We Are Family: An Examination of Corporate Social Presence Strategies in a Culture of Relationalism

This study aims to further our understanding of corporate communication on social media, with a particular focus on how organizations cultivate social presence—defined as being perceived as sociable and personal. Building on existing research, it examines the influence of national culture on organizational social presence strategies. Problematizing social presence theory’s individualistic orientation, this study explores how organizations enact social presence within a culture of relationalism. Employing a hybrid directed content analysis approach to examine a dataset of Chinese organizations’ public communication on social media, this study expands the established strategies of personalization, informal speech style, and invitational rhetoric by introducing two new strategies: familial presence and evoking collective identity. The study concludes by reflecting on the broader cultural implications and exploring the potential existence of alternative underlying logics of corporate communication across different cultural contexts.