drawing from available means: assessing the rhetorical dimensions of facebook practice

International Journal of Business Communication

1 –23© 2015 by the Association for

Business CommunicationReprints and permissions:

sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/2329488415572788

jbc.sagepub.com

Article

Drawing From Available Means: Assessing the Rhetorical Dimensions of Facebook Practice

Mark A. Hannah1 and Chris Lam2

AbstractA company’s presence on Facebook plays an important role in engaging its customer base. However, little empirical work has fully examined the nature and impact of corporate Facebook posts on engagement. In this study, we analyzed 680 Facebook posts collected from a sample of six companies over a period of 12 months. We examined variables including post frequency, content type, illocutionary act, linking style, and media. We found that entertainment posts were more engaging than operational news and innovation posts. Educational posts were also more engaging than innovation posts. With regard to illocutionary acts, expressives, or posts that express the writer’s emotion, were more engaging than all other illocutionary acts. Additionally, representative posts were more engaging than directive posts. For linking style, we discovered that posts containing no link were actually more engaging than posts with an external link. We also found a significant interaction between content type and linking practice, which indicates that linking style influences the effectiveness of some content types in engaging audiences. Finally, we found that companies overwhelmingly relied on the use of text and images in their posts over video and image galleries. We speculate that content that removes a user from the Facebook “universe” (e.g., a link or a video) actually may demotivate a user to engage with the original content of the post. We discuss these results from a rhetorical perspective and provide insight for corporate Facebook practices.

Keywordsrhetoric, Facebook, social media, engagement, communication practice

1Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA2University of North Texas, Denton, TX, USA

Corresponding Author:Mark A. Hannah, Arizona State University, P.O. Box 870302, Tempe, AZ 85287-0302, USA. Email: [email protected]

572788 JOBXXX10.1177/2329488415572788International Journal of Business CommunicationHannah and Lamresearch-article2015

at UNIV NORTH TEXAS LIBRARY on October 27, 2015job.sagepub.comDownloaded from

mailto:[email protected]

http://job.sagepub.com/

2 International Journal of Business Communication

Facebook is the world’s largest social networking site with 1.19 billion users as of September 2013 (Facebook, 2013). While Facebook originated as a social network for college students, the company began allowing organizations to create pages in 2006. In the subsequent years, a rapidly growing number of corporations now use Facebook to communicate to their customer bases in a variety of ways. With this in mind, a growing body of literature has examined how companies can leverage Facebook as a marketing tool. For instance, studies have arisen on brand management (Dholakia & Durham, 2010; Jahn & Kunz, 2012; Hyllegard, Ogle, Yan, & Reitz, 2013; Michaelidou, Siamagka, & Christodoulides, 2011; Tsai & Men, 2013), marketing (Chu, 2011; Hsu, 2012; Pesonen, 2011; Rauschnabel, Praxmarer, & Ivens, 2012), and identity manage-ment (DiMicco & Millen, 2007). A smaller body of literature has emerged on specific communication aspects of Facebook, particularly ways in which companies can use Facebook to build and shape relationships and engage customers (Bortree & Seltzer, 2009; Champoux, Durgee, & McGlynn, 2012; Haigh, Brubaker, & Whiteside, 2013; McCorkindale, 2010; Vorvoreanu, 2009; Waters, Burnett, Lamm, & Lucas, 2009). While frameworks for engaging and building relationships on Facebook exist, much of this work is untested or anecdotal. One area of consensus, however, is the impor-tance for companies to implement an explicit strategy for using Facebook (Nair, 2011; Ramsay, 2010). A major component of a company’s overall strategy that has gone under investigated is how companies can or should construct direct messages, also known as wall posts, to users on Facebook.

In this article, we review research on Facebook and identify a general tendency to overlook the rhetorical dimensions of Facebook as a communication tool. In particu-lar, we note a lack of attention directed to the types of rhetorical practices companies employ to support the content they post on Facebook. Accordingly, we examined 680 Facebook posts from six agribusiness companies to analyze the characteristics of those posts as well as the posts’ impact on audience engagement. To examine the nature and impact of the posts, we first investigated the following items: posting frequency, con-tent types, illocutionary acts, linking practices, and media types used. We then ana-lyzed the engagement that ensued from these items by measuring the comments, likes, and shares that were generated in response to the posts.

This approach to examining the rhetorical dimensions of Facebook engagement adds to contemporary research on social media usage by providing insight into how organizations draw on available rhetorical resources or means to shape audiences’ engagement. In addition, the findings contribute to the emerging understanding of Facebook’s potential for supporting business communication strategy and provide a useful overview of Facebook practice for organizations seeking to utilize Facebook to engage with the public.

Literature Review

Because scholarship about businesses’ use of social media is so broad, we sought to limit our literature review to articles that have implications to how companies can or should construct wall posts on Facebook. To achieve this goal, we reviewed research



Hannah and Lam 3

that focuses on organizational Facebook use as a means to build relationships with stakeholders and engage audiences. Therefore, we excluded research that included ancillary references to Facebook such as Westerman and Westerman (2013) and Jackson (2007) and focused on research that sought to clarify how Facebook supports and/or furthers user interaction. In what follows, we describe three themes we found in the literature: organizational relationship building on Facebook pages, Facebook best practices, and Facebook message content and features on engagement.

Organizational Relationship Building on Facebook Pages

There are a number of studies that examine how Facebook supports an organization’s ability to build and maintain relationships with the public. For instance, Vorvoreanu’s (2009) study of college students and their perceptions of corporations using Facebook used focus groups and found that college students had generally negative perceptions of corporate Facebook use. More specifically, they reported a sense of lost exclusivity with the presence of corporations, had no interest in engaging in conversations or relationships with large corporations, and did not consider themselves more likely to interact with a corporation simply because it had a Facebook page. Students, did, how-ever, embrace small businesses and nonprofits. Based on these findings, Vovoreanu suggests that businesses should cultivate a Facebook strategy that includes personal, authentic, and engaged communication practices. The author warns against practices that might arouse suspicion like corporate advertisement, which can be perceived as impersonal and profit driven. Vorvoreanu further suggests businesses become aware of the social norms that publics develop in social media prior to engaging with publics on Facebook. While this study does not focus specifically on wall posts, such advice regarding corporate Facebook communication practices certainly has implications for wall posts.

