46 Prispevki za novejšo zgodovino LIX - 1/2019
1.01 UDC: 003.295:659.4+004.738.5(497.4) )”201”
Darja Fišer,* Monika Kalin Golob** 
Corporate Communication  
on Twitter in Slovenia:  
A Corpus Analysis
IZVLEČEK
SLOVENSKO KORPORATIVNO KOMUNICIRANJE NA DRUŽBENEM 
OMREŽJU TWITTER: KORPUSNA ANALIZA
V prispevku predstavimo korpusno analizo korporativnega komuniciranja na druž-
benem omrežju Twitter, ki smo jo s kombinacijo besedilnih in metapodatkov izvedli na 
korpusu Janes-Tweet. Analizirali smo značilnosti slovenskih korporativnih računov in 
dinamiko njihovih objav ter analizirali rabo novomedijskih elementov in uporabljenega 
jezika v korporativnih objavah. Na koncu smo proučili še ključne besede v korporativnih 
objavah. Izvedene analize so pokazale, da v primerjavi z zasebnimi računi v korporativnih 
tvitih izrazito prevladujejo standardne jezikovne prvine formalnega sporočanja, sicer red-
kejše neformalne in nestandardne izbire pa so uporabljene premišljeno glede na naslovnika 
sporočila in namen sporočanja. Prispevek je dragocen tudi zato, ker demonstrira potencial 
korpusnih pristopov v komunikologiji, medijskih študijah in drugih sorodnih družboslovnih 
disciplinah, ki proučujejo jezikovno rabo.
Ključne besede: korporativno komuniciranje, družbena omrežja, Twitter, korpusna 
analiza
*  Department of Translation, Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana, Aškerčeva 2, SI-1000 Ljubljana,  Department 
of Knowledge Technologies, Jožef Stefan Institute, Jamova cesta 39, SI-1000 Ljubljana, darja.fiser@ff.uni-lj.si
**  Chair of Journalism, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Ljubljana, Kardeljeva ploščad 5, SI-1000 Ljubljana, 
monika.kalin-golob@fdv.uni-lj.si
47D. Fišer, M. Kalin Golob: Corporate Communication on Twitter in Slovenia…
ABSTRACT
The paper presents a corpus analysis of corporate communication on Twitter, which was 
performed with a combination of metadata and textual data on the Janes-Tweet corpus. 
We compare the amount, posting dynamics and use of social-media specific communication 
elements by Slovene corporate and private users. Next, we analyse the language of corporate 
users. Our analysis shows that, in comparison to private accounts, corporate tweets predo-
minantly use formal communication and standard language characteristics with seldom 
usage of informal and non-standard choices. In the event of those, however, they are chosen 
deliberately to address a specific target audience and meet the desired communicative goals. 
A major contribution of the paper is also a showcase of corpus-based approaches in com-
munication studies, media studies and other related disciplines in social sciences which study 
language use.
Keywords: corporate communication, social media, Twitter, corpus analysis 
Introduction
In the past decade, social media have evolved into a powerful tool, attracting mil-
lions of users every day (boyd and Ellison 2007). Jansen et al. (2010) have shown 
that around 20 percent of all published tweets mentioned or expressed their opinion 
about an organization, brand, product or service. What is more, Wu et al. (2011) show 
that this new form of electronic word-of-mouth is approximately 20 times more effec-
tive than marketing events and 30 times more effective than media appearances. It is 
therefore unsurprising to see such a rapid growth of the online social media market-
ing (Griffiths and McLean 2014) through which companies address a wide range of 
goals, such as increased traffic and brand awareness, improved search engine rankings 
or increased sales (Thoring 2011). In addition, social media can also be used for cus-
tomer service and market research (Weber 2009).
With the growing commercial relevance of social media, researchers have begun 
to study the nature and influence of corporate communication on social media. 
