Organizational Communication in Cyberspace: A Comparative Analysis

Abstract

Justification: organizational communication in cyberspace is a well established practice for more than two decades, both on asynchronous (e-mail, webpages, blogs, social networking sites), and on synchronous channels (chat, VoIP , online conferences, virtual interaction platforms). Organizational webpages – a sort of virtual reception desks – are neglected even by the world’s largest companies. We propose a comparative analysis of the six most populated cities from Romania, with more than 300,000 inhabitants, in terms of their online presence: București, Iași, Cluj-Napoca, Timișoara, Constanța and Craiova. The mayor’s offices’ websites are evaluated according to the United Nation’s e-government criteria (2010), along with usability, accessibility and user centred design standards. Methods: content analysis and application testing on the selected mayor’s offices websites, according to the UN 2010 criteria: stage I – emerging presence; stage II – enhanced presence; stage III – transactional presence, and stage IV – connected presence. Conclusions: all organizations analysed are in a transition from enhanced to transactional online presence, with a relatively low level of multimediality and interactivity. Their webpages still function as virtual window shops, striving visibly to improve communication services for the benefit of citizens.