Primed Authenticity: How Priming Impacts Authenticity Perception of Social Media Influencers

ABSTRACT

Though organizations increasingly collaborate with social media influencers, such as bloggers and videobloggers, little is known as to how the contextual cues related to sponsored content affect the authenticity perception of the social media influencers among audience members. This study explores how positive and negative priming of sponsored content shapes the authenticity perception of the vlogger among its audience members. Four different manipulation conditions were constructed to study a U.S. based travel vlog on Qualtrics, with data collected via Amazon’s Mechanical Turk. A theory-guided content analysis of 211 open viewer responses was conducted to compare perceptions of authenticity between the manipulation groups. The results verified the significance of priming: the same sponsored content can result in opposite reactions among the audience members depending on the positive/negative valence of the introductory text attached, highlighting the central importance of strategic communication related to the perception of sponsored content. The results also point out the importance of audience member engagement for experienced authenticity: The manipulation of audience participation with the vlog had a stronger effect on the perception of authenticity of the vlogger than the positive/negative valence of the introductory text.     

Presidential Agenda Building and Policymaking: Examining Linkages Across Three Levels

To investigate the role of strategic political communication in governing, this study comprehensively examined presidential agenda-building associations at three levels during the first six months of U.S. president Barack Obama’s second term. Multiple presidential information subsidies, national news content, and policymaking activity were monitored. The results revealed solid support for all three levels of agenda-building (i.e., object salience, attribute salience, and network associations among objects or attributes), but the linkages with media coverage and policymaking were not uniform across information subsidy types. Based on the analysis, presidential news releases, blog posts, and presidential speeches were the most effective all-around strategic agenda-building tools for media management and policymaking purposes during this time period. The theoretical and practical implications are discussed.     

A Comparative Study on Global Brands’ Micro Blogs between China and USA: Focusing on Communication Styles and Branding Strategies

This quantitative content analysis compares global brands’ use of communication styles and brand anthropomorphism between two leading culturally different micro blogging sites, Twitter in the United States and Sina Weibo in China. Results show that, despite some differences, communication styles on both sites are more task-oriented than socioemotional-oriented. However, global brands adopt more “give suggestions” style (task-oriented) on Twitter but apply more “tension reduction” communication style (socioemotional-oriented) on Weibo. As for brand anthropomorphism strategies, global brands use more “first and second personal pronouns” on Twitter but more “nonverbal cues and consumer nicknames” on Weibo. By applying Interaction Process Analysis (i.e., task- and socioemotional-oriented communication styles) and brand anthropomorphism frameworks to culturally different social media settings, this study extends our current understandings of how global brands use social media to communicate with their publics.     

Visuelle Kandidatendarstellung in Wahlkampfbeiträgen deutscher und amerikanischer Fernsehsender – Image Bites,Rollenbilder und nonverbales Verhalten

Political communication research still lacks indepth information about the role of visual information in television news. Based on a content analysis of 158 newscasts of two US and two German channels aired during national election campaigns in 2008 and 2009 respectively, this study examines visual representations of candidates’ performances that allow conclusions to be drawn about underlying campaign strategies. Furthermore, journalists’ reporting strategies are analyzed by coding so-called sound- and image bites as well as other selection processes related to nonverbal news of candidates. Results of our bi-national comparative study confirm expectations about a transnational convergence with regard to the increasing importance of image bites, whereas sound bite journalism is particularly prevalent on commercial TV channels. US news coverage reflects a highly professionalized approach by candidates, for instance by how they stage their ‘mass appeal’ and ‘closeness to the people’. German election news reflects a less populist approach towards campaigning with candidates preferring a public image as ‘statesmen’ and ‘party representative’.     