Researchers who investigate the patterns of how information spreads through the 
Twitter network showed that tweets which contain URLs tend to spread faster (Park 
et al. 2012) and that tweets containing words which indicate either positive or nega-
tive sentiment tend to receive more retweets than neutral posts (Stieglitz and Dang-
Xuan 2012). Stelzner (2010) and Heaps (2009) showed that marketers use social 
media mainly for generating exposure for their business and increasing traffic to their 
corporate websites, rather than for selling products and services. Evidence has also 
been found that social media have a positive effect on increasing relational outcomes, 
such as online reputation and relationship strength (Clark and Melancon 2013; Li 
et al. 2013; Miller and Tucker 2013). It is therefore surprising that while the new 
48 Prispevki za novejšo zgodovino LIX - 1/2019
platform of engagement with customers has shifted the company–customer discourse, 
Mangold and Faulds (2009) show that communication is still predominantly scripted, 
promotion-centric and lacks real interaction with the customers.
In this paper we present the results of the first large-scale analysis of corporate 
communication on Twitter in Slovenia. We look into the production, dynamics and 
language in the tweets of Slovene corporate users in order to identify the characteris-
tics of such communication in contrast to the communication of private Twitter users. 
In our study, we use the term corporate account for all private companies, public insti-
tutions, the media and interest associations who do not post as individuals for leisure 
purposes. The analysis was performed on the corpus Janes-Tweet (Erjavec et al. 2018) 
by combining the available user and text metadata with the content of the tweets, 
which enabled a more accurate contextualization, parametrization, comparison and 
generalizations of language use in a specific communicative context.
The rest of the paper is structured as follows: in Section 2 we present related work 
relevant for our study, in section 3, we present the results of the corpus analysis and 
Section 4 concludes the paper and outlines future work.
Related Work
In communication studies, three main strands of research into corporate social 
media communication practices can be identified. The first group focuses on inves-
tigating posting behaviour, the second looks into content analysis, and the third are 
perception studies. In terms of research focus, investigators are mostly interested 
in corporate communication styles, reputation management and corporate social 
responsibility.
Quantitative differences in communication dynamics, style and content of Slovene 
private and corporate Twitter users have been identified by Ljubešić and Fišer (2016) 
and have been attributed to the different communication functions of private and cor-
porate social media users. While corporate users mostly tweet during the work week 
in the morning, private users are more active during weekends and in the evening. 
Corporate tweets have distinctly positive sentiment, while private tweets are predomi-
nantly neutral. Tweets posted by corporate users are retweeted much more often while 
private tweets are more frequently favourited.
By analyzing tweet frequency, following behavior, hyperlinks, hashtags, mentions 
and retweets, several studies have shown that one-way communication is still the most 
common communication strategy used by organizations on Twitter (Waters and Jamal 
2011; Xifra and Grau 2010) and that the style and genre in tweets by PR professionals 
is the same as in other PR text types, treating social media as yet another channel for 
reaching a different consumer segment, without adapting their language accordingly 
(Kalin Golob et al. 2018). However, as shown by Kwon and Sung (2011), the growing 
frequency of imperative verb phrases, such as “follow the brand,” “come by the booth,” 
49D. Fišer, M. Kalin Golob: Corporate Communication on Twitter in Slovenia…
“join us at the event,” or “sign up” for a planned occasion, suggest that corporations 
increasingly use Twitter as a tool to initiate and maintain relationships with consum-
ers. Risius and Beck (2015) empirically identified social media activities in terms of 
social media management strategies (using social media management tools or the web-
frontend client), account types (broadcasting or receiving information), and commu-
nicative approaches (conversational or disseminative). They found positive effects of 
social media management tools, broadcasting accounts, and conversational commu-
nication on public perception. Company account characteristics that have been found 
to influence public perception are verification, friends, and status.
Gomez and Chalmeta (2013) used content analysis to look into corporate 
social responsibility (CSR) on social media and have identified presentation, con-
tent, and interactivity as the key resources for CSR communication on social media. 
