Beyond liking or following: Understanding public engagement on social networking sites in China

Corporate pages on social networking sites (SNSs) have become the key platform where publics interact with companies and organizations around the world. Focusing on one of the most important world economies, China, this study explored the types of public engagement with corporate pages on leading Chinese SNSs as well as the motivations and antecedents that drive such engagement. Given the participatory and communal nature of SNSs, this study proposed a conceptual model incorporating social media dependency and several social relationship factors, including parasocial interaction, perceived source credibility, and community identification, that influenced Chinese publics’ engagement with companies on SNSs. We conducted a web survey with a random sample of 245 Chinese SNS users to test the proposed model. The results confirm that with the exception of perceived credibility, social media usage and relationship-oriented factors played a significant role in inducing public engagement in China.     

Corporate Associations Written on the Wall: Publics’ Responses to Fortune 500 Ability and Social Responsibility Facebook Posts

This is a quantitative content analysis of Fortune 500 companies’ Facebook profiles, wall posts, and wall comments. It confirms that a 3-part typology of message strategies—corporate ability (CA), corporate social responsibility (CSR), and hybrid—exists in corporate online social networking communication. As predicted, when corporations used CA strategies in wall posts, publics’ wall comments demonstrated greater CA associations and product evaluations than CSR associations and company evaluations. Likewise, when corporations used CSR strategies, publics showed greater CSR associations than CA associations. These corporate messages and publics’ responses in the real-world digital market support the synergistic model of corporate communication strategy.     

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.     

Baoren Baoguo: Zhongguo Xinwenshi De Lingyizhong Dufa [To Serve the Nation: Journalists as Prisms of Chinese Press History] edited by CHIN-CHUAN LEE

Social networking sites (SNS) have become an important vehicle for corporate communication. However, there has been little research on how East Asian firms use international SNSs to communicate with global stakeholders. This study compares the communication strategies of Chinese and Japanese companies on Facebook and Twitter and analyzes the public responses and complaints on these corporate SNSs. The results revealed that in addition to the traditional strategies of corporate ability (CA) and corporate social responsibility (CSR), Chinese and Japanese firms adopted the human interest (HI) strategy. The results showed that the Chinese companies in the study sample had a stronger preference for the CSR and interactive strategies, and they responded faster to online complaints compared with the Japanese firms, which were more likely to adopt the strategy of transferring in handling complaints. Moreover, “inviting participation into events” and “seeking specific feedback” were two types of interactive messages that received the highest numbers of responses from the public on Facebook, whereas “promoting sales” showed the highest engagement on Twitter. This study is the first to compare the effectiveness of different corporate response strategies for specific complaint topics on social media. Thus, it contributes to the literature on stakeholder–company interactions.     

Mapping networks in corporate social responsibility communication on social media: A new approach to exploring the influence of communication tactics on public responses

Grounded in the networked stakeholder management theory and two-way communication, this study provides a snapshot of networks between companies and publics on Twitter in the context of corporate social responsibility (CSR) communication. Results showed that CSR communication activities (i.e., informing, retweeting, and mentioning) empowered a corporation through centralizing its network position and gaining public support (i.e., emotional, influencer, and knowledge support). In addition, degree centrality mediated the relationship between corporate retweets and stakeholder support and between corporate response and stakeholder support.     

Functional and emotional traits of corporate social media message strategies: Behavioral insights from S&P 500 Facebook data

Drawing from literature regarding public engagement, the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM), computer-mediated communication research, and emotion psychology, this study examines the effects of companies’ social media communication strategies on public engagement behaviors as indexed by post likes, shares, and comments. Specifically, it investigates how corporate Facebook posts’ functional traits (functional interactivity and vividness) and emotional traits (emotion presence, valence, and strength) impact public engagement online. Through data mining and computer-assisted sentiment analysis of 33,379 posts from 106 Standard & Poor 500 companies’ Facebook accounts, this study finds a negative effect of functional interactivity but a positive effect of vividness on engagement. It also shows that emotional traits overall yield stronger public engagement outcomes. Two-way interactions between emotional and functional features are also detected. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.     

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.     