McCorkindale (2010) conducted a content analysis of the Fortune 50’s Facebook pages and coded for number of fans, profile content, photos and videos, discussion boards, level of engagement, feedback, and communication relations or social respon-sibility. McCorkindale (2010) found (a) over 75% of the pages did not include recent news or updates about the company; (b) few corporations had links to YouTube or videos posted on the site; and (c) most communication on Facebook was one sided, noting that “it appears many companies are not taking advantage of the two-way rela-tionship building capabilities Facebook may perform” (p. 11). Ultimately, McCorkindale noted that while some corporations were taking advantage of commu-nication opportunities on Facebook, few were utilizing it to its fullest extent and argued that corporations must provide incentives for users through increased engage-ment opportunities.

Similar to McCorkindale (2010), Waters et al. (2009) explored whether nonprofit organizations were taking advantage of two-sided, dialogic communication on Facebook. They conducted a content analysis of 275 Facebook profiles and coded for three communication strategies including disclosure (presence of company informa-tion), information dissemination (presence of links and other news-related items), and




involvement (presence of methods of interaction). Results indicated disclosure was most used and organizations largely ignored the other two strategies, and the authors asserted that organizations “were not taking advantage of all the options [Facebook] had to offer their relationship cultivation efforts” (Waters et al., 2009, p. 105). That is, most communication appeared to be one sided. Additionally, they noted that many pages lacked multimedia use and direct contact with stakeholders. Similarly, Bortree and Seltzer (2009) conducted a content analysis of 50 environmental advocacy groups and coded for variables including use of dialogue and dialogue promotion. They found that these groups also were not taking full advantage of Facebook’s dialogic means, such as wall posts, to encourage more dialogue and build stronger relationships with stakeholders. Additionally, they suggested that organizations should post frequently to their Facebook pages to stimulate this dialogic communication. In a similar vein, Champoux et al. (2012) present a business case study of a company’s response in the midst of negative attacks on Facebook, and much like the findings in Waters et al. (2009) and Bortree and Seltzer (2009), they provide similar advice for managing rela-tionships including relating to customers on a personal level and encouraging more two-way, dialogic communication.

More recently, in a two-phase study, Haigh, Brubaker, and Whiteside (2013) exam-ined the information presented on for-profit organizations’ Facebook pages and the impact such information had on stakeholders. First, they conducted a content analysis and coded the pages for organizational disclosure, information dissemination, corpo-rate social responsibility, and interactivity. Pages were also coded for one of three communication strategies: corporate ability, corporate social responsibility, or hybrid communication strategy. Results of Study 1 indicated that for-profit organizations tend to discuss programs and services, achievements, and awards on their Facebook pages and primarily use a corporate ability communication strategy. That is, they tend to highlight their own abilities and downplay corporate social responsibility. In Study 2, three pages were selected as exemplars of the three communication strategies and an experiment was conducted where participants completed initial inventories of percep-tions of organization-public relationship, corporate social responsibility, and purchase intent. While all three pages bolstered these variables, the page utilizing a corporate social responsibility communication strategy was most effective. That is, employing a strategy that shifts away from an inward focus and onto social responsibility seemed to bolster impressions more effectively. Similarly, Tsai and Men (2013) examined per-ceptions of Facebook users through a survey to determine motivations and antecedents of consumer engagement on brand pages. Their survey focused on three social rela-tionship factors including parasocial interaction, perceived source credibility, and community identification. Results indicated that relationship-oriented factors played a significant role in customer engagement. That is, customers reported more potential engagement on pages that attempted to identify with a community and encouraged relationship-oriented communication.

The literature on relationship building on Facebook pages seems to reach a few key conclusions along with a general consensus that corporations were missing opportuni-ties to build relationships with users. First, corporate presence on Facebook inherently



Hannah and Lam 5

aroused suspicion among college students, and therefore, should be carefully man-aged, personal, and authentic (Tsai & Men, 2013; Vorvoreanu, 2009). Additionally, corporations seem to disclose content about their companies but did not take full advantage of calling users to action or driving interaction and dialogue (Bortree & Seltzer, 2009; Champoux et al., 2012; Waters et al., 2009). Finally, corporations might benefit by shifting from an inward focus to an outward focus in their Facebook com-munication. One thing that should be noted is that all of these studies do not focus on individual or direct communication to audiences via posts or status updates. Instead, they focus primarily on an overall page or profile of a company, which is a key distinc-tion for the current study. Therefore, these findings drive the current study as we seek to examine more specifically how corporations are crafting direct messages in posts to their audiences and whether corporations are merely disclosing information or calling users to action. Most importantly, while many of the studies suggest that organizations should better utilize Facebook affordances like wall posts to drive two-way communi-cation and foster customer relationships, none have specifically examined how wall posts influence engagement.

Facebook Best Practices

A natural outgrowth of the relationship-building research discussed above is the “best practices” article that offers guidance for utilizing social media. While a plethora of nonacademic best practice articles exist, we focus only on advice published in aca-demic journals. For instance, Kaplan and Haenlein (2010) offer advice for companies considering using social media. They argue that companies need to take a holistic and integrated approach to social media by ensuring that social media activities align with each other and integrate traditional media and social media activities. Kaplan and Haenlein also note that companies should be active, interesting, humble, professional, and honest in their social media communications with the public. Similar to Kaplan and Haenlein (2010), Ramsay (2010) provides advice on general social media use from a practitioner perspective and argues that social media should not be used for corporate news like updates on the financial status of a company. He also suggests balancing communications between conversation and sales. Additionally, specifically for Facebook, he advises frequent and relevant status updates, but not too many, which, he argues can “swamp” users. Finally, he suggests asking questions on Facebook, but strongly recommends following up and responding with stakeholders. This theme of dialogic communication echoes that of Bortree and Seltzer (2009), Champoux et al. (2012), and Waters et al. (2009).

Kietzmann, Hermkens, McCarthy, and Silvestre (2011) offer a framework intended to define social media and help executives understand its functional building blocks—identity, conversations, sharing, presence, relationships, reputation, and groups. The aim of these building blocks is to offer insight on how best to interact with public audi-ences. For example, understanding the identity block will help a business anticipate a user’s discourse preferences, for instance attitudes about protecting privacy, and thus be in a position to develop communication that aligns with such preferences and




encourages engagement. Similarly, understanding the sharing block will help a busi-ness develop communication content that aligns with a user’s or a group’s sharing practices and by extension enhance engagement. Similarly, Hanna, Rohm, and Crittenden (2011) provide advice on developing a social media strategy that treats available social media as integrated rather than as disparate platforms or silos. Noting that social media have turned the Internet from a platform for information to a plat-form for influence, the authors argue that businesses must learn to visualize their social media efforts as operating in an ecosystem involving both digital and traditional media that is driven by three types of media: owned, paid, and earned. Through developing such a vision of social media, businesses will be able to understand how different ele-ments of social media interact more effectively.