Presentation refers to the different tools and basic information that supports the com-
pany’s CSR presence on social media. Content includes messages related to CSR and 
other topics that reinforce the communication of CSR practices. Interactivity refers 
to the type of CSR communication and the frequency of CSR messages and feedback.
Li et al. (2013) used social identity theory to identify design factors that deter-
mine the social context of a corporate Twitter channel and users’ social identifica-
tion with the community. They confirm that user engagement and informedness in a 
corporate Twitter channel have a positive effect on corporate reputation and that the 
credibility of the corporate Twitter channel has a positive effect on user informedness 
about the corporation. An interesting finding is that deeper relationships among users 
of a corporate Twitter channel result in higher user engagement and informedness 
when the level of corporate involvement with the channel is high and the channel has 
a specific purpose but that the opposite is true when the channel has a generic purpose.
In the related work, post harvesting is typically tailor-made and small-scale, either 
focused on a few carefully selected corporate social media accounts (e.g. 3 companies), 
or limited to a carefully designed time span (e.g. 1 month). Coding of the observed 
phenomena is manual. The research framework is quantitative but done on a relatively 
small scale, and experimental in that research hypotheses are confirmed or rejected 
with statistical tests. Our work differs from this research framework in that we use an 
existing large corpus of tweets and are interested in the characteristics of all the avail-
able corporate accounts in it. While coding of certain phenomena (e.g. account type, 
user gender) was manual, it was performed prior to this study by coders unrelated to 
this study, so could not be fully controlled. Coding of many other phenomena (e.g. 
language, sentiment and standardness level of tweets) was automatic and therefore 
contains a certain degree of noise. Our approach is not only quantitative but large 
scale as well, taking into account several thousands of users and several million of their 
tweets, and is descriptive in nature. What is more, unlike most related work which 
mostly observe the metadata (e.g. tweet frequency, following behavior, retweets) or 
content of the messages (e.g. hyperlinks, hashtags, mentions, sentiment), we also per-
form an analysis of the language used in the messages, which is still underresearched 
50 Prispevki za novejšo zgodovino LIX - 1/2019
in communication studies. A better understanding of the language practices used by 
public companies and institutions for presentation, persuasion and reputation man-
agement on social media will contribute towards a comprehensive understanding of 
contemporary, technology-enhanced corporate public relations and marketing strate-
gies and practices. Finally, while most researchers focus almost exlusively on English, 
our study is performed on Slovene which can serve as a showcase for other languages 
with a smaller number of speakers (and therefore a smaller market size the corporate 
accounts are serving).
Corpus Analysis of Corporate Communication on Twitter
The analysis has been performed on the Janes-Tweet corpus (Erjavec et al. 2018) 
consisting of 11.3 million Slovene tweets or 160 million tokens published by more 
than 10,200 users. Depending on their communication purpose, users in the corpus 
are manually divided into two groups: private and corporate. Corporate accounts 
comprise all private companies, public institutions, the media and interest associa-
tions who do not post as individuals for leisure purposes, who are treated as private 
accounts. In order to establish the characteristics of corporate communication on 
Twitter and differentiate them from the common practices typical of this medium in 
general, we perform a contrastive analysis of these two types of accounts.
Our study consists of three parts, each of which addresses a major segment of com-
munication styles on Twitter, ranging from the analysis of communication dynamics 
and metadata to the content and language analysis, observed from the perspective of 
the two types of accounts. First, we analyzed the production and posting dynamics 
of these two user groups. Next, we analyzed the use of social media-specific commu-
nication elements, such as hashtags, emojis and emoticons. Finally, we analyzed the 
language and keywords used in corporate tweets. All the analyses were performed in 
the SketchEngine corpus-analysis1 suite (Killgarriff et al. 2014).
