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Anthropomorphized brands have been widely used as marketing communication tools to engage consumers on social media, especially on Twitter. Guided by the social exchange theory (SET) and the dialogic theory, this study aims to investigate how anthropomorphized brands leverage different communication strategies on Twitter and how these strategies are related to consumer engagement.

Supervised machine learning was used to identify the communication strategies (i.e. message types and dialogic principles) of 125,887 tweets from 21 brand characters. Some statistical analyses (e.g. frequency analysis, Chi-square analysis and Poisson regression analysis) were performed to explore the relationships between communication strategies and consumer engagement (i.e. retweets and replies).

The majority of anthropomorphized brands’ tweets belonged to the socioemotional category and the most adopted dialogic principles were generation of return visits and conservation of visitors. Consumers engaged more with socioemotional tweets as well as the tweets that adopted the principles of dialogic loop and conservation of visitors. There were clear relationships between message types and dialogic principles in anthropomorphized brands’ tweets, and certain dialogic principles were found to effectively improve consumer engagement with certain message types.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to investigate the communication strategies of anthropomorphized brand characters on Twitter using computational research methods. It not only provides brand managers a systematic review of how current anthropomorphized brands communicate with consumers on Twitter and what strategies work more effectively to trigger consumer engagement but also contributes to theory building in brand management by integrating the SET and the dialogic theory in brand anthropomorphism research.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the dialogic communications potential of bank web sites in Ghana.

The authors undertook a qualitative content analysis of bank web sites in Ghana, drawing upon Kent and Taylor's dialogic communications framework.

Banks in Ghana have been fairly successful in creating web sites with high dialogic value, with over half the banks sampled scoring on more than half of all the dialogic principles (dialogic loop, ease of use, usefulness and conservation of visitors). Most banks, however, scored rather poorly on the principle of return visit.

The revelation that the communication content of banks’ web sites in Ghana does not encourage visitors to return poses a serious challenge for banks in their bid to leverage favourable brand dispositions associated with strong customer relationships.

The paper contributes to the scarce literature on dialogic communications potential of bank web sites in an emerging market context.

This study aims to ascertain the contents of universities in Ghana libraries’ websites and find the dialogic potential of the websites.

A qualitative content analysis technique was used. The sample includes the libraries’ websites of universities in Ghana that have received presidential charter. A checklist was developed to assess the content of the websites. In assessing the dialogic potential of the websites, Kent and Taylors’ framework was used.

Findings from the study show that Ghanaian universities libraries’ websites are providing only static information about libraries and their services. The libraries’ websites are deficient in providing vital information on newspapers, print journals, frequently asked questions and date of post. Again, findings of the study indicate that universities in Ghana libraries’ websites have poor dialogic features.

There is no study investigating the dialogic potential of universities in Ghana libraries’ websites.

The purpose of this paper is to offer critical reflection on the role played by the concept of dialogue in public relations theory, pedagogy, and practice.

This paper is theoretical and therefore focused on the elucidation of the history, meaning, and application of “dialogue” in public relations in comparison with two other academic disciplines and professional fields: political science and organizational communication.

The paper argues that, despite the key normative position occupied by the concept of dialogue in much mainstream public relations scholarship, public relations as an academic discipline has not engaged extensively with the theory of dialogue. While other academic and expert practitioner fields have developed much theoretical reflection, a range of dialogical tools, and created spaces in which the expertise is applied, public relations' normative interest in dialogue seems not to have translated into developing expert dialogic tools or spaces in which public relations experts routinely use such tools.

The paper introduces literature and debates about dialogue largely ignored in the mainstream public relations scholarship and aims to stimulate fresh discussion about the nature of public relations knowledge and practice.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how Kent and Taylor's dialogic features are used by agricultural associations in the USA and Germany to engage media.

A content analysis of 51 American Farm Bureau Federation and 18 Deutscher Bauernverband web sites was conducted to evaluate the incorporation of the principles of ease of interface, usefulness, dialogic loop, conservation of visitors, and generation of return visits.

The study found mixed results for the incorporation of Kent and Taylor's five dialogic principles. At the time of the content analysis, these sites failed to provide a solid dialogic loop between the organisation and the visitor, and they did not encourage return visits. This weakens the sites' potential to move past information provision and build lasting relationships with reporters.

The findings of this research project provide benchmark numbers for the presence of the five dialogic principles in the agriculture industry. Further, the findings strengthen the growing evidence of the impact of the principles in various sectors. Previous research has examined how nonprofit social service and activist organisations have incorporated the principles as well as for‐profit organizations. The current results shine light on how other organisations are using their web site to develop relationships with visitors.

Research on agricultural communication indicates that the media increasingly are downplaying the significance of the industry in mainstream news. Scholars have suggested that the agricultural industry is not well versed in media training and media relations. However, the findings of this study indicate that the leading agricultural associations in the USA and Germany are still primarily using their web sites as one‐way information subsidies rather than capitalizing on the interactive nature of the web. By incorporating the five dialogic principles into their web sites, the agricultural communicators will be in a better position to interact with media in a lasting manner rather than simply serving as a source of one‐way information.

Though the dialogic principles have been studied in other settings, this paper examines their use by organisations in multiple countries. Given the increasing globalisation of the agriculture industry, it is vital to understand how this industry communicates with the media given that it has repeatedly complained about media coverage of agricultural issues and the push by the American Farm Bureau to assist other national agricultural associations around the world.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how US universities' health centers are using dialogue and engagement on social networking sites to educate students and their followers about health issues.

Through a content analysis of health centers' Facebook profiles, the research team examines the use of Kent and Taylor's dialogic principles of communication.

Results indicate that when a health center attracts a large number of followers online, their usage of the outlet as a dialogic tool increases significantly.

The study found that university health centers have a presence on Facebook, but they really are not using the site strategically to gain followers and educate them about health issues that they have pledged to address on their campuses.

The dialogic principles of communication have been examined significantly on web sites and blogs, but this is one of the first studies to test them in the social networking site environment.

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.

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).

This study explores how effectively the Indian government utilized social media to communicate emergency information and promote citizen engagement and awareness during the first wave of COVID-19 crisis.

This research investigates the tweets scraped from the official Twitter handle “CovidnewsbyMIB” of the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting Government of India; the authors unearthed patterns in the communications between the government and its citizens by adopting various social media analysis techniques. Further, the authors also tried to examine the influence of media richness and dialogic loop on citizen engagement through government social media (CEGSM) using multivariate analysis method.

The results highlighted clusters of words/terms present in the tweets related to COVID-19 combating strategies, guidelines, and updates. The authors also found that media richness has a significant positive relationship with CEGSM, but dialogic loop has an insignificant relationship with CEGSM.

This study provides suggestions to government agencies about ways to improve CEGSM by enhancing media richness and dialogic loop elements such as surveys, polls, and responses in the crisis communication.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/OIR-06-2021-0307.