Overall, research surrounding Facebook best practices provides several general frameworks for corporate Facebook usage. These articles, however, offer advice that has yet to be empirically examined. For instance, Kaplan and Haenlein (2010) stress the importance of active and interesting Facebook pages for corporations and point out the importance for a corporation to integrate multiple social media platforms. While seemingly sound in its advice, the current study seeks to extend this research in order to determine whether corporations are actually adhering to such practices. The current study also will examine specific content types to determine if corporations are adher-ing to Ramsay’s (2010) advice of balancing conversational and sales language. Finally, Kietzmann et al. (2011) offer up a framework that focuses on meeting audience needs; however, such a practice has yet to be measured. Therefore, the current study seeks to address these untested claims by determining whether some of these best practices actually influence engagement.

Facebook Message Content and Features on Engagement

There are a small number of studies that have specifically examined the content and features of a company’s wall posts and the impact of those features on engagement. Kwok and Yu’s (2012) study of companies in the hospitality industry is closely related to the current study in that it begins to examine specific message features and measure the impact of those features on Facebook engagement. They examined four Facebook message types: status, link, video, and photo and two message categories: sales and marketing versus conversational messages. They measured engagement through clicks of “like” and “comments” on Facebook. The authors found that photo and status mes-sages were more engaging than videos or links. In addition, conversational messages receive more attention from Facebook users than sales and marketing messages do. Based on these findings, the authors suggest that corporations avoid words associated with selling, such as “win,” “check,” and “vote” (p. 91). Additionally, they recom-mend that corporations post status updates and photos, as opposed to posting links or videos. Finally, they suggest that corporations use conversational messages instead of trying to sell an audience a product. The current study extends Kwok and Yu’s (2012) work by examining many of the same variables and utilizing a similar quantitative methodology on an unstudied sample of corporations. Our study also includes a more



Hannah and Lam 7

comprehensive coding scheme for content type that uses a rhetorical approach. Additionally, Kwok and Yu’s (2012) study only measures engagement by counting the number of “likes” and “comments” a post received. The current study uses a widely adopted measure of engagement, which includes “likes,” “comments,” and “shares.”

Cvijikj and Michahelles (2013) recently examined posts written by both companies and users from 100 Facebook pages. They examined content types of posts, which included entertainment, information, and remuneration; media type, which included vividness and interactivity; and posting time, which included workday and peak hours. Engagement was measured by the comments, shares, and likes each post generated. Through a quantitative analysis, their results were very similar to that of Kwok and Yu (2012). First, they found that entertainment posts were the most engaging content type. For media types, they found that images were the most engaging while video and links were the least engaging. For posting time, posting during peak hours had no impact on engagement. Posting during the weekday, however, produced more com-ments. The current study adds to Cvijikj and Michahelles’s (2013) study by examining a more comprehensive set of content types. Furthermore, our study examines a lin-guistic variable in addition to the content type of the post.

The previous two studies provide a strong methodological framework for the cur-rent study, specifically in the variables they collected and the method in which they analyzed the variables. These two studies, along with findings from other studies in the literature review directly shaped our research questions.

Research Questions

Based on the research discussed in the literature review, we have devised two sets of research questions. First, we seek to provide an in-depth overview of our sample’s Facebook practices. Specifically, we were interested in both the content of the posts as well as the nature in which the companies supported the posts.

Facebook Practice Research Questions

Research Question 1: How frequently do these companies post and how does the frequency change over time?Research Question 2: What content types and illocutionary acts are present in the sample’s posts?Research Question 3: What linking practices do these companies use to support their posts? Do they rely on external or internal links? Do they link to other social media sites?Research Question 4: What media is used in the posts? Do they use text-only, images and text, image galleries, or video and text?

We also seek to examine what, if any, relationship exists between Facebook prac-tices for crafting messages and Facebook engagement by posing the following research questions.




Facebook Engagement Research Questions

Research Question 5: Will a particular content type influence engagement? Will a particular illocutionary act influence engagement? Is there a significant interaction between content type and illocutionary act?Research Question 6: Will a particular linking style (no link, internal link, or external link) influence engagement? Will linking to specific social media sites influence engagement? Is there an interaction between content type and linking style?Research Question 7: Will media choice (text-only, images and text, image galler-ies, and video and text) influence engagement? Is there an interaction between con-tent type and media choice?

Methodology

Sample

We chose to study the Facebook posts of six companies based on their presence in the sustainable agriculture market. The primary reason we chose this particular set of companies is that it allowed us to study a comprehensive group of companies from a relatively small market. That is, if we had chosen companies from a larger market, the size of the sample would have been too large to examine comprehensively. We first identified three companies including Syngenta, BASF Crop Protection, and Monsanto based on their organizational reputations in agribusiness. To identify additional direct competitors in this market, we then examined recent annual reports of one of the com-panies (Syngenta, 2012). Based on the 2012 annual report, six total companies were considered primary competitors in the sustainable agriculture market that included Syngenta, BASF Crop Protection, Monsanto, Bayer Crop Science, Dow Chemical Company, and DuPont Pioneer. Since these six companies were explicitly identified as primary competitors in the annual report, and since all six had active corporate Facebook pages, we selected these companies as the sample for our study.

Time Frame

We wanted to examine the sample’s Facebook practices over an extended period of time. While all six companies had active Facebook accounts, one (Bayer Crop Science) only recently started posting to its Facebook account in August 2012. Therefore, we chose August 2012 as the start of our data collection period. July 2013 was the last month we collected data making the total time period for data collection 12 months.

Variables

We collected six variables from each post over the 12-month period. The variables can be placed into two major categories: Facebook practices and Facebook engagement. Variables that describe a company’s Facebook practices included (a) content type,



Hannah and Lam 9

(b) illocutionary act, (c) linking style, (d) social media links, and (e) media choice. Each week, we recorded these variables on a spreadsheet for every post generated in that week. Table 1 provides a detailed description of each variable. While linking style, social media links, and media use are relatively self-explanatory, the content type vari-able and the illocutionary act variable both require further explanation.

To create the coding scheme for content type, both researchers collaboratively coded a representative sample of the posts and agreed on five codes. We examined coding schemes from Kwok and Yu (2012) and Cvijikj and Michahelles (2013) as a starting point for our own codes. Both of these studies used a limited coding scheme, so we determined that it was necessary to expand on these coding schemes and create five mutually exclusive codes. One of us created a codebook for each of the five codes to ensure that each code was mutually exclusive and coded properly. After the entire sample was coded, the other author recoded 20% of the sample to ensure adequate intercoder reliability. The intercoder reliability was strong (Cohen’s kappa = .76). Each discrepancy was discussed and a single code was agreed on. Table 2 describes each code for content type in more detail.