Kapitalisierung von Paarbeziehungen

This study examines the role that the social networking site Facebook plays in the different aspects of relationship management by couples. The communication of couples is influenced not only by the relationship phase but also by the geographical distance between the partners. Based on the assumption that these factors are also important for the couple’s (partly) public Facebook communications, the online survey explores whether couples in the first phase of a relationship or in a long-distance relationship use Facebook intensively for relationship management. Furthermore, the concept of capitalization (Gable et al. (2004, 2006)) is applied to the social network communication. Originally, it referred to interpersonal communication. In conjunction with the publicity of social networks, the awareness of others could change the processes of capitalization. It can be shown that relationship management in a narrow (“romantic”) sense is upheld on a rather low level. Contrary to expectations, there is less (partly) public relationship communication in the first phase of a couple’s relationship as well as in long-distance relationships. Also contrary to a culturally pessimistic point of view, Facebook is not replacing traditional forms of relationship communication. Capitalization also has deficits; nonverbal forms of communication such as facial expressions, body language, and gestures are lacking on Facebook, despite all of its various emoticons.     

Das Paradox der Medienwirkungsforschung

Results of empirical studies on media effects differ considerably, depending on whether they are derived from individual or aggregate analyses. All in all, the more precise analyses on the individual level lead to weaker evidence of media effects than analyses on the aggregate level. This can be called the paradox of media effects research. It can be explained by ecological fallacies or by the fact that analyses on the individual level are too complex and exclude the effects of interpersonal communication occurring after people were exposed to media messages. In the first step, this article argues that individual and aggregate analyses are implicitly based on different definitions of media effects. Combining a content analysis of television news and a six wave panel survey, it then shows that aggregate analyses are more fruitful when media content is consonant, and individual analyses are more fruitful when media content is dissonant. The causes of these results and their consequences for media effects research are discussed.     

»Mich aber mag das Gesetz recht eigentlich nicht«

Under the influence of systems theory, communication research has largely neglected to investigate individual journalistic performances. It thus abandons the possibility of recognizing and interpreting text forms that deviate from functional norms and still (or therefore) have effects. Primarily in illiberal societies, feature texts allow for original and mocking objections to those who wield power, and to the systems. An example of this are the prose miniatures that Heinz Knobloch published in 〉Wochenpost〈 over several decades. Extraordinarily well-liked among readers in the German Democratic Republic (GDR), they enabled their public to make trips into the space between the lines. In a content analysis of four features, the article demonstrates how the author captured, and ironically pointed at, the everyday reality of the GDR in its ambiguity. In this way, a facet of GDR mass communication so far hardly noticed by research becomes recognizable.     

Has Crisis Communication Been Studied Using an Interdisciplinary Approach? A 20-Year Content Analysis of Communication Journals

This study examines whether the status of crisis communication research is interdisciplinary by paying special attention to different perspectives from varying theories, methods, and authors. One hundred seventy-five articles published in major communication journals from 1991 to 2011 were extracted as crisis communication articles. The results of a quantitative content analysis revealed that, among theories applied to crisis research, most were from communication and public relations disciplines, which included framing, image restoration, situational crisis communication, and excellence theory. Although outside disciplines that have studied crisis communication research included psychology, economics, mathematics, and sociology, those disciplines made up less than one-third of the articles. Regarding the methodological approach, each portion of articles using two or more methods (e.g., experiment and survey) and a triangulation approach (e.g., qualitative and quantitative) was less than 10%. However, the frequency of the triangulation, or mixed-method, approach has dramatically increased since 2006, which indicates that interdisciplinary crisis communication research is evolving into an interdisciplinary field. Another indication of this trend can be found in the variety of authors, institutions, and departments dedicated to crisis communication. Although crisis articles are published primarily by communication, journalism, and public relations departments, other diverse disciplines are also widely contributing to crisis communication research.     

Dialogue and Relationship Building in Online Financial Communications

The use of social media in investor communications is a fairly new phenomenon. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in the United States announced that corporations may use social media to disclose mandatory key information required by law. With that ruling, social media communications leaves the sometimes fancy world of creativity and image creation and enters the core of strategic communication linked to corporate viability and success. Investor relations in general are essentially about engaging in dialogues with shareholders. Whereas disseminating information online is quite established, online dialogues offer a greater challenge. Dialogue-oriented and dialogic communication processes are not the same according to speech philosophy; and dialogic communication serves only as one possibility for corporations to build relationships with stakeholders. The research presented here analyzes how listed corporations deal with the highly participatory and fragmented communication environment on the web. The prevalence and intensity of social media dialogues was analyzed in an empirical study that focused on the 150 largest global corporations listed on DJIA (United States), FTSE (United Kingdom), CAC (France), DAX (Germany), and NIKKEI (Japan). A framework has been constructed to analyze dialogue-oriented and dialogic financial communications on the Internet and social web.     

