... on the stakeholder dialogue. The findings highlight how the relevant items affect the posting behavior of a utility, as well as stakeholders’ reactions, comments and shares. Originality/value By introducing both external factors to the social media literature, this paper broadens the understanding of Facebook...

... to the existing social media literature by investigating the expectations of Facebook users towards a virtual stakeholder dialogue with their public utility companies on Facebook. Design/methodology/approach Eight German and six Austrian public utilities supported the empirical study by posting a link...

... enabling such a dialogue. Still, to the best of the author’s knowledge there exists no research which explicitly focuses the stakeholder dialogue of German, Austrian or Swiss utilities on Facebook. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to analyse Facebook as an instrument for dialogic communication...