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Institutional communication is becoming a strategic instrument for universities, since it facilitates the relationships with their various publics and allows positioning of the institutional brand, which will contribute to building a distinctive reputation. The types of content disseminated by universities via their social media accounts will contribute decisively to these objectives, since the way in which the different topics are communicated may influence the publics’ perceptions of these higher education institutions. This research analyses the different types of content disseminated by universities (in Europe, the United States and Latin America) via their accounts on social networks (Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn), to assess the main content topics that define the universities’ communicative positioning. A content analysis of the publications by universities on their social networks was carried out, representing an appropriate method to recognize the main themes and topics of their communication strategy. The results reveal two main thematic blocks of content: functional (teaching, research and social commitment topics) and institutional (organizational and contextual topics). Institutional publications are the most relevant block of content, far above the functional posts. In terms of specific topics, the organizational ones are the most common, well above publications on teaching or research, while contextual and social commitment content is used marginally. Most universities, in all regions and on all social networks, follow a dominant strategy of institutional content. So, the higher education institutions are mainly using social networks as a strategic tool for institutional positioning, more than informing about their daily activity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study analyzes how the national tourism organizations (NTOs) of Spain and Italy managed their crisis communication to deal with Covid-19. The study examines the messages published by the Twitter accounts of the NTOs from the beginning or the detection of the first patient until one month after the official declaration of the pandemic by the World Health Organization. The results reveal two different ways of managing crisis communications in the face of Covid-19, both in the treatment of the topics and in the timing of publication, at the same time generating different reactions and engagement among users. The Agenzia Nazionale Italiana del Turismo was faster and more active in the first moments of the health crisis compared with the Oficina de Turismo de España. This study can contribute to the development of communication strategies on social media by NTOs during different periods of such crises as well as communication actions to enhance the touristic image of their destinations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social media have opened up new opportunities for the creation of innovative public relations strategies focused on establishing and cultivating relationships with stakeholders on the basis of meaningful dialogue. Consideration of the interrelation between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and public relations highlights new areas for exploration and engagement. Both the dialogical and semantic perspectives reveal the performative and conversational aspects of social media. In general, both the linguistic panorama of CSR and digital media as part of a PR strategy open new possibilities for a dialogical, interactive, meaningful relationship strategy for corporate image management. Based on the linguistic approach to CSR and the Communication Management Approach, this paper explores the linguistic use of Twitter as a primary dialogical strategy to effectively enhance interactive dialogue-based relationships with the stakeholders of the top 50 companies in the energy sector based on tweet data from 2016. Semantic analysis was conducted by advanced text mining and clustering techniques on 3042 tweets monitored in 2017 that contained the leading CSR-related hashtags and keywords. The results demonstrated that the top energy companies apply a defensive and symbolic perspective, mainly for branding purposes. The corporate discourse dominates over a meaningful conversational strategy to foster interaction with stakeholders around sustainability issues on Twitter. The study reveals a homogenized interrelation between CSR, social media, and public relations. The results reveal a tendency for isomorphy in the communication models applied by the companies in the energy sector. Furthermore, similarities in semantics and thus strong tendencies to mutually mimic dialogical strategies are also observed. The semantic narrative built around the brand indicates a limited orientation towards CSR and sustainability. As such, it does not contribute to the creation of a dialogical interaction and meaningful relationships with multiple stakeholders on Twitter, in the high-risk sector represented by the energy industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous research on the presence and activity of hospitals in social media is abundant, but that is not the case of other health-related organizations. In this research we have examined the profiles on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram of 240 health-related entities. It has been proven that health insurers are more present in social networks than the rest, followed by manufacturers of healthcare products, technology companies, pharmaceutical laboratories, biomedical products companies and hospitals. Nevertheless, users interact more with hospitals, although they are less frequent and less active on these platforms. These findings confirm that a greater presence and activity in social media does not correlate with a greater interaction by the public. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ibex 35 and Fortune 500 companies are still not fully utilizing the dialogic potential of social media. The percentage of companies with a low level of dialogic communication exceeds the percentage of companies with a high level in both groups, according to this study which assesses the level of dialogic communication developed by firms with their external audiences on blogs, Facebook and Twitter in an integrated way. Based on Kent & Taylor's (1998) framework, a dialogic conceptual tool has been created, refined and applied to all the sample. The tool analyzes 73 variables on three dimensions: Presence, Content and Interactivity. Inter-method triangulation has been applied to carry out the research: virtual ethnography, critical discourse analysis (CDA) and interviews with experts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]