Harnessing stakeholder sentiment on social networking sites

Abstract

Communicating reputation to stakeholders and assessing whether these messages have been received favourably are essential components of organisations’ overall communication strategies. These actions are, however, becoming increasingly difficult to execute as a result of sophisticated stakeholder expectations as well as notions of continuous stakeholder participation and engagement on social networking sites (SNSs) by means of the co-creation of communication content. This research proposes a new conceptual framework for reputation management on SNSs that aims to address these issues. The framework is essentially based on the utilisation of computer-aided qualitative data analysis software (CAQDAS) such as Leximancer and Centim in the reputation management process. Based on the findings, it is suggested that CAQDAS enables reputation managers to accurately measure stakeholder sentiment, identify prevalent stakeholder discourses pertaining to organisational communication disseminated on SNSs, and detect threats that could damage corporate reputation.

Keywords

• Harnessing stakeholder sentiment
• online reputation management
• social networking sites (SNSs)
• computer-aided qualitative data analysis software (CAQDAS)
• communication strategies