Social Media as a Dialogical Communication Tool: Izmir Metropolitan Municipality Example

Abstract

Social media platforms enable organizations to deliver their messages to their target audiences much faster and more economically than traditional media channels. This new communication area also offers corporations unique opportunities by providing a dialogue-based communication opportunity with their stakeholders. The aim of this study is to examine how the social media accounts of İzmir Metropolitan Municipality, the third biggest city of Turkey, is used in terms of dialogical communication. Within this context, the article discusses how much the official social media accounts of İzmir Metropolitan Municipality include dialogic principles and how much dialogic communication with followers is achieved. Within the framework of the dialogical communication criteria developed by Kent and Taylor (1998), quantitative content analysis was carried out for the Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook accounts of the said municipality. The social media accounts of the municipality with a high follower rate were found to be successful in dialogic principles that usefulness of information, ensuring revisits, ease of interface and keeping visitors. However, the communication with the followers was found insufficient in Twitter in terms of the dialogic loop principle, and unsuccessful in Facebook and Instagram. The fact that the social media accounts of the İzmir Metropolitan Municipality are not supportive of the dialogue gives the corporation a negative image. For this reason, it is of great importance for the corporation to fulfill the principle of the dialogical loop as soon as possible.