Pub Date : 2023-12-12DOI: 10.1177/23294884231217084
Kayoung Kim, Sun Kyong Lee
This study examined an anonymous online community, Blind, while focusing on the role of social networks in information flow, to explain how internal organizational gossip is diffused to employees of other companies and even to the public through its distinctive network structures. We analyzed three cases of gossip networks that differed in terms of the organizations involved and issue severity. The findings suggest that online gossip networks with a large size, low connectedness, and high centralization can easily diffuse information to community members and the outside public. Logistic regression Quadratic Assignment Procedures (QAPs) were used to examine the endogenous and exogenous effects in each network. The results showed that the receiver effect of company size negatively predicted tie formation in NAVER and Samsung’s gossip networks, indicating that gossip diffusion was more likely facilitated by members of smaller companies actively commenting on gossip. The homophily effect of working for the same company predicted tie formation in Samsung’s gossip network, indicating the difficulty of gossip diffusion to external members. Finally, the results of the structural hole analysis suggest that journalists play an important role in issue delivery and gossip diffusion in NAVER’s case. The findings reveal that internal workplace gossip can spill over an organizational boundary online and develop into a corporate crisis.
{"title":"From Organizational Gossip to a Corporate Crisis: A Network Analysis of Anonymous Online Communication on the Blind Application","authors":"Kayoung Kim, Sun Kyong Lee","doi":"10.1177/23294884231217084","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/23294884231217084","url":null,"abstract":"This study examined an anonymous online community, Blind, while focusing on the role of social networks in information flow, to explain how internal organizational gossip is diffused to employees of other companies and even to the public through its distinctive network structures. We analyzed three cases of gossip networks that differed in terms of the organizations involved and issue severity. The findings suggest that online gossip networks with a large size, low connectedness, and high centralization can easily diffuse information to community members and the outside public. Logistic regression Quadratic Assignment Procedures (QAPs) were used to examine the endogenous and exogenous effects in each network. The results showed that the receiver effect of company size negatively predicted tie formation in NAVER and Samsung’s gossip networks, indicating that gossip diffusion was more likely facilitated by members of smaller companies actively commenting on gossip. The homophily effect of working for the same company predicted tie formation in Samsung’s gossip network, indicating the difficulty of gossip diffusion to external members. Finally, the results of the structural hole analysis suggest that journalists play an important role in issue delivery and gossip diffusion in NAVER’s case. The findings reveal that internal workplace gossip can spill over an organizational boundary online and develop into a corporate crisis.","PeriodicalId":45593,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Business Communication","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2023-12-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139006768","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-12-08DOI: 10.1177/23294884231215349
Brian K. Richardson, Samantha Cosgrove, Amnee Elkhalid
Since the COVID-19 pandemic emerged, school board meetings were regularly featured on news broadcasts and social media platforms, depicting scenes of conflict, controversy, and disruption. We wondered how school district communication officers made sense of and remembered parent activists during the pandemic. Using sensemaking theory as a guiding framework, we analyzed data from interviews with 22 school district public information officers (PIOs) in Texas. Data analysis revealed what PIOs noticed (e.g. uncertainty, school board politicization, and closing/opening schools), their meaning-making (e.g. “return-to-normalcy” parents and “risk-averse” parents), and their actions (high vs. low engagement). With regard to remembering, or legacy, emergent themes included “strengthened relationships and learning” and the “domino effect,” which describes school districts where parent activism has persisted with new issues. In light of these findings, we offer theoretical and practical implications including recognition of several sensemaking tensions and impacts on PIOs of sensemaking under prolonged, stressful conditions.
