مقاله سال ۲۰۱۶

The significance of corporate reputation has been recognized in the area of public relations research. Researchers assert that corporate reputation theories predate the concept of contemporary public relations. Organizational reputations together with organization-public relationships comprise the most salient conceptual values of public relations (e.g., Coombs, 2000; Grunig & Hung, 2002; Yang & Grunig, 2005). Although there is no universal agreement on how corporate reputation should be defined, a review of existing literature yielded collectivity and cognitive perceptions as the most distinct attributes of corporate reputation (Bromley, 1993; Fombrun, 1996; Fombrun & Van Riel, 2003; Grunig & Hung, 2002; Yang, 2007; Yang & Grunig, 2005). From a public relations perspective, these two attributes are closely linked to stakeholders in such a way that a company’s reputation is indeed a byproduct of the organization-public relationship outcome (Kim, Huang-Baesecke, Yang, & Grunig, 2013). Swayed by relationship management strategies, a stakeholder’s cognitive perceptions aggregate, accumulate, and are influenced by peers who are more active in communication behavior. This in turn becomes a shared experience and it is how people in general evaluate an organization.

The critical role that stakeholders play in assigning a favorable or unfavorable reputation to an organization has become even more important with the emergence of social media. On one hand, social media make the information dissemination process more transparent thereby creating more positive feelings such as trust and credibility. However, on the other hand, the formation of an online community brings unrelated people together and this interaction is not always positive. Empowered online publics challenge organizational management on a daily basis and asingle negative comment on social media can grow into a severe crisis that damages organizational reputation (Li, 2016).

Up to date, public relations scholars seem to have not yet taken enough action in investigating how stakeholders are responding to the new online issues stemming from social media. In reviewing the current body of literature in Internet-mediated organization-public reputation/relationship management, the majority of studies center on analyzing organizations’ online profiles, communication models, and so forth (e.g. Bortree & Seltzer, 2009; Park & Reber, 2008; Rybalko & Seltzer, 2010; Seltzer & Mitrook, 2007; Taylor & Kent, 2010). The current study is different from most prior research in this aspect: The emphasis of this study is on stakeholders’ behavior and reaction to organizations’ social media messages instead of what organizations do in their online communication. As one of the earliest attempts to model big data from social media in public relations research, this research intends to close the gap in online public relationship reputation management. Based on a content analysis using field data collected from Facebook posts of Fortune 500 companies from 2009 to 2013, the study theorizes stakeholders’ online activities as shallow engagement and profound engagement and investigates the relationship between different engagement levels and corporate reputation. By addressing the unique effects of stakeholders’ online engagement in corporate reputation management, the current research seeks to shift the research paradigm from the organization-oriented approach to a stakeholder orientation in the context of online reputation management. Given the value of social media data in examining stakeholders’ “real world” behavior, this study reinforces the substance of social media in public relations research.