Telecommunication corporations and reputation management in social media space Yoo Jung (Jasmine) Hong, yjasmine@skku.edu Jang Hyun Kim*, alohakim@skku.edu Sungkyunkwan University (SKKU) This research was supported by Sungkyunkwan University through Brain Korea 21 Plus Project (Ministry of Education, Republic of Korea) in 2015. 1
Presentation Overview Introduction Literature Review Aim of the Study Method Results Discussion 2
What is reputation? Reputation public s cumulative judgments of firms over time (Fombrun & Shanley, 1990, p. 235) that are perceived from available information about firms activities originating from the firms themselves, from the media, or from other monitors (Fombrun & Shanley, 1990, p. 234) Communication is one of the crucial elements in reputation management (Doorley & Garcia, 2011) In recent years, social media has become a major communication channel between an organization and its publics, as well as among various publics i.e. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. 3
Literature Review PR Excellence theory positive relationships with stakeholder publics are crucial for organizations, thus excellent public relations greatly strengthens organizational effectiveness (Grunig, 2008) Based on this theory, a global public relations theory (Vercic, Grunig, & Grunig, 1996) was developed: a consolidation of the excellence theory that includes 10 generic principles to be considered for global PR One of the 10 generic principles two-way symmetrical PR model should be used (Vercic et al., 1996) 4
Literature Review Appraisal theory Cognitive appraisal: an evaluation of the significance of what is happening in the person-environment relationship for personal well-being (Lazarus, 1991, p. 87) In evaluating personal relevance regarding a particular situation, it involves the rapid non-conscious evaluation of events, triggering certain emotions (O'Sullivan, 2010, p. 96) An evaluation of a certain situation leads to an emotional or sentimental response that is reflective of the appraisal (Scherer, Schorr, & Johnstone, 2001) 5
Aim of the Study To determine whether there is a significant relationship between the reputation rankings and the type and sentiment of words that most frequently appear on the respective companies social media space 6
Method Company Social media Verizon channel: Facebook (Official page) Sprint Corporation Communications 2015 #72 #66 Ranking Sample: from 2015 Harris Poll Reputation Quotient Report (Harris Poll, 2015) Charter Communications #92 T-Mobile AT&T Time Warner #76 #75 Comcast #93 #85 Data collection period: May 1, 2014~August 31, 2014 (4 months) 2014 rankings were out in April 2014, and the nominations for the 2015 rankings began in end of August 2014 Image retrieved from Google Images Evaluation of six dimensions (a total of 20 attributes) Emotional Appeal, Financial Performance, Products & Services, Social Responsibility, Vision & Leadership, and Workplace Environment (Harris Poll, 2015) 7
Method Method Semantic network analysis: examines the relationship among words Co-occurrence, frequency and distance (Lee, Kim, & Rosen, 2009) Data collection: Python programming language (Python Software Foundation) Data analysis: WORDij (Danowski, 2013) Data visualization: UCINET (NetDraw) (Borgatti et al., 2002) Sentiment analysis: LIWC (Pennebaker, Booth, & Francis, 2007) Acknowledgement. Special thanks to Hyoungbo Shim for his contribution with data collection by using the Python programming language. Images retrieved from Google Images 8
Overview Method May 1, 2014~August 31, 2014 Ranking (2015) Total posts Company Public Corporate involvement Public involvement Verizon #66 7,439 1,887 5,552 0.25 0.75 Sprint #72 7,807 81 7,726 0.01 0.99 T-Mobile #75 8,566 1,277 7,289 0.15 0.85 AT&T #76 3,760 472 3,288 0.13 0.87 Time Warner #85 489 40 449 0.08 0.92 Charter Comm. #92 1,666 355 1,311 0.21 0.79 Comcast (Xfinity) #93 1,218 87 1,131 0.07 0.93 Corporate involvement= no. of company posts / total no. of posts Public involvement= no. of public s posts / total no. of posts 9
Verizon Communications Request for help Contract details and plans Questions and answers Customer service Image retrieved from Google Images 10
Sprint Corporation Complaints Questions and answers / Request for help Contract details and plans Image retrieved from Google Images 11
