foster dialogic communication with publics as a form of building relationships. Yet the link between the content and style of the corporation communication from different cultural backgrounds and publics’ responses in the form of likes and retweets is under-researched. This empirical study explored how global corporations from China and Germany employ factors such as useful content topics and culturally-influenced communication styles to cultivate dialogic communication with publics on Sina Weibo, the largest SNS in China. Although both German and Chinese corporations similarly posted a range of content on products/services, corporate appeal and relationship building with no distinct significant differences in their communication styles, publics’ response varied noticeably in that they were more receptive to content on products/services disseminated by German corporations yet had greater responses to content on corporate appeal posted by Chinese corporations. In addition, publics were more inclined to react favorably to messages presented in an individualistic style of communication by German companies and messages in a collectivistic style by Chinese companies. The implications of how to effectively use SNS to engage in dialogue with publics are highlighted.     

New Media,Web 2.0 and Surveillance

This article outlines some basic foundations and academic controversies about Web 2.0 surveillance. Contemporary web platforms, such as Google or Facebook store, process, analyse, and sell large amounts of personal data and user behaviour data. This phenomenon makes studying Internet surveillance and web 2.0 surveillance important. Surveillance can either be defined in a neutral or a negative way. Depending on which surveillance concept one chooses, Internet/web 2.0 surveillance will be defined in different ways. Web 2.0 surveillance studies are in an early stage of development. The debate thus far suggests that one might distinguish between a cultural studies approach and a critical political economy approach in studying web 2.0 surveillance. Web 2.0 surveillance is a form of surveillance that exerts power and domination by making use specific qualities of the contemporary Internet, such as user‐generated content and permanent dynamic communication flows. It can be characterized as a system of panoptic sorting, mass self‐surveillance and personal mass dataveillance. Facebook is a prototypical example of web 2.0 surveillance that serves economic ends. The problems of Facebook surveillance in particular and web 2.0 surveillance in general include: the complexity of the terms of use and privacy policies, digital inequality, lack of democracy, the commercialization of the Internet, the advancement of market concentration, the attempted manipulation of needs, limitation of the freedom to choose, unpaid value creation of users and intransparency.     

A semiotic approach to the internal functioning of publics: implications for strategic communication and public relations

Employing public relations as a paradigmatic instance of strategic communication, this article challenges the prevailing view of publics as reactive entities. The article briefly reviews the two primary schools of semiotics, Saussurean and Peircean, and argues for the utility of the latter for building a language-centered understanding of publics. The Peircean ideas of unlimited semiosis, semiotic rhetoric, and community are employed to argue that publics ought to be understood primarily as self-actuated and interactive social entities with values and internal dynamics at least as complex and important to communication campaigns as are message content or client/practitioner intentions.The article concludes that we can best understand a public as an ongoing process of agreement upon an interpretation, and that during this process a public may well develop an interpretation that is more sophisticated, insightful, and socially linked than the understanding with which the practitioner/client started. As a result, we argue, publics should be accorded the preeminent position when studying or practicing any form of strategic communication, including public relations. Carl Botan is Associate Professor at Purdue University. Francisco Soto (MA, Purdue, 1995) is an Account Director for Aleph Communicacion, a public relations firm in Madrid, Spain and lectures at several higher education institutions.     

Managing relationships on Facebook: A long-term analysis of leading companies in Germany

The purpose of this study is to investigate how companies manage relationships with publics on social media. Based on the concepts of functional and contingency interactivity, the study examines the long-term implementation of three interactive strategies derived from research on organization-public relationships: dialogic communication, transparent communication, and informal communication. The study sheds further light on relational outputs and outcomes. The results of content analyses of leading German companies’ Facebook pages in 2012, 2015, and 2018 indicate the growing importance of dialogic communication and informal communication. There is a constant relation between dialogic communication and the extent of user interaction, with the analysis suggesting that dialogic communication is used to manage critical user comments. Hence, the long-term study contributes to a deeper understanding of professionalization in corporate social media communication. It provides evidence for PR scholars and professionals that there are effective features on Facebook for managing sustainable relationships.     

