Explicating dialogic communication in building corporate-stakeholder relationship through social networking site: Exemplar from world leading Chinese and German corporations

Due to its timely transmission, interactive nature and wide public access, social media play an increasingly important role in building corporate-stakeholder relationship. Corporations could consciously and strategically forge interpersonally relationships among their stakeholders to create a strong sense of community in their dialogic communication through social networking sites (SNS). Considering the strategic role of social media in corporate-stakeholder communication, this study sets out to extend the research on dialogic communication in a social mediated setting from an intercultural perspective. Special attention will be placed on revealing and comparing dialogic communication practices of world leading corporations from China and Germany on Sina Weibo and the related response and attitude of intended stakeholders online. Our findings postulate German corporations employ SNS as marking communication platform whereas the Chinese companies tend to extensively employ SNS in corporate-stakeholder relationship building. The research contributes to the growing body of research on corporate-stakeholder relationship building through dialogic communication on social networking sites from an intercultural perspective.