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Web 2.0 and the social networks have changed how organizations interact with their publics. They enable organizations to engage in symmetric dialogic communications with individuals. Various organizations are increasingly ­using different social media to enhance their visibility and relationships with their publics. They allow them to disseminate information, to participate, listen and actively engage in online conversations with different stakeholders. Some social networks have become a key instrument for corporate communication. Therefore, this chapter presents a critical review on the organizations’ dialogic communications with the publics via social networks. It puts forward a conceptual framework that comprises five key dimensions including ­“active presence,” “interactive attitude,” “interactive resources,” “responsiveness” and “conversation.” This contribution examines each dimension and explains their effect on the organizations’ dialogic communication with the publics. Hence, this contribution has resulted in important implications for corporate communication practitioners as well as for academia. Moreover, it opens future research avenues to academia.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a measurement scale for assessing the quality of dialogic conversations among companies and digital publics in social media. Dialogic conversations are defined as sequences of communicative actions and counteractions taken by social actors for different purposes based on specific linguistic choices and characterised by diverse communicative approaches and the role played by the involved parties.

A multidimensional scale for measuring dialogic conversations is developed from relevant literature concerning dialogue and public engagement in the fields of corporate communication, public relations, management studies and conversation analysis. The scale is built on three main dimensions: organisation turn-taking, sequencing of conversation, repair strategies and procedures. A pilot study was conducted to purify it from irrelevant variables.

Results of the pilot study show a general good level of reliability for the majority of the proposed variables for Facebook but not for Twitter. This may indicate that Facebook is a more dialogical forum than Twitter.

This is the first study proposing a systematic measurement of the dialogue orientation of online conversations that takes into consideration the role of language and communicative actions. The proposed measurement offers corporate communication managers a concrete tool for evaluating the quality of their online communications and for identifying those areas of their online communication that need improvement.

With the prevailing use of online communication platforms, this study revisits the definitions of trust in an online context. By exploring organizational online communications from a practitioners' perspective, a conceptual framework that illustrates the nature of trust and its relationship with dialogic communication between organizations and organizations' stakeholders in the digital era is proposed.

A total of 27 in-depth interviews were conducted with public relations and marketing practitioners involved in coordinating organizational online communications in Hong Kong.

From the practitioners' perspective, stakeholders' online trust toward an organization, which is a hybridity of initial and rapidly evolving trust, begins with stakeholders swift and initial judgment of the organization according to category-based cues (including knowledge-based attributes of the organization, institutional cues, and particular attributes of online dialogic communication) available on online platforms and further develops over time. Practitioners regard the integration of online and offline communication platforms to be the most effective way to build trust in organization–stakeholder relationships in the digital era, while dialectical tensions can hinder trust formed in online communication.

Along with the proposed conceptual framework, this study advances the discussion of online trust in public relations practices from the practitioners' perspective. A qualitative approach provides rich descriptions that may help to enrich theories in public relations and communication management regarding the interplay of trust and dialogic communication in organizational practices in the digital era.

This study aims at investigating the differential impact of different CSR communication strategies on consumers' brand trust and consequent attitudes and behaviors in the credence goods market.

An experimental laboratory study was conducted to collect data from graduate students (n = 414) from two Chinese universities. Structural equation modeling was used to test the hypothesized model.

The results show that a dialogical communication strategy, compared to a monological communication strategy, is significantly more effective in increasing consumers' brand trust for credence goods as well as their willingness-to-buy and positive word-of-mouth. The results also confirm the mediating effect of CSR knowledge and the moderating effect of broad-scope trust on the relationship between CSR communication strategies and brand trust.

This study implies that in order to promote consumer trust and supportive behaviors toward brands, managers of companies in credence goods market should consider the increased use of various dialogical CSR communication strategies.

The study is one of the first to verify the impact of dialogical vs monological CSR communication strategies on consumers of credence goods.

Despite the recognisable importance of nation brand websites, they have seemingly not been the focus of dialogic communication interrogations of marketing and communications scholars. This paper is one of the initial attempts to address such research lacuna. The paper aims to examine the dialogic potential of the Brand South Africa website and its effect on the country’s image, as well as the impact of this image on consumers’ (tourists) visiting intentions.

Drawing from the dialogic communication and impression management theories, the authors applied partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) to analyse data solicited from 672 participants via an electronic survey.

This paper demonstrates that the dialogic communication principles of the Brand South Africa website have positive influences on the image impression of South Africa. Country image impression was also found to have a significant effect on intentions to visit.

This study is of potential benefit to researchers, government agencies and those responsible for nation branding.

This study contributes to marketing and tourism literatures, by drawing on theories of dialogic communication principles and impression management, to fill the gap regarding the effect of nation brand websites on country image impression and visiting intention of consumers (tourists).

The purpose of this paper is to analyze how the field of strategic communication is shaped and driven by several different logics that not only simply underpin each other, but also and simultaneously oppose each other and point in many different directions.

The authors address the multiple logics in strategic communication and their interplay by drawing on Edgar Morin’s theory of “dialogics.” According to Morin, complex systems are characterized by multiple logics that are at once complementary, competitive and antagonistic with respect to one another.