The potential of Web sites as a relationship building tool for charitable fundraising NPOs

The Internet and especially the new challenges within Web 2.0 provide organizations with the possibility of encouraging two-way communication and engaging publics in dialogue. Charitable fundraising nonprofit organizations (NPOs) can particularly benefit from the Web's relationship building potential. This study aims to explore the potential of Web sites as an online-communication tool of Swiss NPOs. Via content analysis, the Web sites of 134 Swiss charitable fundraising NPOs were examined in order to point out how those organizations are using the Web to create dialogic relationships with their most important stakeholder groups, which are potential donors and the media. Results indicate that the potential of the Internet for dialogic communication is not used efficiently by most NPOs. Nevertheless, NPOs seem to be acknowledging the importance of engaging publics in dialogue, as most of them replied to information requests from potential donors and the media.¹     

Trends in the Relative Influence of Education and Income on Highbrow Taste, 1982–2012

Although numerous studies have confirmed the separate effects of economic and cultural capital on arts participation, research focusing on the cumulative and interactive effects of economic and cultural capital through the creation of taste publics is limited. Using data from the United States (Survey of Public Participation in the Arts [1982–2012]), this research integrates economic and cultural capital—measured as income and education—into the analysis of taste, creates taste publics, and examines their association with highbrow arts participation over time. We find that the effects of economic and cultural capital on highbrow arts participation decreased between 1982 and 2012, and American publics seem to have converged across both types of capital. Implications of the findings are discussed.     

Building dialogic relationships through the world wide web

This article provides a theory-based, strategic framework to facilitate relationship building with publics through the World Wide Web. Although many essays on the Web have appeared in professional and technical periodicals, most treatments of the Web have lacked theoretical frameworks. Strategic communication on the World Wide Web can benefit from a consideration of dialogic communication.This article offers dialogic communication as a theoretical framework to guide relationship building between organizations and publics. Five strategies are provided for communication professionals use to create dialogic relationships with Internet publics.     

Getting emotional: An emotion-cognition dual-factor model of crisis communication

The effect of emotional experience on cognitive processes is an under-explored phenomenon in crisis communication research, despite indications of the increasing importance of emotion-based communication in the digital era. Emerging evidence indicates that the emotional experiences of publics play a critical role during organizational crises and determine the degree to which organizations are able to successfully devise communications that help them deal with such crises. Yet no comprehensive, theoretically sound model exists for analyzing how emotions influence the cognitive processing of crisis information. Our study proposes just such a model, capable of describing how cognition and emotion, separately or interactively, influence the publics’ processing of crisis information and consequently their attitudes and behaviors. Our model describes how emotional variables determine whether the publics take a cognition-oriented approach or an emotion-oriented approach to information processing and subsequent formation of interpretations, evaluations, and judgments directed toward organizations. Moreover, our model explains how an emotion-to-cognition assessment of publics’ attitudes is possible and makes a case for how it is critical for predicting and influencing the publics’ behavior during organizational crises. The hope is that this model will aid practitioners and academics in understanding why the publics’ emotions matter during crisis communication as well as how to craft more effective communication strategies as a result. Finally, several avenues for future research are suggested in order to test the validity of our conceptual model in different contexts.     

Echo chambers and social mediators in public advocacy issue networks

The growing trend of politically motivated consumer boycotts and buycotts on social media not only impacts a company’s financial bottom line, but more fundamentally disrupts relationships between the firm and its publics, the cornerstone of public relations (Ferguson, 1984; Sommerfeldt, & Kent, 2015). On a broader level, such politically motivated advocacy is a critical facet of civil society with important implications on the societal role of public relations (Taylor, 2010). In light of the significance of politically motivated consumer advocacy to public relations, a multi-phase, exploratory study was conducted. Study 1 applies content analysis and social network analysis to examine how different interactive mechanisms on social media—retweet, mention, and reply—may affect communication within and between communities of different ideological views surrounding the boycott and buycott issues. Study 2 further explores the challenges and opportunities of fostering exchange of diverse viewpoints by identifying new social mediators—the “echoers” who propel information flow among in-group members, and the “bridgers” who initiate communication with political out-group members—and assess the key network characteristics of these social mediators. The findings of these two studies advance public relations theories on networks, intergroup communication, and civil society by illustrating how social media structure and social mediators shape the networked public discourse to facilitate or inhibit conversations between publics of different ideological orientations.     