{"title":"“They Masked our Children”: School District Communication Officers’ Sensemaking of Parent Activists During the COVID-19 Pandemic","authors":"Brian K. Richardson, Samantha Cosgrove, Amnee Elkhalid","doi":"10.1177/23294884231215349","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/23294884231215349","url":null,"abstract":"Since the COVID-19 pandemic emerged, school board meetings were regularly featured on news broadcasts and social media platforms, depicting scenes of conflict, controversy, and disruption. We wondered how school district communication officers made sense of and remembered parent activists during the pandemic. Using sensemaking theory as a guiding framework, we analyzed data from interviews with 22 school district public information officers (PIOs) in Texas. Data analysis revealed what PIOs noticed (e.g. uncertainty, school board politicization, and closing/opening schools), their meaning-making (e.g. “return-to-normalcy” parents and “risk-averse” parents), and their actions (high vs. low engagement). With regard to remembering, or legacy, emergent themes included “strengthened relationships and learning” and the “domino effect,” which describes school districts where parent activism has persisted with new issues. In light of these findings, we offer theoretical and practical implications including recognition of several sensemaking tensions and impacts on PIOs of sensemaking under prolonged, stressful conditions.","PeriodicalId":45593,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Business Communication","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2023-12-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138587126","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-11-22DOI: 10.1177/23294884231208352
Chenghui Wu, Yueyang Su
{"title":"Book Review: Social Media Marketing for Business: Scaling an Integrated Social Media Strategy Across Your Organization by Jenkins, A.","authors":"Chenghui Wu, Yueyang Su","doi":"10.1177/23294884231208352","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/23294884231208352","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45593,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Business Communication","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2023-11-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139248677","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-11-12DOI: 10.1177/23294884231208176
Yang Zhang, Jingyuan Zhang
Adopting a critical frame analysis perspective, this study investigates how American and Chinese energy giants represent and frame climate change in their corporate social responsibility reports, and reveals the respective underlying motivations and ideologies. The results show that the eight energy giants all recognized climate change, barely diagnosed its causes, slightly interpreted its impacts, but placed heavy emphasis on their solutions. They divert responsibility and criticism, through representing themselves as a victim and solver rather than a contributor. The frames identified in both corpora include Emission Management frame, Techno-optimism frame, Countermeasures frame, and Stakeholder Engagement frame, with common and distinct characteristics across the two corpora. The analysis of representations and frames exposes shared motivations such as greenwashing, legitimacy, and stakeholder engagement. However, these motivations indicate distinct ideologies, with American energy giants’ ideological denial, a subtle form of climate denialism, and Chinese energy giants’ green growth ideology, striving for a green, low-carbon development while reducing emissions.
{"title":"Climate Change as Represented in Corporate Social Responsibility Reports of American and Chinese Energy Giants: A Critical Frame Analysis Perspective","authors":"Yang Zhang, Jingyuan Zhang","doi":"10.1177/23294884231208176","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/23294884231208176","url":null,"abstract":"Adopting a critical frame analysis perspective, this study investigates how American and Chinese energy giants represent and frame climate change in their corporate social responsibility reports, and reveals the respective underlying motivations and ideologies. The results show that the eight energy giants all recognized climate change, barely diagnosed its causes, slightly interpreted its impacts, but placed heavy emphasis on their solutions. They divert responsibility and criticism, through representing themselves as a victim and solver rather than a contributor. The frames identified in both corpora include Emission Management frame, Techno-optimism frame, Countermeasures frame, and Stakeholder Engagement frame, with common and distinct characteristics across the two corpora. The analysis of representations and frames exposes shared motivations such as greenwashing, legitimacy, and stakeholder engagement. However, these motivations indicate distinct ideologies, with American energy giants’ ideological denial, a subtle form of climate denialism, and Chinese energy giants’ green growth ideology, striving for a green, low-carbon development while reducing emissions.","PeriodicalId":45593,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Business Communication","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135038485","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-10-12DOI: 10.1177/23294884231201142
Rebecca Elektra Van Herck, Lieve Vangehuchten
In spite of the rise of new media in a B2C context, companies still prefer to handle complaints privately. As such, many complaints are handled via email resulting in a professional communication genre of its own. In this study we performed a cross-cultural genre analysis to understand the specific discourse structure of the moves within response mails to complaints, on the one hand, and the importance of the communicative function of Conversational Human Voice within this genre, on the other. With this aim, we collected authentic organizational email replies to complaints from telecom companies active in the UK and Spain (36 and 44 emails respectively). The results indicate that the British and Spanish data sets show a similar discourse structure in terms of move frequency. The submoves that are prototypical for all data sets are Greeting, Explanation, Conclusion, and the closing submoves Sign-off and Signature. The data sets differ mainly in their frequency for the interpersonal submoves Empathy, Gratitude, and Apology, which are more prevalent in the English corpus, and the more business-oriented moves, such as Contact reason, Marketing, and Future contact, which are mainly present in the Spanish corpus. This suggests that organizational email replies to complaints are a rather conventionalized genre, with some linguacultures putting more effort in company-customer interactions by using more interpersonal submoves. Regarding the cross-cultural analysis of the expression of Conversational Human Voice we observed an influence of the respective linguacultures in the sense that the Spanish data are less personal and less invitational than the English mails, although they present more empathetic intensifiers. Furthermore, both data sets show only a limited extent of informal language. We evaluate these findings in the light of previous work.
