Abstract
•How the Fortune 500 interacts with the public on Facebook in 5 years is examined.•Two levels of Facebook stakeholder engagement are theorized with empirical support.•Profound stakeholder Facebook engagement affects company reputation.•To increase reputation, corporates should monitor Facebook comments strategically.
The majority of studies in public relations continue to examine organization-public relationships from only the organization’s perspective, with few studies focusing on the other side of the communication loop: stakeholders. The current study takes the stakeholders’ perspective to investigate the relationship between active stakeholders’ online behavior and corporate reputation. Modeling 5-year longitudinal social media data, a content analysis was conducted for Fortune 500 companies in the context of Facebook. By examining stakeholders’ Facebook engagement at the two levels of shallow engagement and profound engagement, significant associations were discovered. Active stakeholders’ Facebook-based interactions as leaving positive or negative comments with a company are significant predictors of the company’s reputation score. The findings bring new insights to existing literature and also practical implications to public relations professionals.
