How companies are seizing the dialogic opportunities provided by social media to communicate with their external audiences

This thesis assesses the level of integrative dialogic communication prompted by IBEX 35 companies and a selection of 20 Fortune 500 firms with their external audiences on blogs, Facebook and Twitter. With this aim, a dialogic conceptual tool based on Kent y Taylor's (1998) (1998) framework has been created and applied to the entire sample. The tool consists of a questionnaire which analyzes 61 variables and 39 sub-variables on three dimensions: presence, content and interactivity. Inter-method triangulation, i.e., virtual ethnography, critical discourse analysis (CDA) and interviews with experts, has been applied to carry out the research. Results of this research show that use of social media at the dialogic level is higher in the Ibex 35 companies than in the Fortune 500 firms. However, both in the Ibex 35 and the Fortune 500 companies, the percentage of companies with low levels of dialogic communication exceeds the percentage of companies with high levels. Consistent with previous research, this study concludes that Ibex 35 and Fortune 500 companies are still not fully utilizing social media's dialogic potential.