Operationalizing genuineness in CSR communication for public engagement on social media

Public relations professionals from global corporations have increasingly communicated corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices on social media to engage publics. Yet the link between CSR communication of global corporations, particularly with regard to the dimensions of genuineness exhibited in their communication and public engagement on social media is under-researched in China. This empirical study conceptualized and operationalized the dimensions of genuineness, which encompass providing information about different CSR themes, being responsive to publics, demonstrating empathy, and being consistent in what corporations say and do, and then investigated how global corporations engaged Chinese publics through genuine CSR communication on Sina Weibo. Enhanced public engagement outcomes of comments, likes, and shares were observed for the provision of information about the community involvement and development CSR theme alongside the use of empathy. This study informs public relations scholars and practitioners about the importance of providing information on the CSR theme of community involvement and demonstrating empathy to generate higher public engagement.     

How activist organizations are using the Internet to build relationships

This study examines the mediated communication of activist organizations to understand how these groups use their Web sites to build relationships with publics. A study of one hundred environmental organization Web sites identified common features and examined the incorporation of dialogic communication into this new medium. The data suggest that while most activist organizations meet the technical and design aspects required for dialogic relationship building on the Web, they are not yet fully engaging their publics in two-way communication. Moreover, it appears that the activist organizations are better prepared to address the needs of member publics rather than media needs.     

SYMBOLIC POLITICS IN THE INFORMATION AGE: THE 1996 REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGNS IN CYBERSPACE

This paper traces the use of the World Wide Web as a medium of political communication during the 1996 American presidential campaigns. Beginning with the Republican campaigns' use of the medium during the primary election season, a typology of uses of the web is outlined. While all campaigns felt it necessary to participate in the World Wide Web, different candidates used the medium differently. Furthermore, no campaign made full use of the much-publicized interactive capacity of the web; they used it more as a new means of transmitting traditional mass-media literature (video, graphics, etc.) and as a way of providing access to large volumes of campaign information (voting records, speeches, position papers, etc.).     

The social-mediated crisis communication research: Revisiting dialogue between organizations and publics in crises of China

The rapid diffusion of social media is ushering in a new era of crisis communication. To enhance our understanding of the social-mediated dialogue between organizations and their publics in crises of China, this study conducts a content analysis of 61 relevant journal articles published in 2006–2018. Results of this research present an overview of ongoing research trends such as theoretical frameworks and methodological preferences. This research also explores how the unique Chinese social media characteristics affect the dialogue between types of organizations and their publics. Contextual factors such as face and favor, relationship (Guanxi) and sentiment (Renqing), and the centralized political system that may facilitate/inhibit dialogue in crises of China are identified as well. Finally, this study suggests promising new directions such as a scholarly assessment tool for the social-mediated crisis communication research in China.     

Revisiting contingency theory in regenerative social-mediated crisis: An investigation of Maxim’s and Yoshinoya in Hong Kong’s polarized context

This research investigates how the social media-based crisis response of two organizations operating in a specific polarized context unfolds along a regenerative crisis lifecycle in line with the contingency theory of accommodation. By analyzing two crises that affected the Maxim’s and Yoshinoya groups during the Hong Kong social unrest in 2019, the paper commits to explicate how internal, socio-environmental, and external publics’ factors shape the communication patterns of the crisis. By focusing on Facebook posts and information available online, this study examines how the two selected organizations responded to specific crisis situations, and how publics reacted during the regenerative crisis lifecycle. Results show that Maxim’s took the advocative, while Yoshinoya engaged in the accommodative stance initially. Then, they both turned to an avoidance stance to deal with active online publics with opposing political stances. Contingent factors driving the organizations to adopt specific stances were relevant to internal members, organizational characteristics, social media environment, and external publics. Results provide insights about the complexities organizations face to respond to online publics in regenerative social-mediated crises. They also advance the contingency theory by refining the advocacy-accommodation stance continuum, re-defining contingent factors, and explicating the interactive effects of contingent factors on organizational response decision making in a polarized and social-mediated context.     

