Drowned out? Rethinking corporate reputation management for the Internet

The Internet has radically altered the dynamics of corporate reputation formation and management. In the growing hubbub of consumer, media and activist dissection of corporate behaviour, companies are finding it increasingly difficult to make their voices heard. By creating newly accessible channels of communication and organisation, the Internet has shifted the balance of power of “voice”. The result is that corporate reputations are increasingly defined not by what companies do or say, but by how others perceive and respond to their actions and words. This paper argues that the underlying challenge facing reputation managers is that traditional conceptions of corporate communications and corporate relations are unsuited to the developing online environment. Effective online corporate reputation management requires companies to develop new relationships with their online stakeholders, with very different characteristics from traditional top‐down communications models. The paper concludes with an attempt to describe a new conceptual framework for online reputation management.