Abstract

Many organizations use social media to attract supporters, disseminate information and advocate change. Services like Twitter can theoretically deliver messages to a huge audience that would be difficult to reach by other means. This article introduces a method to monitor an organization’s Twitter strategy and applies it to tweets from United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) accounts. The Resonating Topic Method uses automatic analyses with free software to detect successful themes within the organization’s tweets, categorizes the most successful tweets, and analyses a comparable organization to identify new successful strategies. In the case of UNDP tweets from November 2014 to March 2015, the results confirm the importance of official social media accounts as well as those of high profile individuals and general supporters. Official accounts seem to be more successful at encouraging action, which is a critical aspect of social media campaigning. An analysis of Oxfam found a successful social media approach that the UNDP had not adopted, showing the value of analyzing other organizations to find potential strategy gaps.

Abstract

This paper analyzes communication management in Spanish public universities by interviewing communication directors of these institutions. Results show that, in addition to the shortcomings identified in the management of communications in public universities, which undermines the achievement of the exact marketing objective, the diffusional model is dominant, playing a negative influencing role. The diffusional model obscures other alternative models that would show more democratic institutions.

Abstract

Twitter has become one of the main media for spreading political messages. The structure of these messages, or tweets, is compounded by four elements –text, hashtags, mentions, and links- that can be used, organized, and repeated with the only limitation of 140 characters at most. The objective of this work is to analyze how users of political conversations gave structure to their tweets, and what the impact this structure has in the spread or retweet of these messages. We analyze two samples of more than half a million tweets each, related to the Spanish general elections in 2015 and 2016. The result show significant differences in the order and amount of elements in the tweets used by politicians, media, journalists, and citizens. In particular, politicians tend to make a greater use of hashtags, and media use more links. The spread of tweets depends upon the presence of these links, the number of followers, and the number of hashtags. This work contributes with knowledge of the strategies applied by politicians, media, and journalists in the elaboration of electoral campaign tweets.

Abstract

The main objective of this work is to obtain an in-depth understanding of digital communication strategies employed by hospitals by comparing and contrasting the digital communication of two hospitals of reference in Spain. The main method is content analysis of Facebook and Twitter along with in-depth interviews of hospital communication directors. Results show different communication strategies that depend on organizational goals. The public participated in digital communication within three themes: 1) general, sensitive, and topical health issues; 2) personal and professional projects, as well as initiatives for struggle or sensitization; 3) corporate novelties that encourage public involvement. The use of currently existing platforms of social media from which to manage the online communication should be a priority for hospitals. Multimedia content can help to disclose health information. Online communication strategies are adapted to overall communication strategy and differences in cultural profiles lead to differences in priorities.

Abstract

Climate change (CC) has become a topic of great interest in traditional and social media, two valuable sources of information that contribute to discussion on current affairs. Facebook is the social network with the most users in the world and also promotes mobilization, which makes it a platform of great interest for the study of CC communication strategies. The aim of this study is to analyse the content of the messages on CC posted on Facebook by prominent users: the relevance of the topic in the posts as a whole, objectives pursued, type of discourse and the emotions associated with messages. After validating a selection of 10 accounts (Greta Thunberg, Donald Trump, Scott Morrison, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Extinction Rebellion USA, Justin Trudeau, Bernie Sanders, United Nations, Extinction Rebellion UK and Jane Fonda), the methodology was based on content analysis applied to messages on CC (n = 599) posted on Facebook by the selected accounts between 1 November 2019 and 10 January 2020, the period covering the Madrid Climate Summit (COP 25, held in 2019). The results revealed different CC communication strategies. Regarding the presence of CC as a topic, we observed three different strategies: omission, simple mention and high presence. In terms of discourse, we noticed two different strategies: an emotional strategy that was more successful at generating interaction with others, and an analytical strategy that was generally more belligerent in its fight against CC.