Abstract
Relationships are structured as partnerships with multiple entities. The success of partnership programmes depends on the organisations’ consideration of interests and perceptions of all stakeholders (Calabrese, 2008). Strategic communication is essential to create platforms for dialogue and stakeholder participation in the decision-making and partnership creation process. Social media offers increasing opportunities for strategic communication and enables the participation from various public and private stakeholders to participate in the virtual public sphere (Loader & Mercea, 2011). Considering the aforementioned research, it was worth investigating how social media, more specifically Twitter, is used by organisations and public-private stakeholders in the virtual public sphere to establish and maintain relationships. Of specific interest to this study was how organisations can apply Twitter as strategic communication tool to establish partnerships with their public-private stakeholders. The aim was to establish how Twitter is used as strategic communication tool to engage with public-private stakeholders and form strategic partnerships for the Gautrain project. Literature on the Twitter as strategic communication tool for development and maintaining partnerships between organisations and public-private stakeholders is not abundant. This research study aimed to contribute to filling the literature gap. An exploratory research design with a qualitative methodological orientation was applied to select a sample for the study.
M.A. (Strategic Communication)