Personenorientierte Medienrezeption: Ein Zwei-Ebenen-Modell parasozialer Interaktionen

Since its original formulation in 1956 by Horton and Wohl, the concept of parasocial interaction has received remarkable attention among communication scholars. However, it still suffers from a range of desiderata and lacks a coherent theoretical foundation that could guide empirical research. In this article, we present a two-level model of parasocial interaction (PSI) that is intended to lead to a better understanding of the processes of PSI. By refering to theories of media and social psychology, two levels are distinguished: «Low-Level-PSI» comprise the less intensive, superficial modes of media person perception whereas «High-Level-PSI» refer to intensive and elaborated forms of interpersonal involvement with a media character. Both levels are discussed in terms of cognitive, emotional and conative processes which characterize person-oriented media reception. Subsequently, media factors as well as individual characteristics are introduced which are likely to facilitate the intensity of PSI processes as reception is going on. The article concludes with a prospect about useful further developments of the two-level model as well as its implications for empirical audience and reception studies.     

Kommunikation und andere Weltbezüge

The essay presents a largely new theoretical perspective for communication science (and beyond that for the overall social sciences). Starting point of the development was the observation that communication science deals carelessly with issues on a theoretical and methodological level. Most content analyses show one-dimensional and never clear-cut lists of issues without any theoretical background. This ignorance regarding issues is astonishing because issues as the units of the subject matter of communication are of central importance for analyzing processes of communication.The reason can be found in the communication models developed by the discipline in the last century. In the beginning, the reality communicating actors refer to was still present: the “X” in the models of Newcomb und Westley/MacLean. Most of the later models present communication as symbolic interaction between actors where the world references of the symbols are no longer addressed.The new approach is centrally based on works of Sartre and Habermas and can in a nutshell be summarized as following:1. The human existence can completely be described by its cognitive, emotional, conative and communicative references to (more or less) real, virtual and fictitious worlds. This includes self-references where we become world for ourselves in a way.2. Content of human communication are the world references either of the communicator or of the actors presented by the medium. When we communicate, we communicate about what we or others perceive, know, think, feel, do or communicate. The last case marks the possible reflexivity of communication, up to communication about communication about communication (…) about X. The possible increase of such higher levels of reflexivity might be a useful indicator of mediatization.3. Effects of medial and interpersonal communication on human beings must be effects on their world references. This directly results from 1.: If we expect effects of communication on humans whose existence totally consists of world references, these effects must be recordable as world references.4. Insofar intentions of communicating actors target effects on the recipients, the intentions of actors participating in communication must be their own world references or those of their partners.The relevant units of analysis are a) the communicating actors (media and actors in the media), b) their world references, and c) the sections of real or fictitious worlds these references refer to. Here, reflexive structures are omnipresent when actors refer to other actors (and in doing so to their communication again).Effects of communication now can be found in the recipients’ references to these three units: to media and media persons (e.?g., their images), to the communicated world references (e.?g., learning), and to the particular world sections (e.?g., cultivation, agenda setting).The approach might be of a paradigmatic character because it integrates communicator, content and effects research in a systematic way and offers a homogeneous instrument for empirical analysis of all steps of the communication process. At the same time, it offers possibilities of differentiating existing approaches. Agenda setting for example can be reformulated as the question of the effect medially communicated references on an issue have on how important own and other references on the issue are from the recipient’s view. In some cases even negative effects are possible: if media report about problem solving actions in an extensive way, this may have the effect of recipients not thinking that own action is necessary (free riding problem).Finally, new areas of research can be identified in a systematic way, especially regarding the parallel carrying out of communicative and other world references. In times of nearly permanent references to media communication we have to face the question of how important the cognitive, emotional and conative processes are which are carried out parallel to media use. On the one hand regarding the importance for the quality of the communicative processes (classical communication science). On the other hand regarding the importance for a holistic understanding of human existence (on the way to a science of world references).     

