Table 2.
Presentation of dominant themes, theories, methods, techniques and data analysis.
| Items | Frequency (Percentage) |
|---|---|
| Dominant Themes | Stakeholder perceptions/responses to communication strategies – 28 (31%); online social networks or Social Network systems – 23 (26%); Corporate reputation – 20 (22%); Global pandemic and Social media – 12 (13%); Twitter Informatics – 5 (6%) and Tracking and Understanding Public Reaction during a pandemic – 2 (1.3%). |
| Dominant theories applied (n = 21; f = 73) | SCCT - 27 (37%); Image Repair Theory - 10 (13.7%); Attribution Theory - 9 (12.7%); Stakeholder Theory – 5 (6.3%); Social Gratification Theory – 4 (13.7%); Corporate Apologia Theory 3 (4.1%); Asymmetric Information Theory, Pluralistic Industrial Relations Theory, Organisational Theory, Contingency Theory, Dissonance Theory, Situational Crisis Communication Theory, Situational Theory of Publics, Grounded Theory, Game Theory, Conspiracy Theory, Expectancy Violation Theory, Functional Decision Theory and Reputation Management -1 (1.4%) each |
| Dominant methods applied (n = 8; f = 61) | Experiment (37.7%); case study (34.4%); survey (14.7%); desk research (4.9%); Textual analysis, Survey and Experiment, in-depth interview and experiment and the Delphi-scenario technique – 1 (1.6%) each. Analysis of Case Study Data (Content analysis -14; content and framing analysis- 2; experiment – 2; in-depth interview – 2 and textual analysis – 1) |
| Dominant Sampling Techniques (n = 7; f = 59) | Purposive sampling techniques (54.8%); Convenience sampling techniques (26.1%) Simple Random (7.1%), Snowball (4.8%), Theoretical (2.3%), Stratified (2.3%), Cluster (2.7%) and the Systematic sampling (2.3%). |
| Analytic approaches (n9; f = 59) | Descriptive statistics - 16 (27.1%) inferential statistics - 15 (25.4%); Descriptive and Inferential statistics - 9 (15.2%); Explanation building method - 7 (11.9%); Chi-Square (12.6%); Correlation (12.9%), Regression analysis - 4 (6.8%); Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) and Multi-level linear regression - 2 (3.4%) each; Multi categorical mediation analysis and hierarchical cluster and inferential analysis 1 (1.7%) each. |
Source: Content Analysis, September 2020.
Note: For the dominant theory, if a manuscript had more than one theory, all theories were considered.