Mapping the role of public actors in the constitution of place brand publics in social media

Andrea Lucarelli, Christofer Laurell and Efe Sevin ()
Additional contact information
Andrea Lucarelli: Stockholm University
Christofer Laurell: ClimateView
Efe Sevin: Towson University

Place Branding and Public Diplomacy, 2024, vol. 20, issue 3, No 5, 322-334

Abstract: Abstract The paper offers an analytical approach to map and analyze the role of public actors in the digital constitution of place brands. By tracking how different public actors contribute to the shaping of brand publics—specifically via the constitution of brand intangibles—this study examines how digitalization can challenge the traditional public–private dichotomy in administrative entities like municipalities, regions, and cities in creating specific social media brand publics. Within the contours of the study, digitalization refers to the shift of communication channels used by place-based public authorities, institutions, and organizations to digital venues as these actors follow the emergence of brand publics on these newer platforms. Additionally, the approach makes it possible to discuss the networked public brands as mechanisms to manage the numerous stakeholders creating branding messages within geographical associations. To demonstrate the characteristics of the analytical approach its potential, the study uses as illustrative example the Swedish county of Östergötland, and its two municipalities, Linköping and Norrköping. Following an actor-related approach to Social Media Analytics (SMA), 939,758 publicly posted contents generated in blogs, Facebook, forums, and Twitter are used as the empirical dataset. In addition to its analytical contributions, the approach also presents practical and conceptual implications by operationalizing how place-based public institutions, organizations, and sectors can use brand publics not only to influence reputation but also to promote specific brand publics for places in their daily communication in digital spheres.

Keywords: Places; Social media analysis; Digitalization; Brand publics; Relationship building (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1057/s41254-024-00334-9 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:pbapdi:v:20:y:2024:i:3:d:10.1057_s41254-024-00334-9

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.palgrave.com/gp/journal/41254

DOI: 10.1057/s41254-024-00334-9

Access Statistics for this article

Place Branding and Public Diplomacy is currently edited by Robert Govers and James Pamment

More articles in Place Branding and Public Diplomacy from Palgrave Macmillan
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().