In the first year, work was on a theoretical framework for the analysis of social evaluation constructs in social media more generally. Based on which, more specific frameworks for particular social evaluation constructs were derived. One for legitimacy, one for reputation, and one for stigma. Subsequent studies were based on these three frameworks. Aim of the first study was to investigate the dynamics between these two media arenas. The study identified the factors that predicted, why and how negative legitimacy judgments move from social media (micro-level) to news media (macro-level). The second study analysed how an organizational stigma forms in social media. The study finds how dynamic labelling processes lead to persisting negative evaluations of banks in Twitter. The third study bases on experimental design and studies the influence of social media comments and news media articles on individuals’ judgment of corporate crisis communication. The results show how social media comment amplify negative and positive judgments of inappropriate and appropriate crisis response respectively.
The results of the research were presented through various academic and practitioner-oriented outlets and resulted in totally five research articles, of which two were finalized and submitted to leading academic journals, and one of which was accepted and one is under review. The remaining three articles will be finalized by the end of this year and will be submitted to leading academic journals. Earlier versions of these articles were presented at: the Annual Conference of the International Communication Association (2017 and 2018), The Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management (2017), The Annual Colloquium of the European Group for Organization Studies (2018), the Specialized Academy of Management Conference on Big Data (2018), and the Annual Meeting of the European Public Relations Education and Research Association (2017). Furthermore, Researcher has organized a Paper Development Workshop (PDW) on “Legitimacy Struggles of the Sharing Economy” at The Annual Colloquium of the European Group for Organization Studies (2017) and a one-day Workshop on “CSR in the Digital Economy” at Cass Business School (2018). Furthermore, talks given at the University of Nottingham (April 2017), at Cass Business School (November 2016) and at the Free University of Amsterdam (Oct 2017). The Researcher also wrote two blog entries for the Business of Society Blog by CBS and the SAGE Management Ink Blog by publisher SAGE. Further dissemination through outlets targeted at the general public are planned with an article in The Conversation and a media article in The Guardian. Finally, he has reviewed over ten articles for leading academic journals and conferences, such as Organization Studies, Human Relations, Journal of Management Studies, among others.
Re developing methodological skills, the Researcher participated in two full-week method courses at the start, i.e. on discourse analysis the Univ. of Lugano, Switzerland (including application of NVivo Software) and on sentiment analysis and other digital methods at Essex, UK. With the application of these methods, he has further developed his methodological skills in-depth. Re theoretical knowledge, he conducted extensive literature reviews on social evaluations (legitimacy, reputation, and stigma) and digital media, which has resulted in a conceptual article (published in Academy of Management Review).
