Prof Yolanda Botha

Prof Yolanda Botha from the Department of Communication Sciences in the College of Human Sciences recently delivered her inaugural lecture entitled "The strategic communication professional’s role in enhancing social organisational credibility: An omnidirectional and diachronic process from a network perspective".

The newly inducted professor expressed her gratitude to those who played a significant role in her development, both personally and professionally. She acknowledged her parents, husband, colleagues and supervisor, as well as Unisa, for the recognition of her professional rank.

Botha explained that her career as an academic and researcher has been dynamic most of the time. "I often had to make hard choices and sacrifices," she said.

She started her lecture by reflecting on strategic communication in the 21^st century. She said that she always had an interest in strategic communication, exploring various focus areas over the years, including crisis communication, stakeholder relationship building, stakeholder inclusivity, stakeholder engagement and change-oriented communication.

"Strategic communication is defined as deliberate and purposeful communication that involves planned messages and thoughtful organised responses," she explained.

Botha pointed out that not all communication is strategic. She further elaborated that it involves various messages to reach an outcome targeting specific stakeholders and includes various media and modes of communication. "Strategic communication is also enacted in the public sphere, which implies that it deals with societal concerns and is subjected to public inputs, scrutiny and support," she said.

Her lecture also touched on the dramatic changes in media technology and how they have created a new way of thinking about how organisations should interact with stakeholders. Botha stated that these changes have transformed the way society perceives and utilises the media, and have subsequently altered the landscape of strategic communication. "In essence," she said, "the foundational communication disciplines of strategic communication now function in a postmodern environment, characterised by more holistic approaches". She also explained the constitutive role of communication, which entails the transmission model of communication.

Botha’s lecture touched on the invention of the internet and how it allows for immediate feedback and has altered power dynamics.  "Social media, specifically, has changed the way in which stakeholders interact with organisations and brands," she said. "It provides stakeholders with more control."

Her lecture explored source credibility as a starting point and elements related to the actual content of the message on social media. She focused on organisational credibility in a social media context. She explained that the term "social organisation credibility" refers to the extent to which social media users perceive the organisation as a reliable source of information on social media.

Botha shared elements identified in the social media context such as homophily (the principle that a contact between similar people occurs at a higher rate than among dissimilar people), personable interaction, invitational rhetoric, high issue involvement and recency of information. "In my exploration of these elements, I have come to realise that the foundational organisation credibility elements and the organisational elements related to social media context resonate with one another," she said.

Botha said that the theoretical propositions made in her lecture would require further empirical research by means of a social network analysis to measure the proposed social organisational credibility elements. "This exploration would need to be qualitative with communication professionals to build a framework for enhancing social organisational credibility that has pragmatic relevance," she concluded.

* By Nnana Jege, Communication and Marketing Specialist, College of Human Sciences