Womit befassen sich kommunikationswissenschaftliche Abschlussarbeiten?

Transfer is an e-journal of the German academic association of journalism and communication (DGPuK), publishing abstracts of excellent theses in communication in German speaking countries. Since 1999, more than 1.000 abstracts have been collected. This article presents a content analysis of all abstracts published between 1999 and 2008 (n?=?1.056). The objective is to contribute to the ongoing debate about the identity of German speaking communication research and thus adding results to existing studies on journal publications and surveys among researchers. The content analysis examines the issues, the media analyzed, the use of theoretical and empirical approaches and the dominance of public communication as issue – as compared to interpersonal communication – of the studies, based on the abstracts published. Results show that the issues analyzed and the methods applied have not changed much over the years. A somehow alarming result is the fact that only very few abstracts explicitly refer to a theory. This raises the question of the deceasing relevance of theories in today’s communication research.     

The Effectiveness of Social Media Storytelling in Strategic Innovation Communication: Narrative Form Matters

Storytelling is widely believed to be an effective strategy in innovation communication. The use of high-quality narratives in particular is recommended to facilitate the understanding of an innovation, facilitate trust in it, and promote the perception of innovative strength as well as the development of positive attitudes. However, to date virtually no empirical evidence has been presented to support these assumptions. Therefore, we conducted an experiment in which participants were exposed to messages about an innovation that varied in narrative quality (low vs. medium vs. high), and the messages were told in different forms that are typical of social media (nonserial vs. serial) to take account of the ever-increasing importance of these channels in innovation communication. The results show that the understanding of an innovation increases linearly with a message’s narrative quality, serial storytelling impedes understanding, and narrative quality is conducive to the attitude towards the innovator when the story is told in nonserial form and has a detrimental effect when told in serial form. Thus, the results show that the current view on storytelling’s potential is overly optimistic and that using high-quality narratives can, under certain conditions, also have adverse effects. The practical implications of these findings are discussed.     

Politiker-Homepages zwischen Politik-PR und Bürgerpartizipation

More than half of politicians on the federal level and almost a third on the state level in Germany offered their own website in 2002. Websites typically present politicians’ political work and their personality and provide citizens with interactive channels, such as electronic guestbook, online forum and email address. Politicians’ homepages as a new format of online communication are subject to critical coverage in the mass media. One fourth of internet users visit such pages more or less regularly. This article summarizes research on politicians’ homepages and focusses on two perspectives so far neglected: use and effects. Statements on current political issues and personal information are among the most widely used content elements in politicians’ homepages. Interactive components have so far only seldom been used. They contain a participatory potential, which, however, will only come to be realized if politicians keep up a transparent communication management that makes the uses of taking part evident to more citizens. Discrepancies between the citizens’ expectations for politicians’ homepages on the one hand, and people’s online behavior on the other, are discussed.     

Glaubwürdigkeit in der CSR-KommunikationCredible CSR communication

Credibility is a central and well-established concept in communication science, particularly in public relations (PR) research. When it comes to the communication about their corporate social responsibilities (CSR), companies are under public scrutiny and should therefore be eager to communicate in a credible fashion with their stakeholders. However, existing concepts of credibility in PR research do not account for the specific demands of ethical CSR theory. Thus, this article develops a concept of credibility that embraces sender, message, and recipient and the central concept of corporate legitimacy at the same time. Based on the political-normative approach to CSR, this concept builds on the theory of communicative action and the validity claims of the ideal speech situation. This novel approach to credibility in CSR communication is normative, but also opens promising paths for future empirical research in the field.     