Power distance and online organization–public relationship building: a comparative analysis of US and Chinese corporate websites

Informed by the dialogic perspective and Hofstede's power distance theory, this study examines mediated organization–public relationship building on corporate websites. The focus is on exploring how cultural differences influence American and Chinese businesses in addressing concerns and interests of a diverse set of publics. Findings show that corporate websites, whether American or Chinese, tend to converge on a global strategy. Business-oriented features tend to standardize, whereas business environment-oriented features are more likely to localize. Specifically, in relation to the former, we find that US and Chinese companies tend to target multiple audiences on their websites; the majority tailor their messages to customers, investors, employees, and the press simultaneously. Regarding the latter, we find that Chinese companies tend to target the government and US companies are more likely to address social corporate issues on their websites. These findings shed light on the longstanding issue in the literature of whether corporate websites should be culturally specific or universal. The managerial implications of the findings are discussed and recommendations for future research are given.     

A two-path model of the impact of LGBTQ+ diversity CSR levels on public response

Since conflicting opinions and expectations of stakeholders about LGBTQ+ diversity coexist, companies contemplate how far to draw the line of CSR involvement in relation to LGBTQ+ diversity. This study examines how different levels of LGBTQ+ diversity CSR (i.e., proactive, passive, refusal) affect public responses. The proposed model investigates how public perceptions of corporate support for LGBTQ+ diversity (PCSL), influenced by CSR level, affects two dimensions of corporate associations differently (corporate ability and CSR association), and consequently CSR responses (supportive communication intent, purchase intent, and corporate evaluation in this study). The role of perceived value-driven motivation as a mediator was also examined. An online experiment was conducted with two Fortune 500 companies (Dell and Kellogg's). Overall, the results suggest that proactive CSR leads to higher PCS-L and better CSR outcomes among the general public than a passive or refusal approach. PCS-L, directly and indirectly, affects individuals’ CSR associations, which are mediated by value-driven motives. In turn, CSR associations positively influence publics’ supportive communication intent, purchase intent and corporate evaluations. As for CA associations, we found that they had a rather complicated relationship with PCS-L. Specifically, PCS-L had a direct negative effect on CA associations (Dell) or no effect (Kellogg), indicating possible backlash effects. However, higher PSC-L resulted in more favorable perceived motives of the CSR program, driven by the company's moral grounds and corporate values, consequently resulting in greater CA associations (positive indirect impact). Thus, perceived value-driven motives can offset potential backlash effects related to CA associations and corresponding CSR outcomes.     

How controversial businesses communicate CSR on Facebook: Insights from the Canadian cannabis industry

This study advances our current understanding of corporate social responsibility (CSR) communication in a controversial industry by analyzing CSR-related Facebook posts from seven Canadian public cannabis companies. Our findings indicated that these companies’ CSR communication on Facebook was mostly instrumentalist, lacked transparency, and used effective multimedia characteristics. In addition, associations between communication strategies and public engagement on social media (e.g., # of likes, comments, and shares) revealed both opportunities and ethical concerns regarding CSR communication in controversial businesses.     

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.     

Exploring Types of Organization–Public Relationships and Their Implications for Relationship Management in Public Relations

The purpose of this study is to explore the antecedent of organization–public relationships that affects relationship outcomes. Organizations, realizing the interdependence with their publics, developed different types of relationships, such as communal and exchange relationships. Therefore, there should be other types of relationships influencing the quality of the relationships. In this study, 40 qualitative interviews with 36 multinational companies (from Fortune 500 and Taiwan's Commonwealth 1000) in 9 cities in China and Taiwan were conducted to explore more types of relationships. This study discovered mutual communal, covenantal, contractual, symbiotic, manipulative, and exploitive relationships multinational companies have developed with their Chinese publics. The findings also indicate that covenantal relationships help reach a win–win ground, and mutual communal relationships benefit multinational companies the most in achieving effectiveness. A continuum of types of relationships is provided in this study.     

How Do Career Centers Use Social Networking Sites?

The popularity and growth of social networking sites (SNSs), particularly among the college‐aged demographic, makes them logical tools for university career centers to use to connect with students. The authors surveyed 78 university career centers to determine how they use SNSs, the benefits and drawbacks, and the advice they would give to a career center considering using SNSs. The most commonly used SNSs by this sample include Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter, mainly to provide career information. Benefits included students’ responsivity to the SNS posts and increased visibility and attendance at events; the main drawback was time required. The most common recommendation was to determine goals and plan implementation.     

