PR and social networks – potential MA thesis material

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Thinking about possible MA thesis topics brings me back to my BA thesis. The topic of my bachelor thesis was “Forms of Address in Online Social Networks-A Contrastive Analysis of English and German”.  I looked at Facebook and a German social network site (StudiVZ), and analysed the linguistic elements of language displayed. This linguistic approach was rather interesting, given the limited space people had to depict their thoughts and convey their messages. This analysis concentrated on individuals using Facebook as a private sphere addressing their friends and loved ones.

However, I think Facebook has expanded to being a PR tool by opening their site to organisations and as a result businesses have quickly picked up on including online social networks into their overall PR strategy. Furthermore, companies are becoming aware of the fact that there is only limited space, even more so considering Twitter (people have to make most of their 140 characters). The way of communicating with their audiences is crucial for doing business, messages have to be to the point, catch people’s attention and trigger that extra click to the main article or video being referred to. For my MA thesis it would be interesting to analyse how companies use Facebook and Twitter, and whether they are communicating effectively or ruining their reputation with their tweets and posts.

A relevant theory in this analysis would be the “6 part model of cyber-interactivity” established by Ferber, Foltz and Pugliese. The audience’s response behaviour as well as the way of communicating used by the company could draw conclusions on the relationship they have established with their audiences. After getting familiar with this theory by applying it to an NGO’s use of social media in our group project, I thought it would be interesting to draw on it when looking at a company’s social media involvement, in particular when taking social networks into account. In my opinion, that’s the part where it gets tricky, considering that Facebook as well as Twitter were initially seen as private spaces, which are now invaded by companies. In that sense, companies need to be careful about how they communicate their messages and try not to come across as trying too hard. They have to be transparent in their communications while trying to build a trust worthy relationship with their costumers. In addition, they need to establish a long-term relationship with their costumers through their use of social media, and unfortunately most companies do not do too well. To analyse the use of Twitter and Facebook by companies one could look at the most successful companies (those with the most followers/retweets/shares etc.) and analyse what tactics they are using to grab their followers attention.