The authors present and discuss five dialogics that challenge conventional notions of managerial control: deliberate vs emergent perspectives on communication strategy; top-down vs participatory approaches; bounded vs unbounded notions of communication; consistency vs inconsistency in organizational messages; and transparency vs opacity in organizational practices.

While the dialogical perspective defies the ideal of strategic communication as a unitary discipline, the authors argue that the field can only develop by acknowledging, embracing and bringing to the fore of analysis principles that are at once complementary, competitive and antagonistic.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how the dialogic theory of public relations can help strategic communication practitioners support and enhance the relationship between individuals and organizations.

This inquiry applied the dialogic theory of public relations by investigating leading media companies’ context-based strategic use of Twitter. Researchers conducted a qualitative content analysis of 1,800 tweets from 18 top-performing media organizations.

This study identified strategies, rooted in dialogic theoretical principles that media organizations used to engage stakeholders. Media companies employed strategies based on dialogic principles, including promoting organizations as industry and thought leaders, integrating social media, and using an interactive, synergistic organizational voice.

These strategies support the need to expand theoretical conceptualizations and use of dialogic principles to study online communication.

Findings offer practical strategies for practitioners managing organizations’ Twitter communication to foster engagement. In particular, practitioners should consider organizational context and subsequent content advantages.

Findings offer practical and theoretical contributions to the debate of interactivity.

This chapter aims to understand the communication practices of CSR in technological environments, specifically corporate websites. It is important to know what are the dimensions of CSR most valued in online communication, what content is more widespread, and if there is dialogic communication between organizations and different stakeholders. It was used a quantitative method of analysis, using the expanded web content analysis. It was based on the study results of the 1,000 largest Portuguese companies published by the Economic Journal in 2014. The chapter includes the analysis of the best companies from 24 sectors of activity of Portugal. Portuguese organizations use their websites to communicate about CSR practices. A large majority of companies dedicate to these subjects a higher number of pages. The findings indicate that the issues disseminated are various, but the predominance content is related to environmental dimension. Results suggest a low level of dialogic dimension adoption. It is proposed a theoretical framework of online communication of CSR that integrates a set of indicators from three interlinked dimensions: the technical dimension, the informational dimension and dialogical dimension, considering the different kind of publics and the different practice areas inherent to CSR. This framework is a contribution to the deepening of knowledge and understanding of online communication of CSR practices, on the perspective of public relations theory. It has practical implications to communication, because it proposes guidelines that should be considered in an effective online communication of CSR in organizations of various sectors of activity in Portugal. It is proposed a theoretical framework of an effective online communication of CSR that integrates a set of indicators from three interlinked dimensions that are part of the dialogical capacity of organizations.

The purpose of this paper is to compare Fortune 200 and top startup chief executive officers’ (CEOs) communication strategies on Twitter and the effectiveness of these strategies in influencing public engagement. Specifically, guided by the dialogic communication theory and social presence theory, this study explored CEOs’ use of dialogic communication, social presence strategies and message tactics. Additionally, public engagement on Twitter measured by total number of likes, retweets and comments was associated with communication strategies utilized by CEOs.

This study employed the quantitative content analysis. A total sample of 720 posts from 36 CEOs were selected and analyzed. Drawing from prior studies, a coding scheme was developed and employed during the coding process. Two authors of this study served as coders and reached satisfactory inter-coder reliability. A series of χ² tests and negative binomial regressions were conducted for data analysis.

Neither Fortune 200 CEOs nor top startup CEOs fully utilized dialogic principles for Twitter communication. Although Fortune CEOs seemed to be experts in strategically tailoring messages and therefore present themselves on Twitter in a friendly manner, startup CEOs demonstrated a higher level of authenticity, animation and informality. Findings are mixed regarding the direction of associations between dialogic principles and public engagement.

This study expands the application of dialogic principles in examining online executive communication and its influence in public engagement on Twitter. This study was among the first that examined executive leadership communication in the context of social media setting. In this sense, the study shifted the internal focus of leadership research to investigating leaders’ interaction with a variety of online publics.

This study aims to analyze whether companies from six Latin American countries are encouraging dialogic communication on Facebook.

To do so, the paper studied the level of predisposition for interaction and the type of interaction achieved by companies on Facebook to produce an effective dialogic communication exchange and to generate conversation through different types of communication exchange between organizations and users. This research includes a specific analysis of the active presence, interactive attitude, interactive resources, responsiveness and conversation of 29,078 posts on 135 corporate fanpages of companies from six Latin American countries.

The results show that companies have a low interest in managing communication from a dialogic perspective on the social network, not only because a greater predisposition to interaction is needed, but also because the interaction generated is very low. Therefore, the paper identifies the need to review the communication strategy on social networks and to define a strategy aligned to the dialogic nature of the social network.

This research contributes to broadening the conceptual reflection on the evaluation of the dialogue in the digital context and aims to generate new methodological contributions to the evaluation of dialogic communication in an integrated way.