Should business have ‘a sense of morality’?: Company director views on corporate engagement with socio-political issues

Increasingly, companies are expected to engage with, or be responsive to, their publics to achieve social acceptance or to be perceived as legitimate. The expectation manifests, in part, through beliefs that companies should engage with socio-political issues. This important component of public relations practice is examined through a qualitative analysis of interviews undertaken with 23 experienced Australian company directors. The empirical research identifies and explores a tension between the contemporary corporation as an amoral agent while also increasingly responsive to pressures introduced by external expectations, reflected in growing attention to the concept of social licence to operate. When resolving to engage with socio-political issues, directors were predominantly motivated by the company’s best interests and ‘good business’. This necessitated identifying issues relevant to key stakeholders and issues that tied to corporate purpose, identity or knowledge. However, some evidence is apparent of director willingness to engage with issues not directly related to core business or corporate purpose. This may reflect support for an enhanced social licence to operate or even in pursuit of wider societal legitimacy-building, pointing the way to potential future increases in corporate social engagement.     

The Relationship Between Corporate Volunteering and Employee Civic Engagement Outside the Workplace in Russia

This paper discusses the relationship between corporate volunteering and civic engagement outside the workplace in Russia, proceeding from a mixed-method approach. The quantitative findings are based on a comparison between employees in 37 Russian companies who participated in corporate volunteering (N = 399) and those who did not (N = 402). Using binary logistic regression analysis, we demonstrate that employee participation in corporate volunteering is positively related to four forms of civic engagement outside the workplace: informal volunteering, formal volunteering, formal monetary donation, and informal monetary donation. In addition, we draw on information obtained from interviews with 10 corporate volunteers, as well as with all 37 company corporate volunteering managers, to develop a general explanation for why corporate volunteering might lead to civic engagement. We identify three primary explanations. First, trust in companies can be converted into increased trust in social institutions. Second, corporate volunteering can expose employees to other realities, thereby leading them to rethink their priorities. Third, corporate volunteering socializes employees to volunteering, thus making them more likely to incorporate volunteering into their personal repertoires of activities. Corporate volunteering appears to be an effective mechanism for stimulating civic engagement and volunteering infrastructure in post-communist countries.     

Revisiting social-mediated crisis communication model: The Lancôme regenerative crisis after the Hong Kong Umbrella Movement

The widespread use of social media has stimulated the number of crises on a global scale and given rise to regenerative crises which involve multiple crisis stages and publics. Using the Social-Mediated Crisis Communication model and the regenerative crisis model, this study explores a real-life organizational crisis related to Lancôme Hong Kong, which was driven by the socio-political environment after the Umbrella Movement. It aims to examine the engagement strategies by different publics, and also the influence of information forms and sources on the trends of emotion among social media publics. Results also provided an empirical evaluation of the regenerative crisis model driven by a socio-political environment. An online content analysis of selected 10% sample with an online data acquisition and analysis tool (3902 Facebook posts and comments, 1178 forum posts and comments, and 244 online news articles) revealed the interlocking connection among the involved publics along with the social-mediated regenerative crisis life cycle. Followers’ emotional responses were not only attached to Lancôme, but also to third parties as information sources. Four subcategories of influential social media creators were identified. Refinement on the Social-Mediated Crisis Communication model and practical implications are suggested.     

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.     

Corporate social responsibility attribute rankings

This research presents the findings of a rank order evaluation of corporate social responsibility attributes by a target public (N = 72) of a contemporary corporate social responsibility campaign. The results indicate that publics value corporate honesty above other corporate social responsibility behaviors.     

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.     

The new water cooler: Implications for practitioners concerning the NLRB's stance on social media and workers’ rights

This study examines the National Labor Relations Board's (NLRB) recent decision in Hispanics United (2012), which prohibits employers from firing employees for social media posts that contain work-related grievances. Given that social media has become a large part of corporate image on the Internet, this recent ruling has direct impact on corporate image, social media communication, and public relations. Implications for public relations practitioners and human resource management are discussed and standards for evaluating social media posts in light of this recent decision are provided.