The research questions we address with each part of our study are: 1) Does cor-
porate communication on Twitter by Slovene users have a distinct corporate profile in 
terms of posting dynamics and volume? 2) Have Slovene corporate users adopted the 
new media communication style and are using the features offered by the new media 
to maximize their reach and relationship strength? 3) Can we identify the Slovene 
corporate tweeting code?
1 The corpus is publically available for download as well as for on-line querying through the CLARIN.SI research 
infrastructure.
51D. Fišer, M. Kalin Golob: Corporate Communication on Twitter in Slovenia…
Account Analysis
Table 1: Share of corporate and private users and their production in the Janes-Tweet 
corpus.
Users No. of users (%) No. of tokens (%) No. of tweets (%)
Corporate 2612 (25.57%) 30,003,182 (18.70%) 2,112,910 (18.64%)
Private 7627 (74.44%) 130,401,083 (81.30%) 9,223,736 (81.36%)
Total 10,248 (10.00%) 160,404,265 (100.00%) 11,336,646 (100.00%)
Share of users. The ratio between private to corporate users in the corpus is 3:1. 
As can be seen in Table 1, less than a fifth of all the tweets in the corpus have been 
posted by corporate users. This means that in Slovenia, Twitter is mainly used for 
private communication.
Table 2: Distribution of tweets by corporate and private users based on gender in the 
Janes-Tweet corpus.
  Corporate Private
Gender No. of tweets % No. of tweets %
Unknown 1,730,258 81.89% 134,048 1.45%
Male 271,729 12.86% 6,136,470 66.53%
Female 110,923 5.25% 2,953,218 32.02%
Total 2,112,910 100.00% 9,223,736 100.00%
Users’ gender. As shown in Table 2, gender could not be determined for the 
majority of corporate users (82%) based on user name, user profile data and verb 
form usage in their tweets, which is rare in the case of private users (1.5%). This is 
unsurprising because corporate users tweet on behalf of their company or organiza-
tion, adapting their style of writing accordingly, e.g. the use of first person plural verb 
forms, which do not distinguish the gender of the writer. 
Posting Analysis
Post quantity. There are only 29 (1%) corporate users who are very active on 
social media and have posted over 10,000 tweets, and 422 (16%) medium-active ones 
with 1,000 – 10,000 tweets. The majority of corporate users (1,640 or 62.79%) fall 
into the category of low-activity accounts with 100 – 1,000 tweets. The lowest-activ-
ity group includes 521 users (19.95%) who have posted fewer than 100 tweets. In 
comparison to private users, the biggest difference is in groups 2 and 4. There are 9% 
more private users with 1,000 – 10,000 tweets and a similar percentage fewer private 
52 Prispevki za novejšo zgodovino LIX - 1/2019
accounts with only 100 – 1,000 tweets. In the years included in the Janes-Tweet cor-
pus, the volume of content generated by the corporate users is stable but is decreasing 
slightly among the private users (see Figure 1). Occasional sharp drops in the number 
of posts, which are simultaneous for both user groups, were caused by the technical 
issues during data collection and are not related to the seasonal fluctuations or other 
content-related phenomena.
Table 3: Activity of corporate and private users in the Janes-Tweet corpus.
Corporate Private
No. of all accounts 2612 % 7627 %
> 10,000 tweets 29 1.11% 129 1.69%
Between 10,000 and 1,000 tweets 422 16.16% 1867 24.48%
Between 1,000 and 100 tweets 1640 62.79% 4055 53.17%
< 100 tweets 521 19.95% 1576 20.66%
Figure 1: Posting dynamics of corporate and private users in the Janes-Tweet corpus. 
according to the number of posted tweets between June 2013 and June 2017.
 
Post length. Figure 2 shows that the length of corporate tweets is more homog-
enous than the length of private tweets. The biggest share of corporate tweets are 7 to 
11 words long (4 to 7 words in case of private users). The share of corporate tweets 
which do not contain any word (only emojis, hashtags, hyperlinks or multimedia ele-
ments) is only 0.1%. Such tweets are six times more frequently produced by private 
users, which is not surprising as these symbols are typically used in bidirectional com-
munication, which is rare in corporate PR tweets.