For the illocutionary act variable, we used an existing coding scheme from the field of linguistics based on speech act theory (Austin, 1955). According to the theory, all messages have a locutionary act and an illocutionary act. The locutionary act is the literal act of saying something or sending a message. The illocutionary act, on the other hand, is the sender’s intention when a phrase is uttered or a message is sent.

Table 1. Description of Variables.

Variable name Description

Content Type Recorded the primary type of content communicated in the post (Operational News, Altruistic News, Education, Entertainment, Financial, and Innovation). See Table 2 for definitions and examples of each content type.

Illocutionary Act Recorded the primary illocutionary act in each post (Directive, Expressive, Representative, or Question). See Table 3 for definitions and examples of each illocutionary act.

Facebook Engagement A ratio formula that measured a single post’s engagement level. This is calculated by summing comments, likes, and shares and dividing by the number of followers the company had at the time of the post.

Linking Style Recorded if a post included a supplemental link to any external website that was not a social media site (None, Internal, or External).

Media Recorded the type of media used in the post (Text-only, Image, Image Gallery, and Video).

Social Media Links Recorded if a post included a link to a social media site (Facebook, Twitter, Vimeo, Flickr, YouTube, and Google Plus).




Table 2. Content Types, Descriptions, and Example Posts.

Content Type Description Example

Altruistic News Coded when the primary content provides news about the companies’ activities that are altruistic in nature. This includes volunteer activities or partnerships where the company is funding nonoperations-related projects or research.

Over the course of 4 volunteer days, over 50 Dow - St. Charles Operations employees, family and friends dedicated their time to volunteer at their local Habitat for Humanity build site. Have you ever volunteered for Habitat?

Education Coded when a post’s primary content serves to inform the audience about sustainability or a related topic.

Amazing facts of nature: Did you know that a sunflower head is made up of 1,000 to 2,000 individual flowers that are joined at the base?

Entertainment Code when the primary content serves to solicit interaction from the audience without providing any educational, financial, innovative, or company news. This includes posts that contain quizzes or prizes. Entertainment posts also include any post that serves no other clear purpose. For example, posting a picture without any caption or other information was coded as entertainment.

BASF’s Guess my job—play the game and make a guess to win a kindle ebook reader and other great prizes!

Innovation Coded when the primary content describes a company’s products, particularly the product’s innovation. This includes external sources describing a company’s innovations.

Monsanto’s Chief Technology Officer Robb Fraley has a commentary article posted today at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs site for its Global Agricultural Development Initiative. Dr. Fraley discusses how more scientific advances in agriculture are showing great promise to help farmers increase yields.

Operational News Coded when the primary content serves to provide any updates about the company’s operations. This includes posts about mergers, partnerships, conferences, awards, public appearances, and financial reports.

[FW] Press Release: BASF to strengthen global crop protection business with acquisition of Becker Underwood http://www.bu.agro.basf.com/agr/ms/BU/en_GB/news/index


http://www.bu.agro.basf.com/agr/ms/BU/en_GB/news/index




Hannah and Lam 11

Because there is not a finite set of illocutionary acts, Searle (1976) developed a clas-sification scheme to organize the wide variety of illocutionary acts. This scheme includes representatives, directives, questions, commissives, expressives, and declara-tions. Two illocutionary acts, commissives and declarations, were not present in the sample. Therefore, four total illocutionary acts were coded including representatives, directives, questions, and expressives. The intercoder reliability for this variable was strong (Cohen’s kappa = .90). Table 3, which is adopted from Parker and Riley (2005), outlines definitions and examples of each illocutionary act.

The sixth variable, Facebook engagement, is a widely used metric in industry to quantitatively measure the level of engagement for a single Facebook post. Facebook collects and provides this metric to corporations who subscribe to access Facebook metrics. Every post generated on Facebook can engage a potential audience by allow-ing them to perform three actions: like a post, comment on a post, or share the post with their friends. The engagement metric measures the percentage of a total audience that a single wall post engages. It is calculated by summing a post’s likes, comments, and shares. Once summed, the number is divided by the number of followers that the

Table 3. Illocutionary Acts, Definitions, and Example Posts.

Illocutionary Act Definition Example

Directive Used to try to get the hearer (or reader) to do something. This includes acts like requesting, ordering, forbidding, warning, advising, suggesting, insisting, and recommending.

View regional expert testimonials, get crop-specific herbicide recommendations and locate your local BASF Authorized Representative, all in one place. Click here to get started: http://on.basf.com/ZmRDRp

Expressive Used to express the emotional state of the speaker. This includes acts like apologizing, thanking, congratulating, condoling, welcoming, deploring, and objecting.

Our thoughts and prayers go out to the families affected by the tornado in Oklahoma.

Representative Used to describe some state of affairs. This includes acts like stating, asserting, denying, confessing, admitting, notifying, concluding, and predicting.

Monsanto’s research pipeline is advancing a record 18 projects across multiple areas—all aimed at improving farmers’ producing and conserving resources.

Question Used to get the hearer to provide information. This includes acts like asking and inquiring.

Gymnasts use chalk—consisting of calcium carbonate—to help remove sweat and reduce slipping for a better grip. What was your favorite gymnastics moment during the 2012 Olympic Games?

Source. Adopted from Parker and Riley (2005).


http://on.basf.com/ZmRDRp

http://on.basf.com/ZmRDRp



Table 4. Overview of the Sample.

Company Page followers Page creation dateTime on Facebook

in days

BASF Crop Protection 5,792 September 30, 2011 788Bayer Crop Science 84,225 April 8, 2010 1,328Dow Chemical Company 70, 641 November 22, 2010 1,100DuPont Pioneer 17,472 August 5, 2010 1,209Monsanto 29,218 January 15, 2009 1,776Syngenta 28,133 Not provided N/A

Facebook page has at the time that the post was generated, which normalizes the data and makes it possible to compare engagement across companies. The Facebook engagement metric was calculated using a hybrid approach. The two authors coded likes, comments, and shares, but did not code page followers because the authors made the decision to collect this variable after data collection began in August 2012. Therefore, the authors used Page Data, a data analytics resource, to collect page fol-lowers at the time each post was generated.

