The Effects of Blog-Mediated Public Relations (BMPR) on Relational Trust

• Sung-Un Yang• Joon Soo Lim

Blog = a simple version of Web-based log or weblog, is a personal publishing or content management system on the Internet, at which an author or multiple authors can publish information which is often displayed in a reverse chronological order

3

Executive Blogs

• Sun Microsystems– Official blog from

the CEO– Jonathan Schwartz

shares honest observation from a ‘conference’ of startups in Silicon Valley

Excerpt from Jonathan Schwartz’s Blog regarding direct feedback from startups:

“BUT THERE WAS A TROUBLING, CONSISTENT MESSAGE. IT USUALLY WENT LIKE THIS,

THANK YOU SUN.

BUT HEY, WHY ARE YOU HERE?

I THOUGHT YOU BUILT BIG EXPENSIVE STUFF THAT RAN IN BANKS?

OUCH."

Being transparent in blogs builds trust for a company

• Many Public Relations practitioners have come to realize that blogging is not just a fad and have recognized a growing trend in the industry

Purpose

• The purpose of this research is to conceptualized empirically test a model of BMPR, which explains how concepts of narrative structure, dialogue, and blogger credibility are attributed to relational trust

Variables That Influence Relational Trust in BMPR

• Salience of narrative structure• Dialogical Self• Perceived blogger credibility

Hypothesis

• A blog post in salient narrative structure will result in more relational trust

• A blog post delivered by high dialogical self will result in more relational trust

• A high blogger credibility will generate more relational trust

Method

• The blog posts written by Susan Becker , Vice President of Marketing and Product Development at Intelli-Q (a company that produces personal computing hardware products

• The Experiment was conducted on the web by manipulating blogger credibility, narrative structure, and dialogical self.

• High and Low

Participants

• 314 students from 5 large universities in USA

Procedure

• Participants were randomly assigned to eight different groups ( High VS Low blogger credibility, High VS Low narrative structure , High VS Low dialogical self

ScaleBlogger credibility Trustworthy, Expert, Reliable, Intelligent, Professional, and

ExperiencedNarrative StructureShowing personal engagement , demonstrating the blogger’s

feeling/thinking, having a well-defined beginning, middle, and ending of a story, talking about specific, particular events, rather than delivering news or general knowledge

Dialogical SelfSeems to make an effort to respond to comments left on her

blog, seems to ignore others’ perspectives or opinions, seems arrogant, tends to be authoritative, seeks control over others, seems to be aware of the audience, tries to teach others

Result

• High levels of narrative structure, dialogical self and blogger credibility would result in more relational trust than low levels

Relational Trust

• “Interactivity”

• Dialogical Self• Narrative Structure• Blogger Credibility

•Thank You