Social presence and digital dialogic communication: engagement lessons from top social CEOs

ABSTRACT

This study expands the conceptual framework of dialogic communication on social media by incorporating a social dimension via social presence. Through a content analysis, we explored how dialogic internet principles and social presence strategies were implemented in top social CEOs’ Facebook posts to generate public engagement outcomes. Results showed that top social CEOs used a variety of dialogic principles on Facebook. Yet, 1-way information strategies were still more commonly used. Critically, dialogic principles, such as providing information of interest to publics and creating dialogic loops and the affective and cohesive strategies for projecting social presence effectively enhanced public engagement outcomes of reactions, likes, shares, and comments. Theoretical contributions and strategic implications on digital dialogic communication and leadership communication in public relations are discussed.

摘要

本研究通过社交存在纳入一个社会维度，从而扩展了社交媒体上对话交流的概念框架。通过内容分析，我们探讨了如何在顶级社交CEO 的 Facebook帖子中实施对话互联网原则和社交存在策略， 以产生公众参与结果。结果显示，顶级社交CEO在Facebook上使用了各种对话原则。然而，单向信息策略仍然更为常用。最关键一点，诸如提供公众感兴趣的信息和创建对话循环以及用于预测社交存在的情感和凝聚策略等对话原则，有效地增加了反应、点赞、分享和评论的公众参与结果。本文还讨论了公共关系中数字对话沟通和领导沟通的理论贡献和战略意义。

RESUMEN

Este estudio amplía el marco conceptual de la comunicación dialógica en las redes sociales al incorporar una dimensión social a través de la presencia social. A través de un análisis de contenido, exploramos cómo los principios dialógicos de Internet y las estrategias de presencia social se implementaron en las publicaciones sociales de Facebook de los principales Directores Generales (CEOs, por sus siglas en inglés) para generar resultados de participación pública. Los resultados mostraron que los principales CEOs sociales utilizaron una variedad de principios dialógicos en Facebook. Sin embargo, las estrategias de información unidireccional fueron aún más comúnmente utilizadas. Críticamente, los principios dialógicos, como proporcionar información de interés para el público y crear bucles dialógicos y las estrategias afectivas y cohesivas para proyectar la presencia social, mejoraron de manera efectiva los resultados del compromiso público de reacciones, me gusta, compartir y comentar. Se discuten las contribuciones teóricas y las implicaciones estratégicas en la comunicación dialógica digital y la comunicación de liderazgo en las relaciones públicas.

KEYWORDS:

• CEO
• communication
• data mining
• dialogic communication
• public engagement
• social media
• social presence

Appendix

CEO names and affiliations

Table

Notes

1. For the CEOs who posted fewer than 30 posts during the targeted time frame, every post was included in the sample.

2. Facebook adopts a ranking system to identify the top or most relevant comment among others. The system deems metrics, such as number of likes and comments as positive signals; and low engagement and few connections as negative signals (Darwell, 2003).

3. Because each item of the dialogic principles was coded as a dichotomous (i.e., 1 = yes, 0 = no) instead of a continuous variable, the summation of the measures indicated how many tactics of each principle were used by the CEO. Consistent with the coding of its indicators, the summated variable of each dialogic principle was transformed into a dichotomous variable. For each of the transformed variables of dialogic principles (i.e., conservation of visitors, generation of return visits, dialogic loop, and information of interest to publics), 1 = at least one dialogic tactic was used; 0 = none of the dialogic tactics were utilized under that principle.

4. The number of total page likes was included as the control variable in the regression analyses because it was expected to affect the dependent variables (i.e., likes, shares, comments on, and reactions to CEO posts) in the study. For instance, a post posted by a CEO with a large base of followers (i.e., page likes) may be liked/shared/commented/reacted more times than a post posted by a CEO with a small number of followers.

5. Interpretations regarding all the outcomes should be made in their logged forms.