Risky business: social media metrics and political risk analysis

A quantificação do risco país – e do risco político em particular – levanta várias dificuldades às empresas, instituições, e investidores. Como os indicadores econômicos são atualizados com muito menos freqüência do que o Facebook, compreender, e mais precisamente, medir – o que está ocorrendo no terreno em tempo real pode constituir um desafio para os analistas de risco político. No entanto, com a crescente disponibilidade de “big data” de ferramentas sociais como o Twitter, agora é o momento oportuno para examinar os tipos de métricas das ferramentas sociais que estão disponíveis e as limitações da sua aplicação para a análise de risco país, especialmente durante episódios de violência política. Utilizando o método qualitativo de pesquisa bibliográfica, este estudo identifica a paisagem atual de dados disponíveis a partir do Twitter, analisa os métodos atuais e potenciais de análise, e discute a sua possível aplicação no campo da análise de risco político. Depois de uma revisão completa do campo até hoje, e tendo em conta os avanços tecnológicos esperados a curto e médio prazo, este estudo conclui que, apesar de obstáculos como o custo de armazenamento de informação, as limitações da análise em tempo real, e o potencial para a manipulação de dados, os benefícios potenciais da aplicação de métricas de ferramentas sociais para o campo da análise de risco político, particularmente para os modelos qualitativos-estruturados e quantitativos, claramente superam os desafios.

Exploring different social media users from the millennials’ generation: a cross-cultural behavioral analysis of brazilian users of Facebook and chinese users of RenRen

With the increasing importance of digital communication and its distinct characteristics, marketing tools and strategies adopted by companies have changed dramatically. Among the many digital marketing tools and new media channels available for marketers, the phenomenon known as social media is one of the most complex and enigmatic. It has a range that still is quite unexplored and deeply transforms the present view on the promotion mix (Mangold & Faulds, 2009). Conversations among users on social media directly affect their perceptions on products, services and brands. But more than that, a wide range of other subjects can also become topics of conversations on social media. Hit songs, sporting events, celebrity news and even natural disasters and politics are topics that often become viral on the web. Thus, companies must grasp that, and in order to become more interesting and relevant, they must take part in these conversations inserting their brands in these online dynamic dialogues. This paper focuses on how these social interactions are manifested in the web in to two distinct cultures, Brazil and China. By understanding the similarities and differences of these cultures, this study helps firms to better adjust its marketing efforts across regions, targeting and positioning themselves, not only geographically and culturally, but also across different web platforms (Facebook and RenRen). By examining how companies should focus their efforts according to each segment in social media, firms can also maximize its results in communication and mitigate risks. The findings suggest that differences in cultural dimensions in these two countries directly affect their virtual social networking behavior in many dimensions (Identity, Presence, Relationships, Reputation, Groups, Conversations and Sharing). Accordingly, marketing efforts must be tailored to each comportment and expectations.

Content marketing and brand engagement on social media: a study of Facebook´s posts in the ecommerce industry in Brazil

Content marketing refers to marketing format that involves the creation and sharing of media and publishing content in order to acquire customers. It is focused not on selling, but on communicating with customers and prospects. In today world´s, a trend has been seen in brands becoming publishers in order to keep up with their competition and more importantly to keep their base of fans and followers. Content Marketing is making companies to engage consumers by publishing engaging and value-filled content. This study aims to investigate if there is a link between brand engagement and Facebook Content Marketing practices in the e-commerce industry in Brazil. Based on the literature review, this study defines brand engagement on Facebook as the numbers of "likes" "comments" and "shares" that a company receives from its fans. These actions reflect the popularity of the brand post and leads to engagement. The author defines a scale where levels of Content Marketing practices are developed in order to analyze brand posts on Facebook of an ecommerce company in Brazil. The findings reveal that the most important criterion for the company is the one regarding the picture of the post, where it examines whether the photo content is appealing to the audience. Moreover, it was perceived that the higher the level of these criterion in a post, the greater the number of likes, comments and shares the post receives. The time when a post is published does not present a significant role in determining customer engagement and the most important factor within a publication is to reach the maximum level in the Content Marketing Scale.

