Harnessing stakeholder sentiment on social networking sites

Abstract

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