scholarly journals Applying social identity theory to the social media content strategy of a global brand: The role of brand- and user-generated content in global social identification

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Mikayla Meehan
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Social Identification ◽  
User Generated Content ◽  
Global Identity ◽  
Identification Process ◽  
Global Brands ◽  
Global Brand ◽  
Content Strategy ◽  
Identity Priming ◽  
Identity Expression

<p>The global marketplace is centred around products and brands that reflect certain identities. Social media can act as vehicles of meaning transfer for social identification between brands and social media users with a global social identity. Recognizing the importance of the psychological and sociological needs that draw social media users to build relationships with global brands, the purpose of this thesis is to explore the relevance of the global social identification process to global social media branding strategy. More specifically, this research considers the role and influence of social group membership dynamics to explore how brand-generated and user-generated content are part of the global social identification process. In that, this research aims to fill the gap where social identity theory has not been applied as a lens through which to understand and evaluate the social media content strategy of a global brand. This gap is important to fill due to the global social media arena’s social-centric nature and transparency in displaying social group memberships. An interpretive paradigm was used for this research, with a qualitative case study approach that consisted of interviews with global social media users/global brand representatives and a content analysis of the focal brands social media pages. The study found that the global social identification process on social media consists of two stages, global identity priming and global identity expression. Global identity priming occurs when the psychological and sociological function of global brands is transferred to brand-generated content through a semiotic meaning transfer process. Global identity expression can occur after, as a result of global identity priming, social media users with a global identity categorize the global brand into their in-group. Once in-group categorization takes place, creation and/or sharing of user-generated content with the global brand can be considered an act of identity expression and validation by those with a global identity. This has implications for a global brand’s social media content strategy, as the findings revealed that brand-generated content featuring certain symbolic global values facilitates the global social identification process on social media. Moreover, the findings revealed that user-generated content created by social media users for global identity expression purposes is of considerable value to global brands. Understanding how the global social identification process transpires on social media can guide global brands to consider how their content strategy can prime global social identification and meet the identity expression needs of those with a global identity. This has implications for content strategy design, social media interactions and ongoing global brand-user relationships.</p>

scholarly journals Applying social identity theory to the social media content strategy of a global brand: The role of brand- and user-generated content in global social identification

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Mikayla Meehan
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Social Identification ◽  
User Generated Content ◽  
Global Identity ◽  
Identification Process ◽  
Global Brands ◽  
Global Brand ◽  
Content Strategy ◽  
Identity Priming ◽  
Identity Expression

<p>The global marketplace is centred around products and brands that reflect certain identities. Social media can act as vehicles of meaning transfer for social identification between brands and social media users with a global social identity. Recognizing the importance of the psychological and sociological needs that draw social media users to build relationships with global brands, the purpose of this thesis is to explore the relevance of the global social identification process to global social media branding strategy. More specifically, this research considers the role and influence of social group membership dynamics to explore how brand-generated and user-generated content are part of the global social identification process. In that, this research aims to fill the gap where social identity theory has not been applied as a lens through which to understand and evaluate the social media content strategy of a global brand. This gap is important to fill due to the global social media arena’s social-centric nature and transparency in displaying social group memberships. An interpretive paradigm was used for this research, with a qualitative case study approach that consisted of interviews with global social media users/global brand representatives and a content analysis of the focal brands social media pages. The study found that the global social identification process on social media consists of two stages, global identity priming and global identity expression. Global identity priming occurs when the psychological and sociological function of global brands is transferred to brand-generated content through a semiotic meaning transfer process. Global identity expression can occur after, as a result of global identity priming, social media users with a global identity categorize the global brand into their in-group. Once in-group categorization takes place, creation and/or sharing of user-generated content with the global brand can be considered an act of identity expression and validation by those with a global identity. This has implications for a global brand’s social media content strategy, as the findings revealed that brand-generated content featuring certain symbolic global values facilitates the global social identification process on social media. Moreover, the findings revealed that user-generated content created by social media users for global identity expression purposes is of considerable value to global brands. Understanding how the global social identification process transpires on social media can guide global brands to consider how their content strategy can prime global social identification and meet the identity expression needs of those with a global identity. This has implications for content strategy design, social media interactions and ongoing global brand-user relationships.</p>

