New Institutions of Truth? The Czech Case

Introduction: This research investigates the role of social media in institutional communication, with a focus on its effectiveness in engaging stakeholders within the educational sector. It analyzes the impact of digital transformation on public institutions, focusing on how governments' strategic communication during the COVID-19 pandemic, the adoption of digital platforms, and Facebook's role in Romanian public administration demonstrate social media's capabilities. It highlights the effectiveness of social media in spreading information, engaging public sentiment, and enhancing communication strategies during crises. Additionally, it addresses the challenges of combating misinformation and underscores the importance of developing tailored communication strategies. Methodology: The study investigates the engagement of the Romanian Ministry of Education on social media, especially Facebook, during the pre-pandemic, pandemic, and post-pandemic periods. It aims to discern shifts in communication strategies and public engagement by analyzing posting frequency, engagement rates, sentiment analysis, and reaction types, employing tools like Fanpagekarma and RStudio for data collection and analysis. Results: The analysis indicates an uptick in post frequency by the Ministry of Education during the pandemic, with sentiment analysis revealing a consistently positive tone. This suggests a strategic shift towards more optimistic messaging. Engagement rates showed considerable variation pre-pandemic but stabilized during and after the pandemic, indicating effective content resonance with the audience. Conclusions: The study underscores the significant role of social media in crisis communication, evidenced by increased engagement and strategic positive messaging. It recommends institutions continue utilizing social media for flexible communication strategies, suggesting that a balance of optimistic messaging with transparent discussions about challenges can boost public trust and engagement, aiding in the development of a well-informed and resilient society.

Strategic social media influencer communication has become a major topic in strategic communication. However, despite the growing relevance of this new strategic communication instrument, research has paid only limited attention to elaborating its basic concepts. In this article, we adopt a strategic communication perspective to develop a conceptual framework for strategic social media influencer communication. Particularly, we draw on research findings that identify the external resources social media influencers contribute to organization-influencer cooperation. We use these findings to systematically develop functional definitions of social media influencers and of strategic social media influencer communication. We define social media influencers as third-party actors who have established a significant number of relevant relationships with a specific quality to and influence on organizational stakeholders through content production, content distribution, interaction, and personal appearance on the social web. Subsequently, we define strategic social media communication as the purposeful use of communication by organizations or social media influencers in which social media influencers are addressed or perform activities with strategic significance to organizational goals. We then situate these definitions within the broader framework of strategic communication by discussing related concepts and by describing the strategic action field that has emerged around strategic social media influencer communication.

ABSTRACTStrategic social media influencer communication has become a major topic in strategic communication. However, despite the growing relevance of this new strategic communication instrument, research has paid only limited attention to elaborating its basic concepts. In this article, we adopt a strategic communication perspective to develop a conceptual framework for strategic social media influencer communication. Particularly, we draw on research findings that identify the external resources social media influencers contribute to organization-influencer cooperation. We use these findings to systematically develop functional definitions of social media influencers and of strategic social media influencer communication. We define social media influencers as third-party actors who have established a significant number of relevant relationships with a specific quality to and influence on organizational stakeholders through content production, content distribution, interaction, and personal appearance on the social web. Subsequently, we define strategic social media communication as the purposeful use of communication by organizations or social media influencers in which social media influencers are addressed or perform activities with strategic significance to organizational goals. We then situate these definitions within the broader framework of strategic communication by discussing related concepts and by describing the strategic action field that has emerged around strategic social media influencer communication.