T-Mobile Request for help / Customer service Plan details Customer engagement Mixed sentiments Image retrieved from Google Images 12
AT&T Data plan details Request for help / Customer service Corporatecustomer interaction Image retrieved from Google Images 13
Time Warner Apology Customer service Customer engagement Television Image retrieved from Google Images 14
Charter Communications Internet outage information Questions and answers Image retrieved from Google Images 15
Comcast (Xfinity) Complaints & Apology Good Morning America *Xfinity: Comcast s rebranded trademark in 2010 Image retrieved from Google Images Request for help 16
Frequency Table Unique words 17
Sentiment Analysis Emotional strength Telecommunication Companies' Facebook Page Sentiment Analysis 012345678 affect Verizon 4.77 Sprint 4.96 T-Mobile 5.91 AT&T 4.68 Time 6.03 Warner Charter Comm. 4.62 Comcast posemo 3.17 2.73 4.54 2.91 4.54 3.46 (Xfinity) negemo 1.66 2.26 1.48 1.86 1.61 1.19 3.95 3.39 7.28 anx anger sad 0.13 0.47 0.33 0.22 0.78 0.34 0.14 0.54 0.2 0.12 0.61 0.25 0.13 0.45 0.29 0.06 0.39 0.19 0.16 1.07 1.11 Note. 'affect' -> 'affective processes'. 'posemo' -> 'positive emotion'. 'negemo'->'negative emotion'. 'anx'- >'anxiety'. 18
+/-, Chi-square Company Verizon 1.910 Sprint 1.208 T-Mobile 3.068 AT&T 1.565 Time Warner 2.820 Charter Comm. 2.908 Comcast (Xfinity) 1.165 Positive to negative ratio Preacher, K. J. (2001, April). Calculation for the chi-square test: An interactive calculation tool for chi-square tests of goodness of fit and independence [Computer software]. Available from http://quantpsy.org. 19
Discussion Online interactions between customers and corporations are not necessarily positively related to the reputation rankings Overall, telecommunication companies use social media as a Q&A channel. As telecommunication services have become a necessity, contents of communication are mostly inquiries and responses In case of Charter Communications, one crisis incident (Internet outage) dominated its social media space the importance of social media as a means of crisis communication Verizon showed a positive relationship between corporate involvement and its reputation ranking Sentiment analysis shows that the amount of communication is not linked to emotional polarization (the ratio of positive or negative emotion revealed in the messages) 20
Q&A Thank you. Any questions? 21
References Borgatti, S.P., Everett, M.G. and Freeman, L.C. (2002).Ucinet for Windows: Software for Social Network Analysis. Harvard, MA: Analytic Technologies. Danowski, J. A. (2013). WORDij version 3.0: Semantic network analysis software. Chicago: University of Illinois at Chicago. Doorley, J., & Garcia, H. F. (2011). Reputation management: The key to successful public relations and corporate communication. Routledge. Fombrun, C., & Shanley, M. (1990). What s in a name? Reputation building and corporate strategy. Academy of Management Journal, 33(2), 233-258. Grunig, J. E., & Grunig, L. A. (2008). Excellence theory in public relations: Past, present, and future. In Public relations research (pp. 327-347). VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften. Google Images. Harris Poll. (2015, February). Harris Poll RQ Summary Report. The Nielsen Company. Lazarus, R. S.(1991). Emotion and adaptation. Lee, S., Kim, J. H., & Rosen, D. (2009). A semantic network and categorical content analysis of Internet and online media research. Open Communication Journal, 3, 15-28. O'Sullivan, T. (2010). Decision making in social work. Palgrave Macmillan. Pennebaker, J. W., Booth, R. J., & Francis, M. E. (2007). Linguistic inquiry and word count: LIWC [Computer software]. Austin, TX: liwc.net. Preacher, K. J. (2001, April). Calculation for the chi-square test: An interactive calculation tool for chi-square tests of goodness of fit and independence [Computer software]. Available from http://quantpsy.org. Python Software Foundation. Python Language Reference, version 2.7. Available at http://www.python.org Scherer, K. R., Schorr, A., & Johnstone, T. (Eds.). (2001). Appraisal processes in emotion: Theory, methods, research. Oxford University Press. Vercic, D., Grunig, L. A., & Grunig, J. E. (1996). Global and specific principles of public relations: Evidence from Slovenia. International public relations: A comparative analysis, 31-65. 22