53D. Fišer, M. Kalin Golob: Corporate Communication on Twitter in Slovenia…
Figure 2: Tweet length of corporate and private users in the Janes-Tweet corpus.
 
Analysis of Interactive Elements
Likes. As can be seen from Table 4, nearly 80% of corporate tweets do not receive 
any likes, 12% have one like and only 9% have 2 or more likes. Private tweets receive 
significantly different attention: a third of all the private tweets is liked at least once 
and a significant share of them (0.7%) receives over 10 likes. This is another strong sign 
that bidirectional communication is less typical of corporate users and that corporate 
tweets are just one of the channels of the same type of (one-directional) communica-
tion disseminated through different genres.
Table 4: Share of liked and retweeted tweets of corporate and private users in the Janes-
Tweet corpus.
No. of likes
Corporate users Private users
No. of tweets % No. of tweets %
0 1,663,755 78.74% 610,9048 66.23%
1 265,385 12.56% 1,890,549 20.50%
2–10 175,788 8.32% 1,160,057 12.58%
>10 7,982 0.38% 64,082 0.69%
Total 2,112,910 100.00% 9,223,736 100.00%
No. of retweets
Corporate users Private users
No. of tweets % No. of tweets %
0 1,754,988 83.06% 8,414,713 91.23%
1 219,698 10.40% 490,346 5.32%
2–10 134,184 6.35% 300,319 3.26%
>10 4,040 0.19% 18,358 0.19%
Total 2,112,910 100.00% 9,223,736 100.00%
54 Prispevki za novejšo zgodovino LIX - 1/2019
Figures 3 and 4: The most liked (left) and the most retweeted (right) tweet posted by 
corporate users in the Janes-Tweet corpus.
   
Table 5: Use of hashtags, emoji, hyperlinks and mentions by corporate and private users 
in the Janes-Tweet corpus.
Hashtags
Abs. freq. Per million Per tweet
Corporate 922,504 30,746.9 0.44
Private 2,241,693 17,190.8 0.24
Emoji
Abs. freq. Per million Per tweet
Corporate 1,285,696 42,852.0 0.61
Private 12,061,885 92,498.3 1.31
Hyperlinks
Abs. freq. Per million Per tweet
Corporate 1,989,643 66,314.4 0.94
Private 2,583,651 19,813.1 0.28
Mentions
Abs. freq. Per million Per tweet
Corporate 659,211 21,971.4 0.31
Private 9,216,857 57,460.2 1.00
Retweets. Retweeting results show a different picture where a much greater share 
of corporate tweets have at least one retweet (17%) in comparison to private tweets 
(8%), suggesting a higher informative value of corporate tweets for a wider audi-
ence. Interestingly, when considering very frequently retweeted posts, no difference 
between the two account types has been observed.
55D. Fišer, M. Kalin Golob: Corporate Communication on Twitter in Slovenia…
Use of hashtags. Relatively speaking, corporate accounts use hashtags almost 
twice as often as private accounts. On average, almost every second corporate tweet 
contains a hashtag, which holds for only every fourth private tweet. As presented in 
Table 5, sport is the predominant topic of the 10 most frequent hashtags used by 
corporate users which is very similar to private users. Interestingly, half of the 10 most 
frequently used hashtags are shared (sport, news, Ljubljana). Among the 10 corporate 
users with the highest relative frequency of hashtag use we can find less formal maga-
zines and companies. Therefore, for a more detailed analysis of corporate communi-
cation it would be interesting to further divide corporate users into different groups: 
media (journals and magazines), companies, state institutions and non-governmental 
organizations. We plan to include this in our future studies.