{"title":"Unpacking the Art of Customer Complaint Handling in Spanish and British Telecom Emails: A Cross-Cultural Webcare Study With a Human Touch","authors":"Rebecca Elektra Van Herck, Lieve Vangehuchten","doi":"10.1177/23294884231201142","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/23294884231201142","url":null,"abstract":"In spite of the rise of new media in a B2C context, companies still prefer to handle complaints privately. As such, many complaints are handled via email resulting in a professional communication genre of its own. In this study we performed a cross-cultural genre analysis to understand the specific discourse structure of the moves within response mails to complaints, on the one hand, and the importance of the communicative function of Conversational Human Voice within this genre, on the other. With this aim, we collected authentic organizational email replies to complaints from telecom companies active in the UK and Spain (36 and 44 emails respectively). The results indicate that the British and Spanish data sets show a similar discourse structure in terms of move frequency. The submoves that are prototypical for all data sets are Greeting, Explanation, Conclusion, and the closing submoves Sign-off and Signature. The data sets differ mainly in their frequency for the interpersonal submoves Empathy, Gratitude, and Apology, which are more prevalent in the English corpus, and the more business-oriented moves, such as Contact reason, Marketing, and Future contact, which are mainly present in the Spanish corpus. This suggests that organizational email replies to complaints are a rather conventionalized genre, with some linguacultures putting more effort in company-customer interactions by using more interpersonal submoves. Regarding the cross-cultural analysis of the expression of Conversational Human Voice we observed an influence of the respective linguacultures in the sense that the Spanish data are less personal and less invitational than the English mails, although they present more empathetic intensifiers. Furthermore, both data sets show only a limited extent of informal language. We evaluate these findings in the light of previous work.","PeriodicalId":45593,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Business Communication","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135968910","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-10-03DOI: 10.1177/23294884231200249
Bridgit Fastrich
The current study contributes to the demand for more multilingual analyses of online reviews, comparing English and German-language hotel reviews on Booking.com. Specifically, it seeks to shed light on the linguapragmatic contrast of the German speaker showing a preference for more “content-orientation” and the English speaker more “person-orientation” by exploring the use of the first-person perspective (FPP) in online reviews. It further integrates cognitive linguistic theories of construal, considering whether the results implicate not only a difference in the assumedly intentional rhetorical preferences of speakers but also cognitive differences in ways of experiencing a hotel stay, which might also have important implications for how hotels tailor their language-specific responses and maybe even how hotels design their service and intended customer experience. The findings show that FPP did occur in more English reviews, indicating more personalization and thus a more personalized cognitive processing of the hotel stay. However, when FPP was identified in German reviews, it occurred at a similar frequency to English reviews, reflecting a similar degree of subjective involvement. The findings may thus indicate that while this contrast was robust on a whole, linguacultural differences may play an increasingly smaller role as online genres merge into more global styles, a trend that communications practitioners must increasingly consider.