Science and Public Engagement in National Parks: Examples and Advice from Young Scientists

In the context of the conference’s topic of ‘Strategic Communication and Public Engagement’ comes this case study, which illustrates the creative use of social media in crowdsourcing ideas from the public with the goal of formulating government policy in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Unlike the usual model of top-down policy formulation in many developing countries, the UAE government adopted an experiment entitled ‘The UAE Brainstorming Session’, which is the country’s first technology-based citizen engagement event that leveraged the highly popular social media platforms to elicit ideas and suggestions about public services. Specifically, two under-performing national sectors were targeted; public health and education. Citizens and residents were invited to identify the main issues in these two sectors and offer their suggestions to address them. The UAE Prime Minister personally tweeted inviting everyone to participate. The public response to this initiative was substantial, with 82,000 new ideas delivered by several social media channels. A ministerial committee then shortlisted the best ideas, suggestions, and these were subsequently discussed in a strategic cabinet retreat. The next step was government approval of several initiatives, which were subsequently implemented. Lessons learned from this case study can be beneficial to many countries that are considering similar technology-based initiatives that utilize popular and accessible social media as public policy tools and instruments of citizen engagement.Keywords: Strategic Communication; Citizen Engagement; Social Media; United Arab Emirates Government.

The presidential election held on 9 August 2020 and the subsequent popular mobilization marked the end of an era in the history of post-Soviet Belarus. Cautious and apolitical for three decades, Belarusian society seems to have awakened (Petrova and Korosteleva, 2021), in a short space of time observing a profound transformation of state-society relations taking them to a qualitatively new level of self-awareness and self-organisation. This article explores the emergence of peoplehood in Belarus from a complexity-thinking perspective. This lens naturally lead us to the principal conceptual frame of this article - societal resilience as a process of self-organisation - which encapsulates and explains the gist of the recent developments in Belarus, and helps us understand why the rise of peoplehood as a process of emergence in the country may result in irreversible change.

Public engagement on government social media platforms can boost public trust in government while also improving and speeding up the distribution of health information. The importance of public engagement and its widespread existence have promoted extensive academic research on this channel. The purpose of this systematic literature review is to identify and bridge gaps in theories and conceptual frameworks in studies of public engagement via government social media. Furthermore, the objective of this research is to establish a comprehensive framework for analyzing how the public's engagement on government social media during the COVID-19 pandemic is affected by elements including information quality, source credibility, social media characteristics, and personal trust. The PRISMA method is used to review publications from 2019. After an extensive systematic review procedure that involved searching for relevant publications and utilizing inclusion and exclusion criteria to retrieve those that met the study's purpose, 32 papers were finally selected from the Scopus and Google Scholar databases. Finally, this study's findings shed light on the interactions between the public and the government during COVID-19 and offer recommendations for further research on public engagement, including more diverse social media types, the expansion of public engagement forms on social media, and the adoption of different theory or model. This study provides more evidence for research on public online engagement and offers some practical implications for effective communication between governments and the public.

Elite messaging plays a crucial role in shaping public debate and spreading information. We examine elite political communication during an emergent international crisis to investigate the role of tone in messaging, information spread, and public reaction. By measuring tone in social media messages from members of the U.S. Congress related to the COVID-19 pandemic, we find clear partisan differences and a differential impact of tone on message engagement and information spread. This suggests that even in the midst of an international health crisis, partisanship and emotional rhetoric play a critical part in elite communications and contribute to the attention messages receive. The messaging on COVID-19 is polarized and fractured. The valenced messaging provokes divergence in public engagement, reaction, and information spread. These results have important implications for studies of representation, public opinion, and how government can effectively engage individuals in emergent situations or pivotal moments.

In times of public health emergencies, health agencies need to engage and communicate with the public in real-time to share updates and accurate information. This is especially the case for the COVID-19 pandemic where public engagement can potentially save lives and flatten the curve. This paper considers how the use of interactive features and strategic network positions of health agencies on social media influenced their public engagement outcomes. Specifically, we analyzed 203 U.S. public health agencies’ Twitter activity and the public engagement they received by extracting data from a large-scale Twitter dataset collected from January 21st to May 31st, 2020. Results show that health agencies’ network position in addition to their two-way communication strategy greatly influenced the level of public engagement with their COVID-19 related content on Twitter. Findings highlight the benefits of strategic social media communication of public health agencies resides not only in how agencies use social media but also in their formation of network position to amplify their visibility. As official sources of health and risk information, public health agencies should coordinate their social media communication efforts to strategically position themselves in advantageous network positions to augment public engagement outcomes.

