Measuring online dialogic conversations’ quality: a scale development

Stefania Romenti, Chiara Valentini, Grazia Murtarelli, Katia Meggiorin

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

17 Scopus citations

Abstract

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to develop a measurement scale for assessing the quality of dialogic conversations among companies and digital publics in social media. Dialogic conversations are defined as sequences of communicative actions and counteractions taken by social actors for different purposes based on specific linguistic choices and characterised by diverse communicative approaches and the role played by the involved parties. Design/methodology/approach: A multidimensional scale for measuring dialogic conversations is developed from relevant literature concerning dialogue and public engagement in the fields of corporate communication, public relations, management studies and conversation analysis. The scale is built on three main dimensions: organisation turn-taking, sequencing of conversation, repair strategies and procedures. A pilot study was conducted to purify it from irrelevant variables. Findings: Results of the pilot study show a general good level of reliability for the majority of the proposed variables for Facebook but not for Twitter. This may indicate that Facebook is a more dialogical forum than Twitter. Originality/value: This is the first study proposing a systematic measurement of the dialogue orientation of online conversations that takes into consideration the role of language and communicative actions. The proposed measurement offers corporate communication managers a concrete tool for evaluating the quality of their online communications and for identifying those areas of their online communication that need improvement.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)328-346
Number of pages19
JournalJournal of Communication Management
Volume20
Issue number4
DOIs
StatePublished - 2016

Keywords

  • Dialogic conversations
  • Measurement
  • Scale development
  • Social media

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