Strategic corporate communication in the digital age

Institutions and organizations are increasingly using the digital media to communicate with stakeholders on a day-to-day basis and during crises situations. Therefore, this chapter presents a bibliographic analysis on digital corporate communication technologies. The grounded theory’s inductive approach was used to capture and interpret the findings from Scopus-indexed publications. The articles were scrutinized in their entirety, including their research questions, methodologies and interpretation of the findings. Afterwards, this contribution identifies the opportunities and challenges that emerged during an unprecedented Coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak. In conclusion, it implies that there is scope for institutions and organizations to incorporate digital and social media in their crises’ communications and risk management plans. This will enable them to be in a better position to engage in credible and transparent dialogic communications with different stakeholders.peer-reviewe

25 years of research in online organizational communication. Review

25 years ago, organizations consolidated their digital communication and researchers began their study. The article analyzes and evaluates the trends, findings and main future challenges of the discipline from the thematic and methodological point of view. All the articles published on the subject in the main journals included in the Journal Citation Reports (JCR) are studied through an analysis sheet designed for this research and a qualitative study of the topics and hermeneutics. The results indicate a continued increase in interest in the object of study from a largely deterministic and descriptive perspective that offers an overview of the evolution of communication in organizations linked to technological innovations. Emerging issues and challenges include hybrid communication, communication through instant web messaging and robotization and their growing influence on society, especially in political elections and referendumsS

How Spokesperson Rank and Selected Media Channels Impact Perceptions in Crisis Communication

This study examined the impact of spokesperson’s rank and selected media channels in crisis communication by employing different ranks (i.e., CEO and communication director spokespersons) and media channels (blogs, websites, and newspapers). Findings indicated that CEO spokespersons were more effective in terms of lowering publics’ crisis responsibility attributions than communication director spokespersons and that blogs were more effective in lowering crisis responsibility attributions than websites and newspapers

Cavaliers, Heroes, and Devils: A Metaphoric Criticism of Dan Gilbert’s Attempt to Dethrone the King of Cleveland

This study focuses on the letter written by Dan Gilbert, the owner of the National Basketball Association’s Cleveland Cavaliers, in response to LeBron James’ decision on July 8, 2010, to play for another franchise. Metaphoric criticism is used to examine this artifact to reveal Gilbert’s motives for fabricating this letter. The discovered metaphors include LeBron as villain, LeBron as native son, LeBron as fallen hero/king/god, and ownership as hero. These separate metaphors coalesce to form the ultimate metaphor of LeBron as devil and expose Gilbert’s true feelings of anguish and betrayal after James’ departure. Particular attention is paid to what these metaphors suggest about the role of a professional athlete and the expectations they are required to fulfill

The Social Coast Guard: An Ethnographic Examination of the Intersection of Risk Communication, Social Media, and Government Public Relations

The contemporary communication context includes heightened risk, increasing the need for dialogic or relational risk communication with key stakeholders. Scholars have identified social media's potential to improve dialogic communication, yet governments may face challenges when using social media, particularly in a risk communication context. This study explored social media use in "the complex communication context of risk communication" (Sellnow et al., 2009, p. 53) within the under-studied U.S. public sector and applied a complexity and relational theoretical framework to explore the intersection of government public relations, risk communication, and social media. Questions focused on how government communicators in high-risk environments perceived the public sector context influences their risk communication and social media communication; how they viewed social media's role in risk communication; the extent to which they engaged in social-mediated relational risk communication; and, how they planned and executed social media communication. An ethnographic case study of the U.S. Coast Guard's social media program was conducted, including analysis of 205.25 participant observation hours at the headquarters social media office, 10 interviews, and 49 documents. Findings suggest that organizations with risk-related missions or responsibilities may have a "risk communication mindset" that spurs and constrains social media communication and integrates social-mediated risk communication into ongoing public affairs. Intersecting, overlapping influences within public sector contexts also influenced social media strategies and tactics. Data suggest a continuum exists between organizations participating in and hosting social media engagement. Findings suggest moving toward a multivocal conversational relational communication model that encompasses the distributed public relations model (Kelleher, 2009). The dissertation adds depth to the human conversational voice construct (e.g., Bruning, et al., 2004; Kelleher, 2009; Sweetser & Metzgar, 2007) and online relational maintenance strategies by offering a behind-the-scenes understanding of why and how government organizations can be engaging and conversational hosts via social media by inviting audiences to engage without organizations having to maintain conversations. The study offers practical recommendations such as reducing blog content to increase efforts using more engaging platforms like Facebook; increasing use of visually-rich and engaging content; cultivating internal relationships to improve personnel compliance and participation; and, improving strategic integration and evaluation