Brand and influencer strategies in social media marketing of luxury brands in African cities

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 105-121 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mehita Iqani
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Luxury Brands ◽  
African Cities ◽  
Global Brands ◽  
Global Brand ◽  
Critical Theories ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Depth Interviews

This article explores the role of social media promotions in the marketing of luxury, from the perspectives of both representatives of global brands and the local influencers contracted to promote them online. It provides insights into role of social media in marketing luxury in ‘new’ markets (African cities) and the complexities attendant to the relationship between brand representatives and influencers. It reports on in-depth interviews with brand representatives and social media influencers working in the luxury sector in large anglophone African cities. Empirical findings show the role of social media in how luxury is promoted by those working in the industry. Three key complexities to do with value, trust and authenticity were evident in how global brand representatives and local influencers discussed social media. In terms of value, influencers emphasize strategies for monetizing visibility, while brand managers emphasize the need to get their money’s worth. Regarding trust, influencers express caution about brands trying to exploit them, while brands express scepticism about the extent of influencer’s abilities. On the topic of authenticity, influencers emphasize how the integrity of their personal brands is paramount, while brand representatives are mostly concerned with how genuine the social media posts seem. The article provides original empirical details about the relationships between brand managers and social media influencers, as well as to the nuances of social media luxury marketing in African cities. It contributes to critical theories of branding practice in media economies of the global south.

Global identity strategy and its efficacy for Asian brands

2016 ◽  
Vol 28 (5) ◽  
pp. 862-877 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. Min Han
Keyword(s):  
Country Of Origin ◽  
Brand Identity ◽  
Global Identity ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Consumer Responses ◽  
Global Brands ◽  
Global Brand ◽  
Country Of Origin Effects ◽  
Origin Effects ◽  
Practical Implications

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether or not the strategy of pursuing a global brand identity by leading Asian firms will produce intended outcomes in consumer responses. For this purpose, the study empirically examines whether global Japanese brands (e.g. Toyota) are perceived as global or Japanese by consumers. Design/methodology/approach Surveys were conducted with Korean consumers for their evaluations of Japanese automobile brands with varying degrees of globalness. As for brands, the study divides Japanese brands into two groups – those with high brand globalness and those with low brand globalness – and to examine if Japanese-origin effects differ between these two groups. Findings In contrast to the hypothesis, global brands were found to be more subject to country-of-origin effects. Research limitations/implications The findings contribute to research on consumer choices and brand globalness by showing country-of-origin effects for global brands. Practical implications The findings suggest that even when Asian firms emphasize the globalness of their brands, they may still need to attend to country-of-origin effects. Originality/value This study examines an unexplored issue of country-of-origin effects for global brands.

How do consumers from developed regions evaluate global brands from emerging countries? An investigation from the perspective of global–local identity

2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 2-21 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xiaoling Guo ◽  
Ying-yi Hong
Keyword(s):  
Emerging Countries ◽  
Local Identity ◽  
Developed Country ◽  
Global Identity ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Global Brands ◽  
Global Brand ◽  
Global And Local ◽  
Practical Implications ◽  
Local Cultures

