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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.

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.

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.

The purpose of this paper is to present the mechanism of online customer brand trust building through the lens of Walther’s Computer Mediated Communication (CMC) – Social Information Processing Theory (SIPT).

This paper integrates a range of theoretical and empirical works across branding and marketing, including concept of brand trust, use of online social media in brand communication and customer brand relations and CMC-SIPT theory and relational marketing literature other relevant information which were found useful in the given context were reviewed. The aim was to collect a broad spectrum of ideas, based on their relevance to the research purpose to propose effective online brand trust building framework.

This paper proposes three different developmental stages in brand trust building on online social media networks. Each stage is guided by the components of CMC-SIPT. Stage I is interaction and compliance of the brand communication clues which suggest that the aggregated level of interaction and compliance in online brand communication on social media determine the movement of the customer to the next level. Stage II suggests information processing at three successive layers by the customer as identification, internalization brand information and bonding, which eventually prompt the customer to the next level of brand trust building. Stage III is related to trust building which is the critical stage as customer internal states of arousal are experienced, which reduces the emotional risk of decision-making and increases confidence and trust of the customers in brands.

The proposed framework of brand trust building has not been tested empirically. Future research could test and validate the proposed model tracking intrinsic changes in the customer in different brand trust development stages. This research is important for marketers or brands who wish to move beyond the notion of merely satisfying customers, to establishing more powerful emotional bonds between their brands and customers. It fills a gap in brand-trust literature and provides marketers and researchers a means to understand and draw strategies for consumers’ attraction toward brands (Patwardhan and Balasubramanian, 2011). The proposed framework has the capacity to revolutionize the way business and brands engage with society by enhancing and establishing trusting relationship.

To date, this research has not been done specifically from the SIPT perspective. This research is the first to examine brand communication strategies in an effort of building brand trust in the context of online social media network from the CMC-Social information theory perspective. It highlights the peculiarities of online brand communication on social media networks and customer information processing in presenting three stages of customer brand trust development to explain the development and flow of events.

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 longitudinal study aims to analyze the use of websites by a sample of 78 corporations and non‐profits five years apart. In particular, it studies organizational use of interactive and social media features and use of web sites for building relationships with six stakeholder publics.

The authors studied the websites of 78 for‐profit and not‐for‐profit organization seeking to learn how they used this new medium as a communication tool to build and maintain relationships with six key stakeholders: the mass media, consumers, investor/donors, employees, the government, and the community in 2004 and in 2009. They also explored for differences in the way for‐profit corporations and non‐profits used their web sites for relationship building given their different missions and cultures.

First, there was a marked difference in how corporations and non‐profit organizations used their websites. Second, a significant number of organizations used social media applications such as blogs, Twitter, Facebook, and Youtube through their websites in 2009. Third, aside from increased use of social media, in 2009 more organizations used feedback mechanisms such as e‐surveys and e‐polls embedded in their websites, enhancing interactions with a variety of stakeholders. Both corporations and non‐profit organizations generally utilized their websites as information‐dissemination tools, where the information flow is one‐way, although the percentage of both corporations and non profits that used interactive features offered by new media has increased slightly between 2004 and 2009.

This study is among the few that compare web page use by corporations vs non‐profits. A second unique feature of this study is that it is longitudinal in nature, studying web site use five years apart by the same organizations.

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.

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 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.

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.