Data Analysis

We subjected the data to a variety of statistical tests. First, we examined all relevant descriptive statistics for each major variable including means, standard deviations, and frequencies. We also conducted binomial tests to examine the expected frequency of pertinent variables. Finally, we tested relationships between Facebook practices and engagement to determine the influence of such practices. A series of factorial analyses of variance (ANOVAs) and post hoc tests were conducted to examine relationships between practices and engagement. We focused on interactions between content type and all other independent variables because content type was the primary variable of interest in the current study.

Results

Company Overviews

We studied the Facebook posts of six companies, all with varying Facebook profiles and audiences. Corporate Facebook pages reach distinct audiences based on the num-ber of followers, or likes, their pages receive. Table 4 provides descriptive information on each company in our sample. The data in Table 4 is current as of November 25, 2013.

Research Question 1: How frequently do these six companies post and how does the frequency change over time?



Hannah and Lam 13

To gain an understanding of how often companies in our sample posted, we counted the total number of posts. Over a period of 12 months, there were a total of 680 posts or 56.67 posts per month. Of the 680 posts, Bayer Crop Science posted most fre-quently (n = 151) followed by BASF (n = 135), Dow Chemical (n = 124), DuPont Pioneer (n = 94), Syngenta (n = 93), and Monsanto (n = 83). See Table 5 for an over-view of the posting frequency over four 3-month periods. Additionally, we also found that the majority of posts occurred during the traditional work week (Monday-Friday), as posting activity was infrequent on the weekends. In fact, only 34, or 1.52%, of all posts occurred on the weekend.

Research Question 2: What content types and illocutionary acts are present in the sample’s posts?

We were interested in the content type of the posts to examine ways that these com-panies attempt to engage and communicate with their customer base via Facebook. The distribution was fairly even for content type. Across the entire sample (n = 680), education posts were the most frequently posted content type (n = 174). As can be seen in Table 2, education posts typically included content that served to educate the audi-ence about sustainability or a related topic. Operational news or posts that contained information about mergers, partnerships, conferences, awards, public appearances, and financial reports, were the second most frequently posted content type (n = 157). The least posted content type were altruistic posts (n = 86), which typically included information about a company’s volunteer or nonprofit activities. To further examine the distribution of content types, we conducted a series of binomial tests. Because no prior literature has suggested a specific distribution for content types, we assumed that each content type would be evenly distributed. Based on this assumption, 136 (680/5) posts of each content type would appear. Table 6 shows the distribution of all content types and results of the binomial tests. Based on the results, education posts and opera-tional news posts occurred significantly more than expected. On the other hand, posts about altruism and innovation occurred significantly less than expected. Entertainment posts occurred as expected.

Table 5. Company Posting Frequency Over Four 3-Month Periods.

CompanyAugust-October

November-January February-April May-July

Total frequency

Bayer Crop Science 29 51 37 34 151BASF Crop Protection 24 50 44 17 135Dow Chemical 40 18 38 28 124DuPont Pioneer 24 24 15 31 94Syngenta 16 23 23 31 93Monsanto 11 22 25 25 83Column total 144 188 182 166 680




Table 6. Content Type and Binomial Tests.

Company Frequency Expected frequency Binomial p value

Education 174 136 p < .001*Operational Company News 157 136 p = .024*Entertainment 152 136 p = .068Innovation 111 136 p = .009*Altruistic Company News 86 136 p < .001*

*Significant at p < .05.

For illocutionary act, the distribution throughout the sample was less even than for content types, with almost half of all posts being directives (n = 328). As a reminder, a directive is an illocutionary act in which the sender of the message is attempting to get the receiver to perform an action. The second highest represented illocutionary act was representatives (n = 195), followed by expressives (n = 75), and questions (n = 70). Twelve posts contained no words and therefore were not coded for this variable.

Research Question 3: What linking practices do these companies use to support their posts? Do they rely on external or internal links? Do they link to other social media sites?

Links provide users with an opportunity to contextualize the content of their posts for an audience. One important aspect of such contextualization is users’ ability to offer evidentiary support for the post, which can enhance the post’s credibility. There were three possible codes for linking practice: no link, links to internal company web-sites, and links to external websites. Links to internal company websites (n = 277) and links to external websites (n = 117) were prevalent throughout the sample and com-bined were present in 57.9% of the posts. 42.1% of the posts included no link at all (n = 286).

Across the sample, a majority of the posts did not link to other social media sites (n = 553). When a corporation did link to a social media site, YouTube was by far the most linked to social network (n = 58), followed by other Facebook pages (n = 51), and Twitter (n = 12). Other social networks that were linked to included Flickr (n = 3), Google Plus (n = 2), and Vimeo (n = 1).

Research Question 4: What media is used in the posts? Do they use text-only, images and text, image galleries, or video and text?

Facebook affords a few media options when creating a wall post. These options allow the author of a post to convey a message using a variety of media that include text-only, image and text, image galleries, and video and text. The companies in our sample used images and text over 80% of the time (n = 447). The next largest media category was text-only (n = 139), followed by video and text (n = 63), and image gallery (n = 31).



Hannah and Lam 15

Research Question 5: Will a particular content type influence engagement? Will a particular illocutionary act influence engagement? Is there a significant interaction between content type and illocutionary act?

To determine what, if any, influence a particular content type had on engagement, we conducted a 4 × 5 factorial ANOVA. The results indicated a significant main effect for content type (F = 3.369, p = .04). The results also indicated a significant main effect for illocutionary act (F = 4.972, p = .002). There was, however, no significant interaction between the two variables (F = 1.038, p = .412).

To further examine the nature of the significant main effect for content type, we conducted a post hoc Dunnett C tests. Entertainment posts (M = 1.27, SD = 1.65) pro-duced significantly more engagement than innovation posts (M = 0.54, SD = 0.64) and operational news posts (M = 0.64, SD = 0.62). Additionally, education posts (M = 1.02, SD = 1.28) produced significantly more engagement than innovation posts.

We also further examined the nature of the significant main effect for illocutionary act by conducting post hoc Dunnett C tests. Based on these tests, expressive posts (M = 1.58, SD = 1.46) were significantly more engaging than all other illocutionary acts including representatives (M = 1.07, SD = 1.37), questions (M = 0.72, SD = 0.85), and directives (M = 0.72, SD = 1.02). Additionally, representatives were significantly more engaging than directives. See Appendix Table A for the full ANOVA table for content type and illocutionary act on engagement.

Research Question 6: Will a particular linking style (no link, internal link, or external link) influence engagement? Will linking to specific social media sites influence engagement? Is there an interaction between content type and linking style?

