Communicating Trustworthiness: Discursive Legitimation Strategies of Educational Institutions on Facebook
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2024-06-25
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en
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Social media is very important for influencing public opinion and building institutional trust, especially for educational institutions that use it for strategic messaging to manage their reputation and interactions with the community. However, the tactics for constructing those messages as legitimate to properly impact their social media community are yet to be discovered. Research often overlooks educational institutions in favour of traditional media, demonstrating how little is known about the relationship between discursive legitimation strategies and educational institutions on Facebook. This research offers valuable insights into the relationship between discursive legitimation strategies that legitimise communication and educational institutions’ communication of trustworthiness on Facebook. It is relevant to understand how educational institutions use social media platforms to increase public perception and institutional legitimacy in an era where digital communication plays a relevant role. This research employed a single case study with Radboud University as the case or single carrier of the social phenomenon ‘trust’. Qualitative content analysis was used in a deductive manner to examine the relevant data collected by semi-structured interviews and gathering Facebook posts. Consequently, this research found that educational institutions communicate their trustworthiness on Facebook with discursive legitimation strategies whose method of legitimation corresponds morally with the communication of the educational institution’s declared principles concerning trustworthiness.
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Faculteit der Managementwetenschappen