Möglichkeiten und Gefahren der Meinungsfreiheit

A discussion about freedom of speech – such as the one arising from the publication of Muhammad caricatures in a Danish newspaper in 2006 – is of special importance in a democracy as it touches upon one of its elemental values. This article studies the debate on the value of freedom of speech as well as its potential dangers as it developed in the German newspapers after the publication of the caricatures. A quantitative content analysis was carried out encompassing all arguments posed in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Süddeutsche Zeitung and the tageszeitung. During the cartoon controversy, the discussion was only partly pluralistic. The limits to freedom of speech were elaborately put into question, the need to protect the freedom was highlighted, and threats to the freedom were covered. However, the benefits to be gained from a system of freedom of opinion were hardly present in the arguments put forth in the newspapers. An assessment of restraints or benefits mainly took place among the journalists themselves, who not only played the part of a messenger in the conflict, but were also an interested party in it. From these results, a conclusion is drawn on the consideration of freedom of speech as a core value of democracy.     

Desiderata und Perspektiven der Forschung über parasoziale Interaktionen und Beziehungen zu Medienfiguren

Parasocial interactions and relationships are a frequently used framework for studies on media reception in communication research. In spite of its long tradition, however, the concept is still in need of several clarifications. Therefore, this article explores ways to increase the explanatory value of the concept. We briefly present major problems of the definition and conceptualization of parasocial interactions and relationships, namely the understanding of the key elements interaction, relationship, and persona, and suggest first ideas for their solution. Subsequently, opportunities are outlined to enhance the concept by integrating other theories and concepts on media reception and interpersonal perception, taking them from communication research and psychology. Finally, we discuss methodological problems in general and specific shortcomings of the quasi-standard measure, the Parasocial-Interaction-Scale.     

Die flüchtigen Web-Informationen einfangen

The Internet is dominated by a new way of publishing — content is becoming dynamic, multimedialized and particularized. These fundamental changes question traditional content analysis, which has emerged, in recent decades, as a central tool of communication science. Now content analysis should be extended to cope with the challenges of a dynamically changing Internet. To contribute to this task, five new theoretical and four practical features of online content analysis are presented. On this basis, the article, by introducing new solutions to content analysis, demonstrates how dynamic online content could be analyzed. Particularly it is argued that content analysis of dynamic web content should include reception analysis. Tracking user paths through the web environment in a logfile analysis is a promising approach to achieve this. A great chance is posed to communication science: In the Internet, content and reception analysis may be integrated and lead to a new understanding of the links between content, recipient and selection.     

„Politische Kommunikation“: Kern und Rand des Begriffsverständnisses in der Fachgemeinschaft

Terms and concepts are both premises and results of research. Controversies about the basic concepts of a discipline prompt scientific advancement. The aim of this paper is not to put forward an authoritative definition of “political communication,” but—based on prototype semantics—rather to work out what the core of the understanding of this concept is within the scientific community, and what the margin. This is also a test for a method of analyzing the understanding of concepts in general. The basis is a dimensional analysis of the concept of “political communication,” in which a four-dimensional basic structure established by deduction was tested by means of a content analysis of textbook definitions. This leads to a tool for a factorial survey to empirically analyze students’ and lecturers’ understanding of this concept (n = 161). The findings were: At the heart of the understanding of the concept are communication participants deeply involved in the political system in a context of mass media communication. Differences in content and consequences of communication have no influence on the understanding of the concept, and the differences between students and lecturers are small. Comparisons between countries and longitudinal studies are possible on this basis.     

Social Media Influencers in Strategic Communication: A Conceptual Framework for Strategic Social Media Influencer Communication

ABSTRACT

Strategic social media influencer communication has become a major topic in strategic communication. However, despite the growing relevance of this new strategic communication instrument, research has paid only limited attention to elaborating its basic concepts. In this article, we adopt a strategic communication perspective to develop a conceptual framework for strategic social media influencer communication. Particularly, we draw on research findings that identify the external resources social media influencers contribute to organization-influencer cooperation. We use these findings to systematically develop functional definitions of social media influencers and of strategic social media influencer communication. We define social media influencers as third-party actors who have established a significant number of relevant relationships with a specific quality to and influence on organizational stakeholders through content production, content distribution, interaction, and personal appearance on the social web. Subsequently, we define strategic social media communication as the purposeful use of communication by organizations or social media influencers in which social media influencers are addressed or perform activities with strategic significance to organizational goals. We then situate these definitions within the broader framework of strategic communication by discussing related concepts and by describing the strategic action field that has emerged around strategic social media influencer communication.