We conducted a 3 × 5 factorial ANOVA to determine the influence of linking style on engagement and to determine whether linking style and content type interacted. The results indicated that there was a significant main effect for linking style on engagement (F = 9.273, p < .001). Dunnett C post hoc tests revealed that posts with no links (M = 0.96, SD = 1.12) were significantly more engaging than posts with exter-nal links (M = 0.58, SD = 0.51, p < .01). Also, posts with internal links (M = 1.05, SD = 1.47) were significantly more engaging than posts with external links (p < .01). There was no significant difference between posts with no links and posts with internal links. The interaction effect reported below, however, provides additional insight into the value of linking.

The results revealed a significant interaction effect for content type and linking style on engagement (F = 2.683, p = .007). After inspecting the interaction graph shown in Figure 1, we conducted follow-up tests to determine the nature of the interac-tion. Because posts with external links produced consistently low engagement across all content types as seen in Figure 1, posts with no links and posts with internal links were of primary interest. For news-related content types (altruistic and operational news), having no links seemed to negatively influence engagement, while posts with




External Link Internal Link No LinkAltrusi�c 0.38 1.63 0.54Opera�onal news 0.59 1.03 0.58Entertainment 0.52 1.37 1.34Educa�on 0.62 0.98 1.33

0

0.2

0.4

0.6

0.8

1

1.2

1.4

1.6

1.8

Engagemen

t

Figure 1. Content type and linking style interaction.

internal links seemed to positively influence engagement. Figure 1 clearly shows this pattern in the inverted “V” shape for both altruistic and operational news content. Specifically, altruistic news content paired with links to internal websites (M = 1.63, SD = 1.52) was significantly more engaging than both altruistic content with no link (M = 0.54, SD = 0.63) or external links (M = 0.38, SD = 0.29). Similarly, operational news content with links to internal websites (M = 1.03, SD = 1.09) were significantly more engaging than both operational news content that included no link (M = 0.58, SD = 0.54) or external links (M = 0.59, SD = 0.42). For both of these news-related content types, posts with no links performed as poorly as posts with external links.

In opposition to this pattern, engagement for nonnews content, including entertain-ment content and educational content, seemed to benefit from having no links. Figure 1 shows this pattern in the upward slope for educational content. No links (M = 1.33, SD = 1.73) produced the most engagement, followed by links to internal websites (M = 0.98, SD = 0.74). Both of these were significantly more engaging than educa-tional content with external links (M = 0.62, SD = 0.59). Entertainment content with no links (M = 1.34, SD = 1.48) performed nearly as well as internal links (M = 1.37, SD = 2.64), both of which were significantly more engaging than entertainment posts with external links (M = 0.52, SD = 0.53). Finally, innovation content had consistently low engagement and was not significantly affected by linking style. Because of this,



Hannah and Lam 17

we did not represent innovation content in Figure 1. See Appendix Table B for the full ANOVA table.

To determine whether linking to specific social media sites had an impact on engagement, we conducted 2 × 5 factorial ANOVA. This test revealed a significant main effect on engagement (F = 3.481, p = .004). Follow-up tests were not conclusive, however, because there were groups that had too few cases for statistical comparison. Therefore, we decided to conduct an additional analysis in which we combined all links to social media (n = 127) and compared it with posts that included no links to social media (n = 553). Based on this additional analysis, posts that contained no link to other social media sites (M = 1.02, SD = 1.32) were significantly more engaging than posts that linked to social media (M = 0.53, SD = 0.42). See Appendix Table C for the full ANOVA table.

Research Question 7: Will media choice (text-only, images, image galleries, and video) influence engagement? Are there significant interaction effects between content type and media choice?

We conducted a 4 × 5 factorial ANOVA to test the impact of media choice on engagement and to test whether there was an interaction effect between content type and media choice. The results of the ANOVA revealed a significant main effect for media choice (F = 8.96, p < .01). Follow-up tests revealed that posts with images and text (M = 1.08, SD = 1.35) were significantly more engaging than posts with text-only (M = 0.56, SD = 0.87) and posts with video (M = 0.56, SD = 0.44).

While the two-way ANOVA revealed a significant interaction effect for content type and media, follow-up comparisons revealed no significant differences due to a relatively small sample in some categories for the media choice variable. Therefore, even though content and media may be related, we cannot determine the nature of this relationship with any certainty. See Appendix Table D for the full ANOVA table.

Additional Exploratory Tests

While we conducted a series of factorial ANOVAs to answer each of our stated research questions, we also conducted additional exploratory analyses to determine if any other independent variables interacted. Through a series of additional exploratory factorial ANOVA tests, we found no additional significant interactions among the vari-ous independent variables. A future study that included a larger sample might yield other interesting interactions.

Discussion

Our analysis revealed five significant items for corporations seeking to enhance engagement with their Facebook audiences. Regarding illocutionary acts, our analysis follows Kwok and Yu’s (2012) finding that directives like win, check, and vote are not engaging messages. This confirmation is interesting in that even though directives are




intended to engage an audience by calling its members to action, people seem to per-ceive such messages as trying to sell them something. A possible explanation is that audiences may possibly become suspicious of the directive intent and being told what to do, which Vorvoreanu (2009) too noted in her work. In contrast to directives, our analysis found that expressive illocutionary acts were engaging. As a reminder, expres-sives are used to express the emotional state of the speaker; they are not intended as a call to action to audience members. However, our analysis revealed the capacity of expressives to in fact engage, and we attribute this impact on engagement to the social nature of expressive messages. That is, expressives seem to be social and conversa-tional; they appeal to audience members’ emotional states and promote interaction with them rather than simply directing them in a specific way. This seems to be espe-cially true with regard to our sample in the agribusiness sector. In particular, these companies are forwarding something much different on their Facebook pages than a traditional consumer product. They are conveying an image and ethos of sustainability to the public; they are articulating their role in generating a food supply capable of feeding the fast-growing world population. At its core, the issue of sustainable food both with regard to production and quality or nutrition is an emotionally charged topic, so it is unsurprising that expressives would generate significant engagement. Corporations outside of the agribusiness market can learn from this finding as well. Specifically, as companies pursue their own sustainability initiatives on Facebook, they ought to consider opportunities to use expressives in order to foster engagement with users of their pages.

