Use of digital media in the context of dialogical public relations: A case study

Developing communication technology creates a new tool and environment for understanding today's public relations, which has evolved in a direction that provides mutual benefit, understanding and relationship development between the institution and its target audiences. With its structure that allows direct communication, symmetrical communication and interaction, digital media environments have enabled dialogic communication to be adapted to public relations applications. Like all organized structures, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) also carry out public relations activities to achieve institutional and social goals and are affected by the transformations in this field. It is necessary to address a wide social area, communicate with the public, etc. for non-governmental organizations, which generally have limited resources. It is of fundamental importance to carry out public relations activities in the most effective way for their purposes. The infrastructure, web pages, social media environments offered by internet technologies constitute a potential area that will make significant contributions to the aims of non-governmental organizations despite the limited opportunities they have. This dissertation aims to reveal how an education-oriented non-governmental organization Association for Supporting Contemporary Life (ÇYDD) uses its social media accounts in terms of dialogic communication principles. The association's web page and social media accounts (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram) have been examined through content analysis technique based on the principles set forth by Kent and Taylor over a period of 6 months (May-October 2021), and the results of the analysis are supported by the interviews with the authorities of the association. The findings of the research show that the corporate web page and social media accounts meet the principles of the technical cluster (usefulness of information, retention of visitors, ease of use of the interface) at a higher level than the dialogical cluster (the principle of dialogical loop and revisit). When the content analysis results are evaluated together with the interview details, it is put forward that non-governmental organizations, which are voluntary organizations that produce business and service with limited resources, cannot use the dialogic capacity of social media effectively due to factors such as sufficient employment, working hours and budget. It is concluded that the association attaches importance to dialogue and has inclinations towards developing dialogues but cannot realize the dialog-based use of social media due to the limited resources mentioned above.