Use of emoticons and emojis.2 The usage of emoticons and emojis is opposite to 
hashtags, as emojis are, relatively speaking, more than twice as common in posts by 
private users who use 1.3 emojis or emoticons per tweet on average while occurring 
only in every second corporate tweet which indicates greater degree of formality in 
corporate communication on Twitter. Among the 10 corporate accounts the relative 
frequency of emojis and emoticons, we mainly identified resellers of fashion items.
As presented in Table 6, all of the most frequently used emojis or emoticons are 
positive which again indicates a positive tone in PR communication. However, it is 
interesting that only 2 emojis appear on the top 10 list for corporate users while the 
rest are emoticons. This could be a sign of more conservative communication strate-
gies used by corporate users given that emojis are a much more recent phenomenon, 
but this could also be a consequence of corporate users more frequently tweeting from 
their computers rather than smart phones which better support the use of emojis. 
Table 6: Ten most frequent hashtags in corporate and private tweets.
Corporate users Private users
Hashtag Frequency Hashtag Frequency
#plts 18,03 #plts 26,370
#slonews 18,247 #slonews 18,270
#PLTS 9,620 #junaki 18,167
#Ljubljana 5,724 #slochi 13,195
#izvršba 5,167 #PLTS 10,943
#NKDomzale 4,437 #Slovenia 10,780
#olimpija 4,176 #Ljubljana 10,141
#rokomet 4,143 #radiobattleSI 9,184
#junaki 3,941 #ligaprvakov 9,091
#skupajdovrha 3,864 #sp14si 8,351
2 Emoticons (e.g. ;)) are combinations of standard typographical characters used for expressing emotions. Emojis are 
pictograms (e.g. ) which include emotions as well as a broad range of other topics and their usage and interpreta-
tion depend on the individual.
56 Prispevki za novejšo zgodovino LIX - 1/2019
Table 7: Ten most frequent emoticons and emojis in corporate and private tweets and the 
ten corporate accounts with the highest relative frequency of emoticons and emojis.
Emoji Frequency User Frequency Rel. freq*
:) 114,602 RecycleMan 530 12.711,5
;) 55,763 JennParisBags 188 11.522,1
:D 17,715 EtiVelikonja 160 10.409,8
&lt;3 13,688 ApartmaNet 184 10.104,9
:-) 9,672 TRENDtrgovina 436 10.049,3
;-) 4,926 Pawla40 228 9.720,0
:)) 4,680 iPlacesi 125 8.860,0
3,679 bozicluka 92 8.290,2
:P 3,558 matejgaber22 99 7.222,6
 3,436 Modniovitki 424 7.010,9
* Relative frequency is the average frequency of the phenomenon in one million tokens.
Table 8: Ten most frequently mentioned accounts in the tweets posted by corporate and 
by private users.
Corporate users Private users
Mention Frequency Mention Frequency
@YouTube 8,325 @petrasovdat 91,328
@Nova24TV 6,903 @YouTube 71,859
@Val202 3,992 @MarkoSket 57,333
@rtvslo 3,866 @JJansaSDS 53,482
@kzssi 3,736 @lucijausaj 51,391
@unionolimpija 3,616 @leaathenatabako 44,453
@JJansaSDS 3,464 @petrajansa 44,102
@radioPrvi 3,128 @savicdomen 43,394
@vladaRS 2,764 @darkob 42,363
@nkmaribor 2,758 @zzTurk 40,534
Use of hyperlinks. Great differences between private and corporate users can be 
observed in their use of hyperlinks in tweets. Relatively speaking, corporate tweets 
contain more than three times the number of hyperlinks in comparison to private 
tweets. On average, corporate users add a hyperlink to nearly each tweet they post, 
while private users include it only in every fourth tweet. This corresponds to the find-
ings of our preliminary analysis that tweets are often only compressed press releases 
leading to a complete message in the form of a hyperlink.