Regarding content types, our analysis was interesting in two ways: First, we found that entertainment posts were more engaging than operational and innovation posts, and second, we found that education posts were more engaging than innovation posts. The fact that entertainment posts were more engaging than innovation or operational posts is supported by the finding in Cvijikj and Michahelles (2013). While not wholly surprising, it is interesting to note that the sample of companies studied in Cvijikj and Michahelles (2013) were companies who primarily sell traditional consumer products like Coca-Cola and Starbucks. Since agribusiness companies are not selling traditional consumer products, one might expect higher engagement for posts related to a com-pany’s technological developments to support and further the goal of feeding the world sustainably, but this was not the case. It seems, then, that audiences on Facebook, regardless of business sector, engage in posts that entertain them. A second finding that was a bit surprising was that education posts were more engaging than innovation posts. It seems that in the agribusiness sector, Facebook users may be cautious about claims created by a company that focus on innovation, or more specifically, the prom-ise or value of what the company’s innovation is believed to offer farmers as they strive to feed the world. Additionally, in many cases, in the agribusiness sector, inno-vations are products, which may make innovation posts sound like sales pitches. It seems, then, that these users may appreciate posts that are less persuasive about inno-vation and focus more on educating them about the larger issues of sustainable agri-culture, a notion that is supported in Kwok and Yu (2012). Again, corporations outside



Hannah and Lam 19

of the agribusiness market can learn from this finding as they pursue their own sustain-ability initiatives on Facebook. In particular, rather than focus on persuading or selling users on the value and/or importance of their sustainability efforts, they might consider content for wall posts that educates users about the larger sustainability issues the corporation is seeking to address.

We found that, on the whole, posts received more attention when they did not con-tain a link, a finding that confirms Kwok and Yu (2012) and Cvijikj and Michahelles (2013). However, diverging from the findings in those studies, our analysis also found an important interaction between content type and linking style. In particular, our examination showed that nonnews posts seemed to benefit from no links. This finding is significant for corporations using Facebook as it suggests that Facebook users may want to stay local when reading nonnews items; they may prefer to stay within the Facebook “universe” and interact therein primarily with content on their newsfeed. Conversely, our analysis also found that news posts (operational and altruistic) that contained links to internal company sites were more engaging than no links or external links. A possible explanation is that certain content types like news lend themselves to connecting more readily with additional information. That is, news stories generally would exceed the space constraints of a Facebook wall post. Granted, Facebook does not have a character limitation like Twitter, but there may be unwritten length expecta-tions for Facebook wall posts. For instance, a 500-word post likely would not be received well. This finding is important because it shows that, contrary to advice pro-vided in previous research, corporations should not completely dismiss linking as a practice on Facebook. Instead, companies should consider the broader rhetorical con-text and link accordingly. Specifically, companies should consider the use of links when supporting their news posts or other posts that would benefit from further expla-nation or information. Conversely, companies might want to avoid using links when additional information is not necessary, such as entertainment posts.

As a final note regarding the companies’ linking practices, we were surprised by the lack of posts connected to other forms of social media via links (18.7%). In social media best practice articles, a common theme is the importance of integrating multiple social media channels (Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, etc.) into a unified platform. For example, Hanna, Rohm, and Crittenden (2011) note that companies should not treat social media as disparate platform and silos. Kaplan and Haenlein (2010) argue that companies must ensure their social media activities are aligned with each other, and as an example describe Chrysler Jeep’s decision to combine photos shared on Flickr with groups on Facebook. In the context of our sample of agribusiness companies, it seems the companies are not forwarding an integrated social media strategy and are perhaps missing out on opportunities to leverage social media’s capacity to heighten user expe-rience and foster higher levels of engagement. While linking to other social media sites actually produced less engagement than no links, connecting to multiple social media outlets may have potential to reach wider audiences. Companies should, then, consider their unique contexts and audiences in order to decide whether linking to social media is appropriate.




Finally, regarding media choices, our analysis confirmed Kwok and Yu’s (2012) and Cvijikj and Michahelles’s (2013) finding that photos receive more attention than videos. While it may be enticing to post videos, results from multiple studies suggest that they do not produce as much engagement as a photo. Such confirmation is signifi-cant because it suggests that even across multiple sectors of the economy, Facebook users seem to be responding to and engaging with certain types of media more favor-ably. We should note, however, that we do not seek to dismiss video altogether as a viable means of communication like previous studies have. Instead, because videos inherently possess media capabilities that photos do not, there might be contexts in which videos are appropriate even at the risk of immediate engagement. As a final note, there is a potential connection between the finding about a user’s preference for engaging with photos and our finding that suggests avoiding links in nonnews posts. That is, photos without links keep users local in the Facebook universe rather than send them away.

Limitations and Future Directions

While the results offer readers a preliminary look at specific Facebook practices and the impact of those practices on engagement, we want to acknowledge the limitations of the study, which we believe offer new pathways to future research. First, though Facebook engagement is a widely used metric that provides useful insights for compa-nies, it is not the only important outcome of Facebook communication. We do not want to suggest that companies outright dismiss particular Facebook practices that were found to produce less engagement. Future research could investigate less engag-ing practices on other outcomes like purchase intent or attitude toward a company.

Another limitation was that the sample was relatively small, and we attribute this limitation to our desire to study a comprehensive group of companies from a rela-tively small market. Broadening the sample to include additional companies naturally will increase the sample size as well as offer a different perspective on Facebook practice in companies that are engaged in other sectors of the economy. Third, we understand there is a qualitative component to the companies’ posts beyond the quan-titative engagement metric; therefore, we see a lot of opportunity in studying addi-tional language variables used in the posts. Performing a qualitative analysis would allow researchers to assess how variables like word choice, word count, and style affect engagement. In addition, qualitatively assessing the language in a post would open the door to examining the nature of audience response to a post, that is, positive, negative, or neutral, and thus provide further insight into the dynamics of Facebook interaction. Fourth, regarding the time frame of the study, examining a sample longer than 12 months presents researchers with an opportunity to examine how a Facebook page changes over time. Last, our finding that engagement is significant when users remain in the Facebook universe suggests an opportunity to examine the impact of companies creating self-contained content on their Facebook pages rather than send-ing users away from the page via a link to an external, third-party source of evidence.



Hannah and Lam 21

Appendix

Authors’ Note

Both authors contributed equally to this study.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Table D. ANOVA Table for Content Type and Media Type on Engagement.

SourceType III sum of

squares df Mean square F Sig.

Content Type 14.512 4 3.628 2.703 .030*Media 12.215 3 4.072 3.033 .029*Content Type * Media 54.121 12 4.510 3.360 .000*


Table A. ANOVA Table for Content Type and Illocutionary Act on Engagement.