Purpose While an increasing number of global brands are of emerging country origin, research about emerging global brands remains scare. The purpose of this paper is to provide the first theoretical effort to understand how consumers in the developed regions evaluate global brands from emerging countries. Building on globalization and social identity theory, the paper aims to shed light on the effect of global identity on consumer attitude toward emerging global brands, the process of such effect, and the boundary condition for it as well. Design/methodology/approach The authors used two non-student surveys in the USA and UK in which respondents’ global identity was measured and two laboratory experiments in which respondents’ global identity was primed. The operationalization of dependent variables is also divergent, either directly measuring attitude toward the global brands from developing countries or measuring consumer relative evaluation. Convergent results were reported from four studies. Findings The results show that when consumers’ global (vs local) identity is accessible, those from developed regions will show more favorable evaluations of global brands from emerging countries. And this effect is mediated by the positive association between global identity and globalization. Further, this effect emerged when consumers view global and local cultures as compatible with each other but disappeared when consumers view global and local cultures as oppositional to each other. Practical implications The findings have practical implications for global brand marketers from emerging economies to enter developed country markets, and to make their brands real global. Specifically, global identity consumers should be targeted and the compatible view of global and local cultures should be pronounced. Originality/value Focusing on global brands from emerging countries, this paper examines the global identity effect in developed country markets for the first time. The finding add new knowledge to the literature of globalization, global branding, and assimilation effect of global identity, and help to reconcile the heated debate on whether country of origin is still relevant to the globalized world.

Chinese Social Media Platforms and Microblogging in the Context of Public Diplomacy

Communicology ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 167-179
Author(s):  
E.S. Nadezhkina
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
Public Diplomacy ◽  
User Generated Content ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Interactive Communication ◽  
Network Interaction ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
The Right ◽  
Chinese Social Media

The term “digital public diplomacy” that appeared in the 21st century owes much to the emergence and development of the concept of Web 2.0 (interactive communication on the Internet). The principle of network interaction, in which the system becomes better with an increase in the number of users and the creation of user-generated content, made it possible to create social media platforms where news and entertainment content is created and moderated by the user. Such platforms have become an expression of the opinions of various groups of people in many countries of the world, including China. The Chinese segment of the Internet is “closed”, and many popular Western services are blocked in it. Studying the structure of Chinese social media platforms and microblogging, as well as analyzing targeted content is necessary to understand China’s public opinion, choose the right message channels and receive feedback for promoting the country’s public diplomacy. This paper reveals the main Chinese social media platforms and microblogging and provides the assessment of their popularity, as well as possibility of analyzing China’s public opinion based on “listening” to social media platforms and microblogging.

scholarly journals Affordances-Based Brand Relations: An Inquire on Memetic Brands on Instagram

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 205630512110213
Author(s):  
Alessandro Caliandro ◽  
Guido Anselmi
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Brand Communities ◽  
Empirical Results ◽  
Global Brands ◽  
Technical Architecture ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
Compositional Changes

In this article, we argue that, in an era of platformization of culture, social media users tend to relate with brands through modalities that are more informed by platforms’ affordances (i.e., by the technical architecture of and participatory cultures thriving on social media platforms), rather than shared systems of values and meanings promulgated within brand communities or influencers’ fandoms. Our argument grounds on an analysis of 757,776 Instagram posts related to six global brands, through which we show how users create branded content by following and reproducing a memetic logic. Drawing on our empirical results and Limor Shifman’s theory of Internet memes, we introduce the notion of memetic brands. Memetic brands are collections of branded social media posts, which derive from a standard branded template that repeats from user to user with small compositional changes at every iteration and on top of which users attach expressions of their vernacular creativity. In the process, memetic brands vehiculate a hypersignification, that is, an implicit discourse on fluid and situational consumption. Through the concepts of affordances-based brand relations and memetic brands, the article contributes (from a theoretical and methodological point of view) to the emerging literature on platformization of culture.

scholarly journals Travelers’ Responsible Environmental Behavior towards Sustainable Coastal Tourism: An Empirical Investigation on Social Media User-Generated Content

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 56 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mohammad Tipu Sultan ◽  
Farzana Sharmin ◽  
Alina Badulescu ◽  
Elena Stiubea ◽  
Ke Xue
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Structural Equation ◽  
Environmental Behavior ◽  
Relevant Literature ◽  
User Generated Content ◽  
Equation Modeling ◽  
Environmental Concerns ◽  
Destination Marketing ◽  
Coastal Tourism ◽  
Responsible Environmental Behavior