Consumer Perceptions of CSR communication: An experimental investigation

This research aims to find out the most effective Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) message approaches that will contribute to favourable consumer CSR beliefs and attitude toward the company. Three message approaches: the use of narrative, invitational rhetoric and message ambiguity will be investigated. It is expected that consumer support for CSR and consumer scepticism will have moderating effects and consumer attribution of company motives will mediate the relationship between message approach and attitude toward the company. A series of laboratory experiments will be conducted with consumers as the participants. Quantitative data collected through the experiment will be analyzed and a research model will be tested. It is anticipated that the findings from this research will allow public relations and corporate communication practitioners to better identify effective CSR communication message approaches which lead to positive consumer CSR beliefs and attitude toward the company

Is there Still a PR Problem Online? Exploring the Effects of Different Sources and Crisis Response Strategies in Online Crisis Communication Via Social Media

This study examined the effects of source and crisis response strategy on crisis communication outcomes in the context of social media. A 3 (source: organization, CEO, or customer) × 2 (strategy: accommodative or defensive) × 2 (crisis type: airline crash or bank hacking) mixed experimental study was conducted with 391 participants. The organizational sources were more likely to be perceived as more credible than the non-organizational sources. In particular, the CEO appeared to be the most trustworthy and credible source in delivering crisis messages. The path analysis indicated that perceived source credibility mediated the effect of source on reputation and behavioral intentions. This mediation appeared to be contingent on the type of crisis response strategy

25 years of research in online organizational communication. Review article

25 years ago, organizations consolidated their digital communication and researchers began their study. The article analyzes and evaluates the trends, findings and main future challenges of the discipline from the thematic and methodological point of view. All the articles published on the subject in the main journals included in the Journal Citation Reports (JCR) are studied through an analysis sheet designed for this research and a qualitative study of the topics and hermeneutics. The results indicate a continued increase in interest in the object of study from a largely deterministic and descriptive perspective that offers an overview of the evolution of communication in organizations linked to technological innovations. Emerging issues and challenges include hybrid communication, communication through instant web messaging and robotization and their growing influence on society, especially in political elections and referendums

Synchronizing crisis responses after a transgression: An analysis of BP's enacted crisis response to the Deepwater Horizon crisis in 2010

Purpose: With the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon oil well in the Gulf of Mexico on April 20, 2010 and until the well was officially "killed" on September 19, 2010, British Petroleum (BP) did not merely experience a crisis but a five-month marathon of sustained, multi-media engagement. Whereas traditional public relations theory teaches us that an organization should synchronize its messages across channels, there are no models to understand how an organization may strategically coordinate public relations messaging across traditional and social media platforms. This is especially important in the new media environment where social media (e.g. Facebook and Twitter) are increasingly being used in concert with traditional public relations tools (e.g. press releases) as a part of an organization's stakeholder engagement strategy. This paper seeks to address these issues. Design/methodology/approach: The present study is a content analysis examining all of BP's press releases (N=126), its Facebook posts (N=1,789), and its Twitter tweets (N=2,730) during the 2010 Gulf crisis (May 20, 2010 through September 20, 2010). Findings: Results demonstrate BP used a synchronized approach with press releases serving as the hub for their multi-media strategy. Originality/value: This paper identifies a synchronized approach for crisis communication in response to organizational transgressions. © Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Linguistic elements of conversational human voice in online brand communication: Manipulations and perceptions

The conversational human voice (CHV) is an extensively studied and adopted communication style in online brand communication. However, in previous research the way in which CHV is operationalized differs considerably: the type and the number of linguistic elements used to establish a sense of CHV in online brand messages varies. Moreover, it is still unknown how CHV operationalizations contribute to consumers’ perceptions of CHV, which consequently could affect their evaluation regarding the message and the brand. In this paper, we addressed these issues by conducting an integrative literature review and a perception experiment, and consequently present a taxonomy of linguistic elements related to message personalization, informal speech, and invitational rhetoric that can be used to operationalize CHV systematically in future studies in online brand communication. Directions for future research and managerial implications are discussed