Content Type 13.477 4 3.369 2.516 .040*Illocutionary Act 19.975 3 6.658 4.972 .002*Content Type * Illocutionary Act 16.681 12 1.390 1.038 .412


Table B. ANOVA Table for Content Type and Linking Style on Engagement.



Content Type 10.937 4 2.734 1.993 .094Linking Style 25.439 2 12.720 9.273 .000*Content Type * Linking Style 29.439 8 3.680 2.683 .007*


Table C. ANOVA Table for Social Media Links Versus No Social Media Links.



Social Media Links 24.691 1 24.691 17.019 .000*





Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

References

Austin, J. L. (1955). How to do things with words (2nd ed.). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Bortree, D. S., & Seltzer, T. (2009). Dialogic strategies and outcomes: An analysis of environ-mental advocacy groups’ Facebook profiles. Public Relations Review, 35, 317-319.

Champoux, V., Durgee, J., & McGlynn, L. (2012). Corporate Facebook pages: When “fans” attack. Journal of Business Strategy, 33(2), 22-30.

Chu, S. C. (2011). Viral advertising in social media: Participation in Facebook groups and responses among college-aged users. Journal of Interactive Advertising, 12(1), 30-43.

Cvijikj, I., & Michahelles, F. (2013). Online engagement factors on Facebook brand pages. Social Network Analysis and Mining, 3, 843-861.

Dholakia, U. M., & Durham, E. (2010). One café chain’s Facebook experiment. Harvard Business Review, 88(3), 26.

DiMicco, J. M., & Millen, D. R. (2007). Identity management: Multiple presentations of self in Facebook. Proceedings of the 2007 International ACM Conference on supporting group work. Retrieved from http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.127.6500&rep=rep1&type=pdf

Facebook. (2013). Newsroom. Retrieved from http://newsroom.fb.com/Key-FactsHaigh, M. M., Brubaker, P., & Whiteside, E. (2013). Facebook: Examining the information

presented and its impact on stakeholders. Corporate Communications, 18, 52-69.Hanna, R., Rohm, A., & Crittenden, V. L. (2011). We’re all connected: The power of the social

media ecosystem. Business Horizons, 54, 265-273.Hsu, Y. L. (2012). Facebook as international eMarketing strategy of Taiwan hotels. International

Journal of Hospitality Management, 31, 972-980.Hyllegard, K. H., Ogle, J. P., Yan, R. N., & Reitz, A. R. (2013). Female consumers’ fanning

of companies on Facebook: The influence of generational cohort. International Journal of Electronic Marketing and Retailing, 5, 222-241.

Jackson, M. H. (2007). Should emerging technologies change business communication scholar-ship? Journal of Business Communication, 44, 3-12.

Jahn, B., & Kunz, W. (2012). How to transform consumers into fans of your brand. Journal of Service Management, 23, 344-361.

Kaplan, A. M., & Haenlein, M. (2010). Users of the world, unite! The challenges and opportuni-ties of Social Media. Business Horizons, 53, 59-68.

Kietzmann, J. H., Hermkens, K., McCarthy, I. P., & Silvestre, B. S. (2011). Social media? Get serious! Understanding the functional building blocks of social media. Business Horizons, 54, 241-251.

Kwok, L., & Yu, B. (2012). Spreading social media messages on Facebook: An analysis of res-taurant business-to-consumer communications. Cornell Hospitality Quarterly, 54, 84-94.

McCorkindale, T. (2010). Can you see the writing on my wall? A content analysis of the Fortune 50’s Facebook social networking sites. Public Relations Journal, 4(3), 1-14.

Michaelidou, N., Siamagka, N. T., & Christodoulides, G. (2011). Usage, barriers and measure-ment of social media marketing: An exploratory investigation of small and medium B2B brands. Industrial Marketing Management, 40, 1153-1159.


http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.127.6500&rep=rep1&type=pdf

http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.127.6500&rep=rep1&type=pdf

http://newsroom.fb.com/Key-Facts


Hannah and Lam 23

Nair, M. (2011). Understanding and measuring the value of social media. Journal of Corporate Accounting & Finance, 22, 45-51.

Parker, F., & Riley, K. (2005). Linguistics for non-linguists: A primer with exercises. Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon.

Pesonen, J. (2011). Tourism marketing in Facebook: Comparing rural tourism SME’s and larger tourism companies in Finland. In L. Rob, M. Fuchs, & R. Francesco (Eds.), Information and communication technologies in tourism 2011 (pp. 537-546). Vienna, Austria: Springer.

Ramsay, M. (2010). Social media etiquette: A guide and checklist to the benefits and perils of social marketing. Database Marketing & Customer Strategy Management, 17, 257-261.

Rauschnabel, P. A., Praxmarer, S., & Ivens, B. S. (2012). Social media marketing: How design features influence interactions with brand postings on Facebook. In T. Langner, S. Okazaki, & M. Eisend (Eds.), Advances in advertising research (Vol. 3, pp. 153-161). Berlin, Germany: Springer.

Searle, J. (1976). A classification of illocutionary acts. Language in Society, 5, 1-23.Syngenta. (2012). Annual report. Retrieved from http://annualreport2012.syngenta.com/assets/

img/pdfs/Syngenta_AnnualReview2012.pdfTsai, W. H. S., & Men, L. R. (2013). Motivations and antecedents of consumer engagement with

brand pages on social networking sites. Journal of Interactive Advertising, 13(2), 76-87.Vorvoreanu, M. (2009). Perceptions of corporations on Facebook: An analysis of Facebook

social norms. Journal of New Communications Research, 4(1), 67-86.Waters, R. D., Burnett, E., Lamm, A., & Lucas, J. (2009). Engaging stakeholders through social

networking: How nonprofit organizations are using Facebook. Public Relations Review, 35, 102-106.

Westerman, C. Y., & Westerman, D. K. (2013). What’s fair? Public and private delivery of project feedback. Journal of Business Communication, 50, 190-207.

Author Biographies

Mark A. Hannah is an assistant professor of rhetoric and professional writing in the Department of English at Arizona State University. His research focuses on rhetorics of cross-disciplinarity, specifically articulations of rhetorical expertise and praxis in complex, collaborative work environments.

Chris Lam is an assistant professor at the University of North Texas, where he studies com-munication in professional and technical communication team projects. He also examines the literature on professional and technical communication and its impact on the profession.


http://annualreport2012.syngenta.com/assets/img/pdfs/Syngenta_AnnualReview2012.pdf

http://annualreport2012.syngenta.com/assets/img/pdfs/Syngenta_AnnualReview2012.pdf


drawing from available means: assessing the rhetorical dimensions of facebook practice

Documents