Empowerment or disempowerment: Exploring stakeholder engagement in nation branding through a mixed method approach to social network analysis

Social media is utilized to cultivate relationships with stakeholders in nation branding. This study investigates stakeholder engagement on social media in China’s nation branding by looking into the interaction between pro-government stakeholders and citizens. It analyzes the networked narratives surrounding the recent soccer mega-events from the aspects of public communication, public consultation and public participation. The findings highlight the limited citizen engagement attributed to asymmetric power relationships in the communication practice of nation branding. Theoretically, the conceptual development of the authentic stakeholder engagement framework in nation branding advances the conventional goals of nation branding towards inspiring social development and contributes to the emergent field of stakeholder engagement on social media by incorporating the PR-driven relationship building paradigm and the principles of engagement. Practically, the mixed-method design combining social network analysis with content analysis allows for uncovering the underlying relationships between stakeholders constructed by networked narratives in a retweet network, and the outcomes of this study provide an insight into how the brand meaning of a nation is negotiated via stakeholder engagement in the digital space. Due to the surging quest by countries in East Asia for utilizing soccer to achieve political aims, this China-focused study has both domestic and regional significance.