Purpose Cyberattacks on critical infrastructure (CI) pose serious risks to societal resilience, requiring a human-centred approach to crisis management. This study examines public responses to the Florida water plant hack by analysing social media discourse and its role in shaping cybersecurity strategies. Design/methodology/approach A qualitative case study approach applies the Kübler-Ross five stages of grief model to analyse Twitter posts from the first week following the attack. Abductive thematic analysis identifies patterns in public sentiment, emphasizing the role of social media as a real-time feedback mechanism. Lean principles are integrated to highlight stakeholder-driven cybersecurity improvements. Findings Public responses followed a structured emotional progression, from denial and humour to anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. Social media discourse revealed concerns over systemic vulnerabilities, accountability demands and calls for cybersecurity reform. These insights emphasize the importance of transparent crisis communication, proactive risk management and public engagement in strengthening cybersecurity resilience. Practical implications Findings offer actionable insights for the public, media, private sector and government agencies into crisis response planning, fostering trust and resilience in digital infrastructure security by integrating public feedback into cybersecurity planning through structured social media analysis and iterative learning practices. Originality/value This study uniquely applies the Kübler-Ross model to cybersecurity crises, offering a novel framework for understanding public reactions. It highlights the role of social media in bridging communication between policymakers and end users and demonstrates how lean thinking can enhance adaptive cybersecurity strategies in CI management.

Firms implement sustainable product design, sustainable manufacturing, and recycling as core sustainable supply chain management (SSCM) practices to address public demands. In Society 5.0, public engagement with these practices in cyberspace reshapes business designs and reflects them in physical spaces, driving societal transformation. Understanding public reactions is essential to align firms’ SSCM practices with public requirements, prioritising human well-being and advancing human-centric, citizen co-creation, and urban symbiosis logics. Analysing 26,620 social media posts from 19 fashion brands, we find sustainable product design and recycling initiatives have a significantly positive effect on public reactions. Sustainable manufacturing overall has insignificantly positive effects, but disaggregating it reveals sustainable sourcing has significantly positive effects on public reaction, while sustainable production does not have significant effects. Firms should prioritise investments in sustainable product design, sourcing, and recycling to enhance public reactions, gain legitimacy, and promote sustainable development for social benefit.

This paper explores the cultural and urban significance of Tugu Yogyakarta, a famous monument in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. Located at the city's main crossroads, Tugu Yogyakarta is essential to Yogyakarta's Philosophical Axis, symbolizing the city's identity and pride. This analysis examines the academic discourse and social media presence of Tugu Yogyakarta, highlighting the monument's historical, cultural, and urban importance. The study emphasizes the role of social media platforms such as Instagram and TikTok in promoting the monument to a broader audience through visual and interactive content, with virtual reality (VR) technology discussed to provide virtual tours, increasing public engagement and awareness without time and distance limitations. The findings expose that academic literature, predominantly produced by Indonesian researchers, focuses on cultural heritage, urban design, and educational roles, while the topic is just starting to gain attention internationally. The social media analysis shows strong public engagement, with hashtags like #tugujogja widely used, reflecting the monument's cultural significance. This study combines a literature review with social media data analysis, making it a unique approach to comprehensively assess the monument's popularity and public awareness of its historical and cultural value. The social media data was analyzed using Gephi and Excel to calculate hashtag frequency and visualize network interactions. The findings show the critical contribution of Tugu Yogyakarta to the sustainability of cultural heritage preservation. The study highlights the synergistic relationship between academic research and the social media presence in promoting Tugu Yogyakarta, with digital platforms significantly boosting its visibility and public engagement. In conclusion, this study provides a multifaceted analysis of Tugu Yogyakarta, integrating cultural aspects, urban elements, and city marketing strategies. Successful promotion of the monument through academic works and social media can enhance heritage conservation and strengthen the public's engagement with Yogyakarta's historical landmarks.

