Corporate Communication on Twitter in Slovenia

A Corpus Analysis

Abstract

The paper presents a corpus analysis of corporate communication on Twitter which was performed with a combination of metadata and textual data on the Janes-Tweet corpus. We compare the amount, posting dynamics and use of social-media specific communication elements by corporate and private users. Next, we analyse the language of corporate users. Our analysis shows that, in comparison to private accounts, corporate tweets predominantly use formal communication and standard language characteristics with seldom usage of informal and non-standard choices. In the event of those, however, they are chosen deliberately to address a specific target audience and meet the desired communicative goals. A major contribution of the paper is also a showcase of corpus-based approaches in communication studies, media studies and other related disciplines in social sciences which study language use.