{"title":"(Im)personalization in German and English Negative Online Reviews: Contrasts, Comparisons, and Cognitive Implications","authors":"Bridgit Fastrich","doi":"10.1177/23294884231200249","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/23294884231200249","url":null,"abstract":"The current study contributes to the demand for more multilingual analyses of online reviews, comparing English and German-language hotel reviews on Booking.com. Specifically, it seeks to shed light on the linguapragmatic contrast of the German speaker showing a preference for more “content-orientation” and the English speaker more “person-orientation” by exploring the use of the first-person perspective (FPP) in online reviews. It further integrates cognitive linguistic theories of construal, considering whether the results implicate not only a difference in the assumedly intentional rhetorical preferences of speakers but also cognitive differences in ways of experiencing a hotel stay, which might also have important implications for how hotels tailor their language-specific responses and maybe even how hotels design their service and intended customer experience. The findings show that FPP did occur in more English reviews, indicating more personalization and thus a more personalized cognitive processing of the hotel stay. However, when FPP was identified in German reviews, it occurred at a similar frequency to English reviews, reflecting a similar degree of subjective involvement. The findings may thus indicate that while this contrast was robust on a whole, linguacultural differences may play an increasingly smaller role as online genres merge into more global styles, a trend that communications practitioners must increasingly consider.","PeriodicalId":45593,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Business Communication","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135696609","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-09-24DOI: 10.1177/23294884231200858
Leping You, Linda Hon, Yu-Hao Lee
Companies are often hesitant about the impacts of corporate political advocacy, whether to take a stance, and on which issues. This study conducted a 2 (value congruence vs. value incongruence) by 2 (issue relevance: low vs. high) online experiment to understand how these two factors affect consumers’ perceptions of the motives of a company engaging in corporate political advocacy, as well as how consumers’ perceptions of the company affect their supportive behaviors. The findings revealed that value congruence affects consumers’ perception that the company is acting in the public interest, which encourages them to support corporate advocacy regardless of whether the outcome of the advocacy is relevant to their lives. However, issue relevance can affect how strongly people oppose a company’s stance when they disagree. The findings indicate that the public service motive is a crucial predictor of consumers’ favorable perceptions of a company and their supportive behavioral responses to corporate political advocacy.
{"title":"How Value Congruence and Issue Relevance Affect Consumer Reactions to Corporate Political Advocacy","authors":"Leping You, Linda Hon, Yu-Hao Lee","doi":"10.1177/23294884231200858","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/23294884231200858","url":null,"abstract":"Companies are often hesitant about the impacts of corporate political advocacy, whether to take a stance, and on which issues. This study conducted a 2 (value congruence vs. value incongruence) by 2 (issue relevance: low vs. high) online experiment to understand how these two factors affect consumers’ perceptions of the motives of a company engaging in corporate political advocacy, as well as how consumers’ perceptions of the company affect their supportive behaviors. The findings revealed that value congruence affects consumers’ perception that the company is acting in the public interest, which encourages them to support corporate advocacy regardless of whether the outcome of the advocacy is relevant to their lives. However, issue relevance can affect how strongly people oppose a company’s stance when they disagree. The findings indicate that the public service motive is a crucial predictor of consumers’ favorable perceptions of a company and their supportive behavioral responses to corporate political advocacy.","PeriodicalId":45593,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Business Communication","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135925746","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-09-20DOI: 10.1177/23294884231200861
Lise-Lotte Holmgreen
The article discusses the use of conversational human voice (CHV) to address negative eWOM on brand-generated social media platforms. Using the case of a crisis-ridden Danish bank, the article investigates the use of CHV outside service failures and its effects on critical publics in the context of intentional crises. The data consist of posts and comments from the bank’s Facebook page, following allegations of money laundering. The analysis reveals that CHV is used extensively by the bank to counter criticism; however, the degree to which the strategy is standardized or tailored seems to depend on whether users appear once, have a regular presence, engage in dialog, and are known to the bank’s employees. These findings suggest that while CHV is intended for more personalized communication to make users more sympathetic to the organization, its use will have to be contextualized to be effective.