Social media crises in the organization: exploring management strategies through cases from France and Brazil

The aim of this Master’s thesis has been to shed light on the response strategies that organizations are implementing when facing a crisis created on or amplified by social media. Since the development of social media in the late 1990s, the interplay between the online and the offline spheres has become more complex, and characterized by dynamics of a new magnitude, as exemplified by the wave of “Twitter” Revolutions or the Wikileaks scandal in the mid 2000s, where online behaviors deeply affected an offline reality. The corporate world does not escape to this worldwide phenomenon, and there are more and more examples of organizational reputations destroyed by social media “fireballs”. As such, this research aims to investigate, through the analysis of six recent cases of corporate crises (2013-2015) from France and Brazil, different strategies currently in use in order to identify examples of good and bad practices for companies to adopt or avoid when facing a social media crisis. The first part of this research is dedicated to a review of the literature on crisis management and social media. From that review, we were able to design a matrix model, the Social Media Crisis Management Matrix, with which we analyzed the response strategies of the six companies we selected. This model allows the conceptualization of social media crises in a multidimensional matrix built to allow the choice, according to four parameters, of the most efficient (that is: which will limit the reputational damage) response strategy. Attribution of responsibility for the crisis to the company by stakeholders, the origin of the crisis (internal or external), the degree of reputational threat, and the emotions conveyed online by stakeholders help companies determining whether to adopt a defensive response, or an accommodative response. The results of the analysis suggest that social media crises are rather manichean objects for they are, unlike their traditional offline counterparts, characterized by emotional involvement and irrationality, and cannot be dealt with traditionally. Thus analyzing the emotions of stakeholders proved to be, in these cases, an accurate thermometer of the seriousness of the crisis, and as such, a better rudder to follow when selecting a response strategy. Consequently, in the cases, companies minimized their reputational damage when responding to their stakeholders in an accommodative way, regardless of the “objective” situation, which might be a change of paradigm in crisis management.

Practices in social media in the travel education business

Praticas na midia social se refere a vista ou a percepcao de uma marca nao so com base em suas ofertas e servicos, mas tambem sobre seus valores e cultura como percebido principalmente pelos consumidores. As organizacoes podem utilizer a imagem que é interessante e aceitavel para os clients. Nos ultimos anos, uma das formas que as organizacoes de forma consistente comercializar ou publicitar a sua marca envolve midias sociais. O ojetivo deste estudo é explorer quais sao as praticas de midia social no negocio de educacao de viagens. Para obter os dados, a pesquisadora entrevistou pessoas de seis empresas de educacao de viagens e cotejadas informacoes sobre o tema a partir de fonts primarias e secundarias existentes. O pesquisador conduziu a pesquisa para determiner praticas de marketing de midia social em que se aplicam nos sectores do turismo e educacao. Com base nos dados obtidos pelo pesquisador, as praticas de marketing de midia social incluem a utilizacao de plataformas de midia social com um alcance internacional generalizada tipo Facebook, Twitter, Instagram e YouTube. Outra estratégia é para postar constantemente as atualizações que não são apenas interessante, mas também informativo sobre os produtos e serviços oferecidos por uma marca ou organização. As empresas ou organizações devem também interagir com os clientes ou clientes on-line, a fim de manter os interesses deste último em ofertas e serviços da ex. O envolvimento do cliente é uma das razões por que os clientes optam por seguir as empresas on-line através da mídia social. A pesquisa também revela outras vantagens e benefícios da mídia social que constituem as melhores práticas, tais como a conversão de não-clientes para os clientes, o aumento da presença da mídia para aumentar a popularidade, a comunicação eficaz das metas e objetivos organizacionais, bem como a formação de um bom relacionamento com os clientes. As organizações também podem usar turístico criado conteúdo (TCC) e outros tipos de conteúdo para orientar a tomada de decisão no desenvolvimento do produto gerado pelo usuário.

Social entrepreneurship, microcredit and development challenges: a case study analysis of Banco Pérola

The term “social entrepreneurship” has been attracting growing interest from different sectors in the past years, driven by the possibility of employing business techniques to tackle recurrent social and environmental issues. At the forefront of this global phenomenon is microcredit, seen by many as an effective anti-poverty tool and having the Grameen Bank as its flagship program. While the prospects of social entrepreneurship seem promising, the newness of the concept and its somewhat confusing definition make conditions difficult to analyze this contemporary phenomenon. Therefore, the objective of this study was to discuss the challenges faced by social entrepreneurs and alternatives of development for social businesses through a case study on a Brazilian microcredit institution and inclusive business, Banco Pérola. The case addresses a growing need for case studies designed for teaching in the field of social entrepreneurship. It was focused mainly on understanding the development challenges within Banco Pérola, and built based on interviews carried out with top management, credit officer and clients of the institution, as well as on secondary data collected. An analysis of the case study was performed under a Teaching Notes. As illustrated by the Banco Pérola case, the main difficulties encountered by social entrepreneurs relate to the systematization of processes and creation of operational routines, including for performance evaluation (impact assessment tools); to the capture and management of both financial and human capital; to scaling up the business model and to the need of forging closer and more personal relationships with customers as against in traditional banking practices. In spite of certain limitations, such as the fact that the case might soon become outdated due to the fast-changing environment surrounding Banco Pérola, or the fact that not all relevant stakeholders (e.g. partners) were selected for interviews, the research objective has been achieved and the study can be seen as a contribution to spreading the concept of social entrepreneurship.

