Transcript of Blogs or Flogs? Genre Conventions and Linguistic Practices in Corporate Web Logs
- 1. Blogs or Flogs? Genre Conventions and Linguistic Practices
in Corporate Web Logs Cornelius Puschmann University of Dsseldorf
[email_address] Telematica Instituut 31 August 2007
- 2. Contents of this presentation
- What's a corporate blog anyway?
- Three strategic
approaches:conformingwith,floutingorsubvertingconventions
- 3. Research context
- 4. The project
-
- The corporate blog as an emerging genre of
computer-mediated
- survey of a new form of domain-specific publishing
- linguistic and extra-linguistic aspects
- What functions do corporate blogs realize?
- How do corporate blogs play with existing genre
conventions?
- 5. Data
- web feeds (RSS/Atom) are used to retrieve, store and analyze
language data
- automated part-of-speech annotation
- 161 English-language sources (133 corporate blogs, 18 personal,
1 political, 1 technical)
- 3 press editorial sections (New York Times, Washington Post, LA
Times)
- 5 press release sections (Microsoft, GM, Sun, Oracle,
McDonald's)
- 6. What's a corporate blog anyway?
- 7. An example: GM FastLane
- 8. A lot of different terms on the market
- 9. My pragmatic definition
- A blog written and maintained by the employees of a company
that is
- used to further organizational goals.
- Blogs can fulfill intra- or extra-organizational functions
- customer relations management
- 10. Organizational and functional types of corporate blogs
- Five different types grouped according to authorship and
function:
- 11. Organizational and functional types of corporate blogs
- Five different types grouped according to authorship and
function:
- 12. Organizational and functional types of corporate blogs
- Five different types grouped according to authorship and
function:
- 13. Organizational and functional types of corporate blogs
- Five different types grouped according to authorship and
function:
- product blog,image blog ,knowledge blog
- 14. Organizational and functional types of corporate blogs
- Five different types grouped according to authorship and
function:
- product blog,image blog ,knowledge blog ,strategy blog
- 15. Organizational and functional types of corporate blogs
- Five different types grouped according to authorship and
function:
- product blog,image blog ,knowledge blog ,strategy blog
,multi-purpose blog
- 16. Corporate blogging ethics?
- Robert Scoble'sCorporate Weblog Manifesto(2003)
- http://scoble.weblogs.com/2003/02/26.html
- #2Post fast on good news or bad
- #7Talk to the grassroots first
- #8If you screw up, acknowledge it
- #14If you don't have the answers, say so
code of conduct, behavior beats bottom line
- 17. Companies that blog
- 18. Why do companies blog?
- 19. A communicative crisis?
- The Cluetrain Manifesto(1999)
- http://www.cluetrain.com/
- #1Markets are conversations.
- #2Markets consist of human beings, not demographic
sectors.
- #3Conversations among human beings sound human. They are
conducted in a human voice.
- #4Whether delivering information, opinions, perspectives,
dissenting arguments or humorous asides, the human voice is
typically open, natural, uncontrived.
- #5People recognize each other as such from the sound of this
voice.
- 20. A communicative crisis?
- The Cluetrain Manifesto(1999)
- http://www.cluetrain.com/
- #1Markets are conversations.
- #2Markets consist of human beings, not demographic
sectors.
- #3Conversations among human beings sound human. They are
conducted in a human voice.
- #4Whether delivering information, opinions, perspectives,
dissenting arguments or humorous asides, the human voice is
typically open, natural, uncontrived.
- #5People recognize each other as such from the sound of this
voice.
- 21. A communicative crisis?
- The Cluetrain Manifesto(1999)
- http://www.cluetrain.com/
- #1Markets are conversations.
- #2Markets consist of human beings, not demographic
sectors.
- #3Conversations among human beings sound human. They are
conducted in a human voice.
- #4Whether delivering information, opinions, perspectives,
dissenting arguments or humorous asides, the human voice is
typically open, natural, uncontrived.
- #5People recognize each other as such from the sound of this
voice.
- 22. A communicative crisis?
- The Cluetrain Manifesto(1999)
- http://www.cluetrain.com/
- #1Markets are conversations.
- #2Markets consist of human beings, not demographic
sectors.
- #3Conversations among human beings sound human. They are
conducted in a human voice.
- #4Whether delivering information, opinions, perspectives,
dissenting arguments or humorous asides, the human voice is
typically open, natural, uncontrived.
- #5People recognize each other as such from the sound of this
voice.
- 23. Communicating vs. Publishing spontaneous planned discursive
monologic qualified constative publishing (written) interpersonal
communication (spoken) transient persistent contextual
non-contextual
- 24. What's so special about blogs?
- blogs are the first trulypersonalpublishing platform
- blogs combine the qualities ofpublishing(one-to-many,
asynchronous, no feedback) andinterpersonal communication(one-one,
synchronous, feedback)
- they have hard technically conditioned conventions...
-
- segmentation of texts into posts
-
- title, date and author with each post
-
- reverse chronological order of items
- ... and soft communicative conventions
-
- first-person voice (I think it is a good thing that X vs. It is
a good thing that X)
-
- meta-language (I just wanted to blog about this)
-
- interactional queues are usually literal (What do you think?
means Leave a comment!)
-
- author and publisher are usually identical (I means I, writer,
I, publisher and I, blog owner) ...
- 25. Implications for corporate blogging
- people can communicate, companies can't
- the corporate voice is an invention
- press releases, advertisements etc either have no discernible
referents or simulate conversations (here at Company X, we are
trying to make your life better)
- this worked fine in mass media (no feedback), but fails in
feedback media such as blogs Since companies can't communicate, how
can they blog?
- 26. Three strategic approaches:conforming
,floutingorsubvertingconventions
- 27. Strategy #1: Conforming author is discernible
- 28. The trouble with conforming
- Spokesperson syndrome: any time an employee expresses a
(personal) opinion it can be interpreted as the official standpoint
of the company
- no more clear, carefully targeted messages
- individuals take the spotlight, companies get the
limelight
- personal communicative goals can take priority over those of
the company
- a neutral, third-party view is needed to ease an image problem
(Scoble)
- behavior beats bottom line
- 29. Strategy #2: Flouting instead, use of the corporate we
- 30. The trouble with flouting
- risk of being accused of not getting it
- what function does this realize?
- 31. Strategy #3: Subverting there's an author... but he's
fictional
- 32. The trouble with subverting
- if you get caught you're in deep trouble (Wal-Mart flog
incident)
- subverting is the strategy for pursuing covert goals
- problem A: you are cheating, problem B: that you are cheating
suggests that you have a hidden agenda
- can you build real trust with fictional characters?
- 33. E) Observations
- 34. Observations
- blogs are profoundlypersonalplatforms of communication
- this means that organizations must individualize corporate
relations if they want to utilize blogs
- this is associated with a number of risks
- traditional, control-based approaches to marketing and PR are
least effective in the context of blogs, unless one resorts
tofloutingorsubverting
-
- hard to predict in their precise effect
-
- highly dependent on the individual bloggers expertise,
sensitivity etc
-
- only effective in the long term
- 35. Thanks for listening!
- 36. Blogs or Flogs? Exploring and Exploiting Genre Conventions
and Linguistic Practices in Corporate Web Logs Cornelius Puschmann
University of Dsseldorf [email_address] Telematica Instituut 31
August 2007