Political parties and organisational reputation : analysing discourse on Twitter about scandals relating to the Democratic Alliance (DA)

M.A. (Strategic Communication)Abstract: The increased use of social network sites, such as Twitter, has led to a shift in power dynamics between political organisations as newsmakers and citizens as consumers of news. With so many stakeholders active online, watching and engaging with matters concerning citizens, political figures and their affiliated political organisations have fallen victim to the fast-moving spread of information when saying/doing/posting material that is perceived to be politically incorrect or not in the best interests of the public (Ott, 2016:61). The aim of this research was to examine how public discourse on Twitter amongst stakeholders influences the reputation of the Democratic Alliance following two political scandals within the party. Strategic communication was used as the paradigmatic approach to the research using stakeholder theory, as the research concerned itself with the online discourse amongst citizens who are primary stakeholders in the political organisation. Consideration was given to the concepts of online discourse, co-creation, agenda-building, citizen participation, conversational valence and organisational reputation in order to contextualise political scandals within the online space. The qualitative research methodology employed was a netnographic study to review online discourse amongst Twitter users engaging in salient conversations relating to the scandals. The data was analysed using manual coding. The study revealed that public online discourse amongst stakeholders on Twitter can negatively impact the reputation of political organisations during times of political scandals. Based on the public’s perception of the politician, the discourse relating to the scandal can either hurt the politician’s reputation and brand (as was the case with Zille) or it can lead to an increase support of the politician (as was the case with De Lille), which in turn, harmed the DA