Korea’s Nation Branding on Social Media: An Analysis of Government Facebook Postings and User Reactions

Abstract

Because of their participatory, open and sharing nature, social media are widely used for nation branding these days. Through social media that allow symmetrical two-way communications, governments can interact intimately with their foreign stakeholders, forging amicable online relations. Their target audiences, on the other hand, can react real-time to governments’ nation branding activities through diverse communicative features of social media, such as likes or comments functions of Facebook. Yet the dynamic interactions between governments and their overseas audiences have not been fully examined despite rich quantifiable data of social media available for such studies. This paper attempted to explore that area by analyzing the Korean government’s social media-based nation branding efforts. More specifically, the study examined what kinds of messages the Korean government sends to foreigners through its nation-branding Facebook, receiving what kinds of reactions. Results show that the messages are predominantly informational, although promotional or relational messages elicit more active and favorable reactions from their users. Also, the Facebook messages were found to focus on soft-power elements of nation branding, such as culture, tourism and nature, rather than hard-power elements, such as politics and economy. Users reacted more favorably to soft-power messages. Academic and policy implications of the research are discussed in conclusion.