| Abstrakt: |
According to the excellence theory, which is still a dominant normative framework in public relations today, communication professionals should strive for two-way symmetrical interactions with their interlocutors. In the past, such interactions were severely complicated by the lack of suitable tools. Social media, known to afford interactivity, appear to offer the solution to this problem. However, research has shown that social media are predominantly used to push content. In order to understand why this is the case, we decided to study the perceptions of 'knowledgeable outsiders'. More specifically, we organized a series of in-depth interviews with human resources executives in which we asked them about the impact of social media on internal communication, a sub-discipline within public relations. While these executives welcomed the interactive potential of social media, this interactive potential was not seen as the sole prerogative of professional communicators. Furthermore, they believed that the current approach of internal communicators towards social media, which is still very much focused on the use of socialmedia as extra channels through which to 'push' content, is partially the reason why the dialogic potential of the latter is still largely unrealized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