An Arab perspective on social media: How banks in Kuwait use instagram for public relations

This study examines the public relations functions of eight Kuwaiti banks listed in the Kuwait Stock Exchange Market (KSEM) that post on their Instagram accounts. It also uses market-size, organization, and individual level predictors to model Instagram postings. A content analysis of 1502 posts revealed the banks use Instagram for promotion, information dissemination, community building, and interactive engagement, in that order of prominence. The findings suggest banks operate at the confluence of visual communication through Instagram and integration of religious symbolism to serve a public relations function predicated on image and influence. In doing so, the banks tap into the wellspring of social media use by target publics by navigating a balance between obedience to Allah and meeting bank business objectives. The resulting tension between sacred and secular highlights Arab cultural values and suggests Instagram fosters individualism, which challenges Arab emphasis on collectivism and fractures the notion online platforms can effectively build meaningful relationships that characterize Arab culture. The study posits Instagram is more effective in an Arab context at image building than relationship building, threading the importance of visual communication through social media across Arab culture and global public relations practices.     

Relationship building and the use of Web sites: How Fortune 500 corporations use their Web sites to build relationships

This study examines the dialogic features of corporate Web sites in order to determine the Web site practices of the corporations for building relationships with their publics. Content analysis of 100 Fortune 500 companies’ Web sites revealed that the corporations designed their Web sites to serve important publics and foster dialogic communication. The corporate Web sites appear to promote control mutuality, trust, satisfaction, openness, and intimacy. However, the corporations need to maintain repetitive interactions with their publics to enhance trust, commitment, and exchange relationship.     

Social media adoption among Turkish public relations professionals: A survey of practitioners

Social media is emerging as an important public relations tool and empowers two way symmetrical communications with publics and stakeholders. PR professionals are confronted with the swift rise of social media that forces practitioners to pay due and timely attention. They are not only excited about utilizing these tools together with conventional media, but are also excited about speaking directly to their publics and stakeholders without the involvement of any intermediaries. Through the perspective of UTAUT model, this paper examines the social media adoption of PR professionals in Turkey and how they employ social media tools both internally and externally. We employed a web-based questionnaire to 126 PR professionals who are members of the Turkish Public Relations Association. Findings reveal that Turkish PR professionals highly appreciate the importance of social media in recent PR practice. However, not all social media tools are equally adopted; e-mail is the most, and virtual world applications are the least adopted social media. It is also found that in the future, social networks are expected to be the most important social media, while corporate web sites get the second and mobile phone (PDA) applications get the third rank.     

United Airlines’ and American Airlines’ online crisis communication following the September 11 terrorist attacks

The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, provided a challenging series of events for the crisis communication efforts of American Airlines and United Airlines. Based on crisis communication theory and organizational use of the Web, this study examined how the two companies used their Web sites during the first three weeks after the incidents as one means of conveying information following the attacks.Theoretically, analysis of incident-related segments of the two sites showed that the airlines evidenced key elements of crisis response. They provided instructing communication by giving facts, stating how their publics should take action, and providing information regarding how the problem was being corrected. Additionally, they offered adjusting communication through a series of condolence messages and links to relief organizations before emphasizing normal operations.From an online perspective, this study revealed that the Web enabled both companies to provide an immediate response to the attacks. The Web also allowed United and American to offer frequent updates about the incidents to their publics and to communicate their crisis response process to various publics simultaneously.     

Employees as information influencers of organization’s CSR practices: The impacts of employee words on public perceptions of CSR

This study investigates the impact of employees’ words about their organization’s corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities on external publics’ attitudes and behaviors toward the organization. Specifically, it examines how the valence (positive vs. negative) of employees’ words regarding a CSR campaign interacts with the type of channel (face-to-face vs. social media) of employees’ communication behaviors, and how these factors affect external publics’ perceived authenticity of the organization’s CSR, corporate attitudes, and purchasing intentions, respectively. An online experiment among 221 general consumers in the United States was conducted. The results demonstrated that negative messages regarding CSR distributed by employees in face-to-face communication decreased publics’ favorable attitudes and behavioral intentions to a greater extent than that distributed via social media (i.e., Facebook). However, the effect of communication channel became insignificant when positive messages regarding CSR were shared by employees. The results further showed that perceived authenticity mediated the effects of channel and message valence on publics’ attitudes and behavioral intentions. Theoretical and practical implications for CSR practices and employee communication are discussed.