Facebook as a Dialogic Strategic Tool for European Local Governments

Abstract

The main aim of this study is to analyze the extent to which local governments in the EU apply dialogic strategies in their Facebook profi les in order to establish and enhance relations with society, and then to examine the impact of certain factors on the implementation of these dialogic strategies. A descriptive analysis is made of the implementation of the dialogic communication theory in relation to the use of Facebook, and this is followed by an explanatory analysis of factors leading local governments to apply dialogic principles. These analyses show that the situation is open to improvement, because local governments are mostly unaware of the benefi ts offered by the use of dialogic principles when establishing online relationships with stakeholders, and greater awareness would enable them to enhance such relationships.

Dialogic Communication During Covid-19 Pandemic: An Analysis on Technoparks’ Social Media Usage in Turkey

“…Besides, it is concluded that they did not make use of the advantages of social media platforms to build stronger dialogues with their stakeholders particularly during the pandemic days when most of their stakeholders were expected to stay home, work from home and also to search for new entrepreneurship, research and development opportunities which technoparks could offer. As for each principle of dialogic communication, it is clear that Instagram accounts were preferred mostly for disseminating information (as also found in the studies of Silkü-Bilgilier and Kocaömer in 2020, and Arslan in 2019), while Facebook accounts were used mostly for attracting audiences for their return visits (which results in deficiency in dialogic communication as discovered by Haro-de-Rosario, Sáez-Martín, & del Mar Gálvez-Rodríguez, 2017;Saxton & Waters, 2014;Capriotti & Losada-Díaz, 2018;Oltarzhevskyi et al, 2018;Shin et al, 2015 in their studies), and the technoparks mostly used features of Twitter that made it possible to keep audiences on the platform (which shows important similarities with the major findings of prior research such as Rybalko & Seltzer, Connectist: Istanbul University Journal of Communication Sciences, 2021, 60, 1-26 2010; Kemna, 2013;del Mar Gálvez-Rodríguez et al, 2016;Beverly, 2013;Shin et al, 2015;Yue et al, 2019). This may signal the different social media strategies of technoparks for each platform, which, if that is the case, demonstrates that there is no consistency among those strategies.…”

“…As one of the leading social networking platforms, Facebook offers its users to share information, create and sustain constant interaction (such as conversation, negotiation, discussion, exchange, and so on), and cultivate dynamic relationships with their key audiences, which in turn gives way to developing strong dialogue, through its powerful dialogic functions (Capriotti & Losada-Díaz, 2018) such as comments, reactions, polls, and events and the like. Unlike some prior research (Kim et al, 2014b), more recent studies (Haro-de-Rosario, Sáez-Martín, & del Mar Gálvez-Rodríguez, 2017;Saxton & Waters, 2014;Capriotti & Losada-Díaz, 2018;Oltarzhevskyi et al, 2018;Shin et al, 2015) assert that many organizations manage their Facebook accounts only for disseminating information instead of establishing a two-way dialogue.…”

“…Being the first research analyzing the social media use of technoparks in Turkey in terms of dialogic communication principles, this study differs from previous ones on several counts. While prior research examined either only Facebook (Capriotti & Losada-Díaz, 2018;Haro-de-Rosario, Sáez-Martín, & del Mar Gálvez-Rodríguez, 2017;Saxton & Waters, 2014), Twitter (del Mar Gálvez-Rodríguez et al, 2016;Kemna, 2013;Linvill et al, 2012;Rybalko & Seltzer, 2010;Sáez Martín, de Rosario, & Caba Pérez, 2015;Sundstorm & Levenshus, 2015;Wang & Yang, 2020;Yue et al, 2019), and Instagram (Arslan, 2019; Connectist: Istanbul University Journal of Communication Sciences, 2021, 60, 1-26 Silkü-Bilgilier & Kocaömer, 2020), or only two of these social media platforms (Kim et al, 2014a;Kim et al, 2014b;Shin et al, 2015;Yağmurlu, 2013), this study takes a more holistic approach and conducts content analyses of these three social media platforms in terms of the dialogic communication principles. In addition, to the best knowledge of the authors, this study holds the title of being the first research which attempts to present the quality indexes [an index based on the determinants of the quality of the social media platforms to determine their excellence in terms of dialogic communication, as stated by Navarro-Ruiz and Humanes Humanes (2012)] of these social media platforms regarding their adoption of the dialogic communication principles in order to reveal the strengths and weaknesses of each social media platform of technoparks, and to make suggestions for dialogic communication management.…”

The Dialogical Potential of Facebook: The Case of Fashion Brands

“…The existing advertising saturation affects the effectiveness of campaigns [20]. For this reason, companies, instead of investing in a massive marketing, should focus on building relationships with customers and making personalized messages [12]. Regarding to this and because of the Internet, public relations and the way organizations involve their publics has changed considerably in recent years [21].…”

“…In this sense, we cannot forget that social media is based on dialogue, so organizations must pay attention to this situation with the purpose of participating on it and in dialoguing with its clients [12]. Therefore, it is common for large companies to use the means of social communication, such as Facebook [21].…”