Mentions of other users. Big differences between private and corporate users are 
observed in the rate and type of other user accounts mentions. Relatively speaking, 
57D. Fišer, M. Kalin Golob: Corporate Communication on Twitter in Slovenia…
mentions are more than twice as frequent in private tweets as they are in corporate 
tweets. On average, private users mention other users in every tweet, whereas corpo-
rate users use this option only in every third message. This is not surprising because the 
main objective of PR tweets is self-presentation, which is why referencing others is less 
needed. Among the 10 most frequently mentioned accounts in corporate tweets are 
mainly media, political institutions/parties/individual politicians and sport organiza-
tions, while in private tweets we find social media influencers, two journalists and a 
politician. Both lists have only two mentions in common, i.e. YouTube and Janez Janša, 
one of the oldest and best known Slovenian politicians.
Language Analysis
Language of tweets. Corporate users almost exclusively post messages in Slovene 
(93%), which is considerably different from private users whose share of tweets in 
a foreign language is twice as large. Among the foreign languages used in tweets of 
corporate users, English prevails (5%). This corresponds to our preliminary findings 
that the main goal of Slovene corporate Twitter users is to address their Slovene audi-
ence through formal communication for business or informative purposes. The only 
exception are the accounts of Slovene Embassies around the world often posting in 
their local language (e.g. in French), as well as the accounts of the Ministry of Foreign 
Affairs, the president and the prime minister who occasionally use English tweets to 
inform the international community about major events (e.g. arbitration). 
Table 9: Language use in the tweets posted by corporate and private users.
  Corporate Private
Language No. of tweets % No. of tweets %
Slovene 1,973,677 93.41% 8,074,681 87.54%
English 104,955 4.97% 983,141 10.66%
Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian 16,058 0.76% 57,017 0.62%
Other 18,220 0.86% 108,897 1.18%
Total 2,112,910 100.00% 9,223,736 100.00%
Sentiment of tweets. Every tweet in the corpus is annotated with a sentiment label 
(see Erjavec et al. 2018). Half of all corporate tweets have positive sentiment, a third 
has neutral sentiment and 17% of the tweets have negative sentiment. This greatly 
differs from private tweets, half of which are neutral, 27% negative and only a quarter 
positive. This is another indication of the PR nature of corporate tweets which try to 
convey a positive corporate image, attract customers, sell products, etc.
58 Prispevki za novejšo zgodovino LIX - 1/2019
Table 10: Sentiment of tweets posted by corporate and private users.
  Corporate Private
sentiment No. of tweets % No. of tweets %
positive 1,024,238 48.48% 2,320,841 25.16%
neutral 729,811 34.54% 4,411,516 47.83%
negative 358,861 16.98% 2,491,379 27.01%
total 2,112,910 100.00% 9,223,736 100.00%
Table 11: Language standardness level in the tweets posted by corporate and private 
users.
  Corporate Private
Standardness No. of tweets % Sentiment No. of tweets
L1 1,688,244 79.90% 4,515,310 48.95%
L2 353,397 16.73% 3,489,743 37.83%
L3 71,269 3.37% 1,218,683 13.21%
  2,112,910 100.00% 9,223,736 100.00%
Table 12: Comparison of the language used in corporate and private tweets according to 
part of speech.