{"title":"“We’re Not Proud of the Cases We’ve Been Involved in”: Crisis Resolution on Facebook Using Conversational Human Voice","authors":"Lise-Lotte Holmgreen","doi":"10.1177/23294884231200861","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/23294884231200861","url":null,"abstract":"The article discusses the use of conversational human voice (CHV) to address negative eWOM on brand-generated social media platforms. Using the case of a crisis-ridden Danish bank, the article investigates the use of CHV outside service failures and its effects on critical publics in the context of intentional crises. The data consist of posts and comments from the bank’s Facebook page, following allegations of money laundering. The analysis reveals that CHV is used extensively by the bank to counter criticism; however, the degree to which the strategy is standardized or tailored seems to depend on whether users appear once, have a regular presence, engage in dialog, and are known to the bank’s employees. These findings suggest that while CHV is intended for more personalized communication to make users more sympathetic to the organization, its use will have to be contextualized to be effective.","PeriodicalId":45593,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Business Communication","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136314658","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-09-20DOI: 10.1177/23294884231200244
Svenja Widdershoven, Mark Pluymaekers, Haithem Zourrig, Paul Sinclair, Josée M. M. Bloemer
This research explores the potential of non-negative consumer messages to counteract negativity in social media firestorms through emotional contagion. 1,186 tweets were examined in response to a McDonald’s Japan service issue, revealing that non-negative messages tend to align emotionally with preceding messages. This suggests a temporary mitigation of negativity. Investigating emotional contagion within social media firestorms challenged the prevailing notion of negativity bias, indicating a focus on maintaining a positive affective state. Practical implications suggest organizations should monitor and acknowledge non-negative messages during crises to identify advocates and gain insights into subnetwork impact. Incorporating elements from contagious non-negative posts in responses can help mitigate reputational damage. This research contributes to a deeper understanding of emotional contagion dynamics in social media firestorms, aiding organizations in managing their online reputation during crises.
{"title":"Calming the Storm: How Non-Negative Messages From Fellow Consumers Can Dispel Negativity in a Social Media Firestorm","authors":"Svenja Widdershoven, Mark Pluymaekers, Haithem Zourrig, Paul Sinclair, Josée M. M. Bloemer","doi":"10.1177/23294884231200244","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/23294884231200244","url":null,"abstract":"This research explores the potential of non-negative consumer messages to counteract negativity in social media firestorms through emotional contagion. 1,186 tweets were examined in response to a McDonald’s Japan service issue, revealing that non-negative messages tend to align emotionally with preceding messages. This suggests a temporary mitigation of negativity. Investigating emotional contagion within social media firestorms challenged the prevailing notion of negativity bias, indicating a focus on maintaining a positive affective state. Practical implications suggest organizations should monitor and acknowledge non-negative messages during crises to identify advocates and gain insights into subnetwork impact. Incorporating elements from contagious non-negative posts in responses can help mitigate reputational damage. This research contributes to a deeper understanding of emotional contagion dynamics in social media firestorms, aiding organizations in managing their online reputation during crises.","PeriodicalId":45593,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Business Communication","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136314460","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-09-20DOI: 10.1177/23294884231200247
Ursula Lutzky
This article explores customer service interactions between the Irish airline Ryanair and its passengers on the social networking platform Twitter. Using a corpus linguistic methodology, it investigates a 1-million-word corpus of Twitter threads comprising tweets addressed to and posted by Ryanair between August 2018 and July 2019. Studying the communicative strategies used in the corpus reveals customers’ main concerns and causes for complaint, and how the airline addresses these in their response tweets offering assistance to passengers. In addition, the analysis of customer response tweets to these corporate replies allows insights into customers’ reactions to and perception of the (often generic) answers they receive. The aim of this case study is to gain further understanding of the linguistic and communicative features that characterize customer service interactions online, and the attitudes customers voice toward them, with a view to streamlining customer communication and improving levels of customer satisfaction.
{"title":"“Doesn’t Really Answer My Question . . .”: Exploring Customer Service Interactions on Twitter","authors":"Ursula Lutzky","doi":"10.1177/23294884231200247","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/23294884231200247","url":null,"abstract":"This article explores customer service interactions between the Irish airline Ryanair and its passengers on the social networking platform Twitter. Using a corpus linguistic methodology, it investigates a 1-million-word corpus of Twitter threads comprising tweets addressed to and posted by Ryanair between August 2018 and July 2019. Studying the communicative strategies used in the corpus reveals customers’ main concerns and causes for complaint, and how the airline addresses these in their response tweets offering assistance to passengers. In addition, the analysis of customer response tweets to these corporate replies allows insights into customers’ reactions to and perception of the (often generic) answers they receive. The aim of this case study is to gain further understanding of the linguistic and communicative features that characterize customer service interactions online, and the attitudes customers voice toward them, with a view to streamlining customer communication and improving levels of customer satisfaction.","PeriodicalId":45593,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Business Communication","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136314647","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
京公网安备 11010802042870号
京ICP备2023020795号-1
扫码关注我们
求助内容：
应助结果提醒方式：