Social media usage in the context of dialogical public relations: A research on the top 100 companies in Turkey

New paradigm, emerging in the last phase of the public relations theory and practice is to develop and sustain mutual understanding, trust and support based on dialogical communication between organizations and their stakeholders. Social media tools which globally used by the masses present a dialogic and interactive medium to public relations. Social media tools constitute a platform which enable dialogic public relations to contribute considerably provided that organizations should adopt and use it as a strategic communication approach. In this context, it is a significant question mark, raising over minds how they are capitilized on social media tools which has a capacity to become public relations more interactive, symmetrical and dialogic and how they are used effectively. This study examines the paradigm shift from one-way assymmetrical communication to relational and symmetrical one and also social media tools which offer the new paradigm an opportunity and environment to be practiced. Do organisations take advantage of dialogic public relations concept so as to communicate and build relationships with publics in social media tools? If so, to what extent are they able to achive it? In order to answer and explicate the questions, raised this work analysed social media tools, used by top 100 corporations, ranked by total sales in Turkey in terms of dialogic public relations concept. The findings, obtained through content analysis based upon dialogic public relations principles, introduced by Kent and Taylor (1998), suggest that the corporations do not utilize sufficiently the dialogic potential of social media tools.