Mapping the role of public actors in the constitution of place brand publics in social media

Abstract

The paper offers an analytical approach to map and analyze the role of public actors in the digital constitution of place brands. By tracking how different public actors contribute to the shaping of brand publics—specifically via the constitution of brand intangibles—this study examines how digitalization can challenge the traditional public–private dichotomy in administrative entities like municipalities, regions, and cities in creating specific social media brand publics. Within the contours of the study, digitalization refers to the shift of communication channels used by place-based public authorities, institutions, and organizations to digital venues as these actors follow the emergence of brand publics on these newer platforms. Additionally, the approach makes it possible to discuss the networked public brands as mechanisms to manage the numerous stakeholders creating branding messages within geographical associations. To demonstrate the characteristics of the analytical approach its potential, the study uses as illustrative example the Swedish county of Östergötland, and its two municipalities, Linköping and Norrköping. Following an actor-related approach to Social Media Analytics (SMA), 939,758 publicly posted contents generated in blogs, Facebook, forums, and Twitter are used as the empirical dataset. In addition to its analytical contributions, the approach also presents practical and conceptual implications by operationalizing how place-based public institutions, organizations, and sectors can use brand publics not only to influence reputation but also to promote specific brand publics for places in their daily communication in digital spheres.