Audience Engagement and Image Formation: A Comparative Study of Public Relations Campaigns on Facebook and Instagram
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.51173/ijaa.v2i1.62Keywords:
Audience Engagement; Public Relations Campaigns; Image Formation; Facebook.Abstract
This paper focuses on analyzing interaction with the audience and building an image in PR campaigns on Facebook and Instagram by using a mixed-method approach of comparison. The research missions are to evaluate the effects of platform architecture variations, variations in visual communication styles, and variations in content design on user interaction and the strength of the campaign messages representational power. The quantitative data were gathered containing 120 posts on PR websites (60 on each platform) and examined through both descriptive and inferential statistics analysis to set a comparison between the lines, comments, shares, views, and the rate of engagement. In order to determine thematic patterns corresponding to narrative coherence, symbolic cues and linguistic framing, qualitative visual-discourse analysis was undertaken. These figures demonstrate that Instagram strongly outdoes Facebook in all the engagement indices, with an average of more likes and comments, more visual and general engagement rate. Instagram posts were also more visual, and emotional and Facebook posts were more informational and heavily text based. The above results indicate that Instagram is more capable of serving image-based PR goals, whereas Facebook is beneficial on providing more detailed and context-based messages. The research adds to the knowledge of the cross-platform PR strategy by revealing the necessity of developing platform-specific content. It concludes that PR practitioners must use the differentiated approaches utilizing the advantages of Instagram in visuals and Facebook in information to maximize the communication results.
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