Strategic organizational discourse and framing in hypermodal spaces

The purpose of this paper is to explore how organizations can strategically frame their legitimate perspective on a specific issue in order to gain salience and public support in a social media context.

By means of framing theory and a critical perspective on strategic discourse in hypermodal spaces, the study examines in detail the discursive strategies and framing processes employed by a non-profit organization that faces local and global contestation of its corporate operations.

Through a critical discourse analysis of the organization’s 385 Facebook posts during two periods of time, the results not only show how the corporate perspective is strategically framed and legitimized, but also challenged and consequently adapted in this hypermodal issue sub-arena. In addition to legitimizing the organizational perspective by providing evidence-based facts and external expert views as reliable and neutral sources, and echoing supporters’ voices and actions as further endorsements, the organization also strategically manages the Facebook dialogue by delegitimizing counterarguments.

This study contributes to the corporate communication field by revealing how framing can be materialized in specific discursive strategies aimed to legitimize and delegitimize. It shows how such strategies are interrelated in hypermodal clusters in ways that sustain the organizational discourse, and can evolve across time and within the same actor’s strategy. Methodologically, this study expands the research toolkit by introducing hypermodality in exploring framing and strategic organizational discourse.