Proceedings: Conference on Corporate Communication 2012 Page 1

Organizational Blogging
An Explorative Case Study of a Corporate Weblog from an Employees’
Perspective
Annette Agerdal-Hjermind
Center for Corporate Communication
Department of Communication
School of Business & Social Sciences
Aarhus University, Denmark
aan@asb.dk
The purpose of this paper is to address and discuss implications of blog usage in a corporate
communication context from an employees’ perspective by analyzing the local context and the
underlying motivations of corporate blogging as they are being discursively constructed by a
group of organizational bloggers. The paper presents findings from a case study of a
government agency’s corporate blogging activity, traced through focus group interviews with
the organizational bloggers. Based on an empirical investigation of the organizational bloggers
using situational analysis and thematic network analysis, central contextual elements and
implications are unfolded and discussed, providing a documented, nuanced and deep insight and
understanding into blog usage in a corporate context from the perspective of the employee
bloggers. Insights and further understanding about blogging from inside an organization is as
critical to our understanding of blogging and social media in a corporate context, as it is to our
understanding of transparent and participatory organizational culture. The findings are useful
for managers to get insight into the implications of corporate blogging, i.e. the challenges and
resources, barriers and opportunities, which employees experience when acting as bloggers, as
well as when acting on other transparent Web 2.0 mediated communications platforms for
corporate purposes.
Keywords: Web 2.0; Social media; Corporate blogging; Organizational blogging; Corporate
communication; Discourse analysis.
Paper type: Case study
Abstracts of <strong>Conference</strong> <strong>Proceedings</strong>: <strong>Conference</strong> on Corporate Communication 2012
Page 45