Politics in Africa is often believed to be a foreign import because of the popular association with colonial influences and western democracies. Contemporary African communication encapsulates traditional methods, the modern mass media, and the new social media, all of which have important roles in the purposive uses of communication in politics. Using communication to achieve political objectives requires astute strategies that are best realized through purposive planning, careful implementation, and systematic evaluation which are the hallmarks of strategic communication. This chapter explains strategic communication against a backdrop of African communication to offer five fundamental concepts that constitute the essence of strategic political communication. These five key concepts which are election campaigns, governance and government policies, internal cohesion, public opinion, and crisis management are explained to show their relevance in contemporary Africa. The conclusion shows that although strategic communication has not become a distinct profession yet in Africa, the prospects are good for its wider adoption in both business and politics. More professionalization of strategic communication in Africa will lead to better uses of traditional and new forms of communication to achieve desirable preplanned outcomes that will contribute significantly to Africa’s political and economic development.

This study examines the management of social media in Tanzanian government institutions from an audit perspective, focusing on the Tanzania Civil Aviation Authority (TCAA) and the Tanzania Meteorological Authority (TMA). The study is motivated by the growing reliance on social media for institutional communication and stakeholder engagement, alongside the lack of structured oversight and auditing mechanisms, which can undermine effectiveness and pose information security risks. A mixed-methods approach, predominantly qualitative, was employed, incorporating questionnaires, interviews, document reviews, and observational data to assess social media usage, engagement levels, and governance practices within the selected institutions. Findings indicate notable differences in social media efficiency between the institutions. TMA exhibits high engagement across Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, reflecting deliberate content management and active stakeholder interaction. In contrast, TCAA shows moderate engagement with occasional high interaction, suggesting underutilization of social media potential and gaps in strategic management. The study applies the Uses and Gratifications Theory to interpret these differences, highlighting that effective social media communication relies on content that meets users’ informational, social, and participatory needs. The study emphasizes the importance of structured social media governance and auditing as mechanisms to enhance transparency, accountability, and strategic communication in public institutions. It recommends that government agencies establish clear policies and frameworks for content management, implement regular audits, invest in analytics tools, and build the capacity of social media personnel to optimize engagement and responsiveness. Such measures can ensure social media functions as a strategic asset, strengthening institutional credibility, public trust, and sustained stakeholder interaction in the digital era. ARTICLE’S INFO Article No.: 121725198 Type: Research Full Text: PDF, PHP, HTML, EPUB, MP3 DOI: 10.15580/gjjamc.2025.1.121725198 Received: 20/08/2025 Accepted: 28/11/2025 Published: 29/12/2025 Keywords: Government institutions, Social media audit, Stakeholder engagement, Tanzania, Public sector communication, TCAA, TMA *Corresponding Author Ally Changwila E-mail: bapropsk@gmail.com Article’s QR code

This article analyzes Indonesia's communication strategy in the multilateral Coral Triangle Initiative on Coral Reefs, Fisheries, and Food Security (CTI-CFF) cooperation, focusing on strategic communication approaches and environmentally-based digital diplomacy. The CTI-CFF is a crucial platform for Indonesia to build its image as a maritime leader and protector of the region's environment. This research employs a literature review and exploratory content analysis of scientific literature, policy documents, and social media content from relevant institutions, such as the Ministry of Maritime Affairs and Fisheries (MMAF) and the CTI-CFF Regional Secretariat. The findings indicate that Indonesia utilizes the CTI-CFF not only as a policy cooperation instrument but also as a strategic communication medium that combines the framing of environmental and food security issues. The "healthy ocean = safe food" framing is a key narrative used to frame environmental issues within the context of national security. Furthermore, using social media as a digital diplomacy tool demonstrates Indonesia's efforts to expand the influence of environmental communication in a public and participatory manner. This study emphasizes the importance of strategic communication in ecologically based regional cooperation. It opens up opportunities for further research on the effectiveness of digital diplomacy and public engagement in national environmental campaigns.