There has been increasing interest in coastal tourism, sparking a debate on the responsible environmental behavior of travelers visiting sustainable destinations. To mitigate this issue, destination marketing organizations (DMOs) and environmental activists are trying to develop strategic approaches (i.e., by using digital technologies) to enhance the sustainable behavior of travelers. Environmental responsiveness and its impact on sustainable destinations is gaining attention by companies, scholars, and institutions. However, the relevant literature has not addressed social media user-generated content regarding sustainable destinations. Sharing stakeholder knowledge, activities, and experience on social media could accomplish this goal. Hence, this paper aims to explore travelers′ responsible environmental behavior towards coastal tourism within the social media user-generated content paradigm. To measure the effect of user-generated content (UGC), i.e., cognitive triggers and affective triggers, on the responsible environmental behavior of travelers, a survey questionnaire was used to collect data (n = 506) from the world’s longest sandy sea beach, Cox’s Bazar, located in the Southern part of Bangladesh. The data were examined by structural equation modeling (SEM). The results revealed that cognitive and affective triggers of user-generated content influence travelers’ environmental concerns and attitudes, making a significant contribution to shaping responsible environmental behavior. Additionally, the findings show that environmental concerns and attitudes play a significant role in producing commitment towards a sustainable coastal tourism practice. This study contributes to the effectiveness of user-generated content for persuasive interactions with destination marketing organizations to develop sustainable tourism practices.

scholarly journals Social Media Toxicity Classification Using Deep Learning: Real-World Application UK Brexit

Electronics ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (11) ◽  
pp. 1332
Author(s):  
Hong Fan ◽  
Wu Du ◽  
Abdelghani Dahou ◽  
Ahmed A. Ewees ◽  
Dalia Yousri ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Hate Speech ◽  
Modern Society ◽  
User Generated Content ◽  
Real World Application ◽  
Proposed Model ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
Public Dataset ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Harmful Side Effect

Social media has become an essential facet of modern society, wherein people share their opinions on a wide variety of topics. Social media is quickly becoming indispensable for a majority of people, and many cases of social media addiction have been documented. Social media platforms such as Twitter have demonstrated over the years the value they provide, such as connecting people from all over the world with different backgrounds. However, they have also shown harmful side effects that can have serious consequences. One such harmful side effect of social media is the immense toxicity that can be found in various discussions. The word toxic has become synonymous with online hate speech, internet trolling, and sometimes outrage culture. In this study, we build an efficient model to detect and classify toxicity in social media from user-generated content using the Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (BERT). The BERT pre-trained model and three of its variants has been fine-tuned on a well-known labeled toxic comment dataset, Kaggle public dataset (Toxic Comment Classification Challenge). Moreover, we test the proposed models with two datasets collected from Twitter from two different periods to detect toxicity in user-generated content (tweets) using hashtages belonging to the UK Brexit. The results showed that the proposed model can efficiently classify and analyze toxic tweets.

Suggesting text alternatives for images in social media

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-6
Author(s):  
Letícia Seixas Pereira ◽  
João Guerreiro ◽  
André Rodrigues ◽  
André Santos ◽  
João Vicente ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Social Networks ◽  
Social Media ◽  
Shared Responsibility ◽  
User Generated Content ◽  
Media Content ◽  
Android Application ◽  
Image Description ◽  
Visual Content ◽  
Considerable Part ◽  
The Web

Image description has been a recurrent topic on web accessibility over the years. With the increased use of social networks, this discussion is even more relevant. Social networks are responsible for a considerable part of the images available on the web. In this context, users are not only consuming visual content but also creating it. Due to this shared responsibility of providing accessible content, major platforms must go beyond accessible interfaces. Additional resources must also be available to support users in creating accessible content. Although many of today's services already support accessible media content authoring, current efforts still fail to properly integrate and guide their users through the authoring process. One of the consequences is that many users are still unaware of what an image description is, how to provide it, and why it is necessary. We present SONAAR, a project that aims to improve the accessibility of user-generated content on social networks. Our approach is to support the authoring and consumption of accessible social media content. Our prototypes currently focus on Twitter and Facebook and are available as an Android application and as a Chrome extension.

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