Social welfare analysis in a simple financial economy with risk regulation

In the last years, regulating agencies of rnany countries in the world, following recommendations of the Basel Committee, have compelled financiaI institutions to maintain minimum capital requirements to cover market risk. This paper investigates the consequences of such kind of regulation to social welfare and soundness of financiaI institutions through an equilibrium model. We show that the optimum level of regulation for each financiaI institution (the level that maximizes its utility) depends on its appetite for risk and some of them can perform better in a regulated economy. In addition, another important result asserts that under certain market conditions the financiaI fragility of an institution can be greater in a regulated econolny than in an unregulated one

From legal commons to social commons: Brazil and the cultural industry in the 21st century

This article describes some of the current transformations regarding the processes by which information and culture are generated, from the point of view of developing countries. In this brief analysis, the article discusses the role of projects such as Creative Commons for developing countries. It also discusses the idea of legal commons and social commons. While the idea of legal commons can be understood as the voluntary use of licenses such as Creative Commons in order to create a “commons”, the idea of social commons has to do with the tensions between legality and illegality in developing countries. These tensions appear prominently in the so-called global “peripheries”, and in many instances make the legal structure of intellectual property irrelevant, unfamiliar, or unenforceable, for various reasons. With the emergence of digital technology and the Internet, in many places and regions in developing countries (especially in the “peripheries”), technology ended up arriving earlier than the idea of intellectual property. Such a de facto situation propitiated the emergence of cultural industries that were not driven by intellectual property incentives. In these cultural businesses, the idea of “sharing” and of free dissemination of the content is intrinsic to the social circumstances taking place in these peripheries. Also, the appropriation of technology on the part of the “peripheries” ends up promoting autonomous forms of bridging the digital divide, such as the “LAN house” phenomenon discussed below. This paper proposes that many lessons can be learned from the business models emerging from social commons practices in developing countries. The tension between legality and illegality in “peripheral” areas in developing countries is not new. The work of Boaventura de Sousa Santos and others in the 1970s was paradigmatic for the discussion of legal pluralism regarding the occupation of land in Brazil. This paper aims to follow in that same pioneer tradition of studies about legal pluralism, and to apply those principles to the discussion of “intellectual property” rather than the ownership of land.

Social entrepreneurship practices and social change In Brazil: a qualitative study in three non-governmental organizations

Social Entrepreneurship (SE) has attracted growing interest from a wide variety of actors over the last 30 years, especially due to a general agreement that it could be an important tool for tackling many of the world’s social ills. In the academic sphere, this growing interest did not translate into a matured field of study. Quite the opposite, a quick look at this literature makes it evident that: SE has been consistently subjected to numerous theoretical discussions and disagreements, especially over the definition of the concept of SE which is often based on a taken-for-granted notion of social change; it has been more systematically investigated in restricted contexts, often leaving aside so called developing/emerging countries like Brazil and especially lacking in-depth qualitative studies; SE literature lags behind SE practices and few studies focus on how SE actually occurs in a daily and bottom-up manner. In order to address such gaps, this thesis examines how social entrepreneurship practices accomplish social change in the context of Brazil. In this investigation I conducted an inductive practice-based, qualitative/ethnographic study in three Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) located in different cities in the Brazilian state of São Paulo. Data collection lasted from February 2014 until March 2015 and was mainly done through participant observations and through in-depth unstructured conversations with research participants. Secondary data and documents were also collected whenever available. The participants of this study included a variety of the studied organizations’ stakeholders: two founders, volunteers, employees, donors and beneficiaries. Observation data was kept in fieldnotes, conversations were recorded whenever possible and were later transcribed. Data was analyzed through an iterative thematic analysis. Through this I identified eight recurrent themes in the data: (1) structure; (2) relationship with other organizational actors (sub-themes: relationship with state, relationship with businesses and relationship with other NGOs); (3) beliefs, spirituality and moral authority; (4) social position of participants, (5) stakeholders’ mobilization and participation; (6) feelings; (7) social purpose; and (8) social change. These findings were later discussed under the lens of practice theory, and in this discussion I argue and show that, in the context studied: (a) even though SE embraces a wide variety of different social purposes, they are intertwined with a common notion of social change based on a general understanding and aspiration for social equality; (b) this social change is accomplished in a processual and ongoing manner as stakeholders from antagonistic social groups felt compelled to and participated in SE practices. In answering the proposed research question the contributions of this thesis are: (i) the elaboration a working definition for SE based on its relationship with social change; (ii) providing in-depth empirical evidence which accounts for and explains this relationship; (iii) characterizing SE in the Brazilian context and reflecting upon its transferability to other contexts. This thesis also makes a methodological contribution, for it demonstrates how thematic analysis can be used in practice-based studies.