Reddit As A New Platform for Public Relations: Organizations’ Use of Dialogic Principles and Their Publics’ Responses in the Subreddit IAmA

• In Event: The Power of Social Media

Abstract

Applying Taylor and Kent’s (2002) dialogical communication principles, this study aims to describe in what ways organizations implement dialogic principles in the subreddit IAmA, a specific section of Reddit, and how their audiences respond. It also focuses on the less-researched publics’ side of computer-mediated PR. Twenty three AMAs were purposively selected within the year-long timeframe of 1 February 2014 till 1 February 2015, including a total of 40,903 comments of which 1,482 are responses from organizations. Both a conventional and a directive approach were taken in the qualitative content analysis (Hsieh & Shannon, 2005). The findings suggest that there is room for improvement in organizations’ use of dialogic principles and highlight the complexity of audience responses. While each dialogic principle can be argued to theoretically have a positive effect on these responses, audiences on Reddit especially hold transparency, open communication and honesty in high regard and expect organizations’ AMAs to have extrinsic and/or intrinsic value for the publics besides having value for the organization in marketing and/or PR context.

Authors

• Phuong Hoan Le, Erasmus University Rotterdam

• Yuping Mao, California State U, Long Beach