Legitimacy and Social Media

: A netnographic study on the Communication Strategies of Supreme Audit Institutions: The case of ECA

Abstract

With the increased importance of social media for public sector organizations mainly supreme auditing institutions which is not a usual role for auditors to perform in their profession. The European Court of Auditors (ECA) was chosen due to its important role for European Union and its citizens.

The aim of this study is to explore the communication strategies adopted by ECA over social media (mainly LinkedIn) in gaining. To observe the ECA case, an inductive approach was carried out through netnography in the period between January 2019 and December 2021. The theoretical frame of reference is based on the legitimacy theory and the increased importance of social media for legitimation.

By showing the practice and communication activities, this study highlights the way supreme audit institutions, such as ECA, use social media to gain legitimacy and thoroughly take advantage of the ability to adapt communication strategy over the social media due to the variety of the tools and the addressing of the social aspect of stakeholders.

Date of Award	2022-Jun
Original language	English
Supervisor	Giuseppe Grossi (Supervisor), Christian Koch (Supervisor) & Timur Uman (Examiner)