Impression management techniques applied by South African state-owned entities when communicating on social media platforms

Abstract

South African state-owned entities (SOEs) are perceived negatively due to their poor performance in delivering services. The negative perceptions incentivise the management of SOEs to engage in impression management techniques to remain legitimate to their stakeholders. This study explores whether Schedule 2 SOEs employ impression management techniques on social media and whether their performance can influence such techniques. The study used a quantitative content analysis to analyse Facebook and Twitter posts. The posts were coded based on the impression management techniques and features present in them. Descriptive statistics were used to describe which techniques were used on Facebook and Twitter (currently X). A Mann-Whitney U test and a chi-square test were used to determine whether performance has some association with the use of impression management techniques. The key findings indicate that South African SOEs use some features of social media posts for impression management, whereas in other instances, this was absent. Further, the performance of an SOE has a significant association with the features used in most cases (apart from the type of post). All SOEs used qualitative information, suggesting that the type of post can be used to alter users' perceptions. However, time orientation and attribution were not found to be used by both improving and declining performers for impression management. Features such as hashtags, hyperlinks and pictures were used for impression management.