Part of speech Corporate (per million) Private (per million) Ratio**
Proper nouns 66,738.4 33,507.8 1.99
Numerals 30,564.9 16,109.7 1.90
Conjunctions 54,381.1 33,302.1 1.63
Prepositions 86,947.2 54,549.6 1.59
Adjectives 76,889.9 48,254.8 1.59
Common nouns 186,446.6 127,056.0 1.47
Abbreviations 3,826.0 3,458.9 1.11
Punctuation 143,234.6 158,188.2 0.91
Main verbs 62,631.9 75,795.7 0.83
Auxiliary verbs 36,974.7 52,968.0 0.70
Adverbs 38,192.1 55,483.1 0.69
Pronouns 39,118.2 62,678.8 0.62
Particles 19,816.6 35,540.7 0.56
Interjections 1,740.9 6,194.5 0.28
** Ratio between the frequency in corporate and in private tweets.
Language standardness. Tweets by corporate users mainly contain standard 
Slovene (80%) and highly nonstandard content is only rarely present (3%). Almost 
the opposite is true of private users. Less than half of their tweets are written in stand-
ard Slovene and the share of tweets containing highly nonstandard Slovene is more 
59D. Fišer, M. Kalin Golob: Corporate Communication on Twitter in Slovenia…
than four times greater in comparison to corporate users. Some exceptions can be 
found among the accounts of public personalities (e.g. stand-up comics, radio pre-
senters, musicians) who often purposefully tweet in nonstandard Slovene because 
informal communication is a major part of their corporate image.
Orthography. Great differences are detected regarding the use of abbreviations: 
corporate tweets mainly contain standard abbreviations of academic or other titles 
(dr., mag., d. o. o.) and common abbreviations (št., oz., min.), while in private tweets 
we find nonstandard abbreviations (tw), often without full stop (slo, lj, min). Some 
differences can be also observed in the use of punctuation. In corporate accounts, a 
bigger range of classic punctuation marks is used according to the orthographic norm. 
Tweets by private users are characterized by frequent repetitions of the same punctua-
tion mark to give the message an emotional charge. Much more frequent is also the 
use of social-media specific symbols (#, @, *).
Parts of speech. The analysis of the parts of speech in the language of corporate 
tweets offers an insight into communication purposes of corporate accounts. Relatively 
speaking, there are almost twice as many proper nouns and numerals in corporate 
tweets than in private ones. Much more frequent are also conjunctions, prepositions, 
adjectives and common nouns. As shown in Table 10, interjections are considerably 
more often present in private accounts (3.5 times more). The same is true for parti-
cles (almost 2 times more), pronouns and adverbs. On the one hand this confirms a 
greater formality of corporate users and reflects a more direct and personal approach 
of private users. On the other hand this also reflects different communicative func-
tions of Twitter: informative for corporate and conversational for private accounts. 
Furthermore, the informative, as well as the influencing function to some extent, are 
also confirmed by the detailed analysis of individual parts of speech presented below.
The noun. Common nouns are 1.5 times more common in corporate tweets 
than in private ones, but the matching rate of the first 20 common nouns that are 
most frequently used is surprisingly high (70%): dan/day, leto/year, tekma/race, ura/
hour, mesto/place, teden/week, čas/time, hvala/thank you, svet/world, delo/work, človek/
human, konec/end, otrok/child, država/country. Among the 20 most frequent nouns, 
the following are specific to corporate tweets: video/video, foto/photo, zmaga/victory, 
novica/news, cena/price, sezona/season. Proper nouns are twice as common in corpo-
rate tweets than in the private ones and the matching rate of the 20 most frequent 
nouns is 40%: Slovenija/Slovenia, Ljubljana, Maribor, EU, Slovenc/Slovene, Evropa/
Europe, ZDA/USA, Cerar, Janša. Among the 20 most frequent nouns, the following 
proper nouns are corporate tweets: Olimpija, Koper, Peter, Gorica, Janez, Domžale, 
Luka, Tina, Marko.
In corporate tweets a higher level of formality of expression has been detected as 
both first and last names are indicated (private tweets mention only the last name). 
Furthermore, we can observe greater diversity of places and company names. An anal-
ysis of nominal pronouns returned predictable results: corporate tweets contain plural 
pronouns (nam/to us, nas/us, vam/to you), while in private tweets we find singular 
60 Prispevki za novejšo zgodovino LIX - 1/2019
forms of pronouns (jaz/I, me/of me, ti/to you, te/you). The reason for grammatical 
plurality lies in the fact that authors of corporate tweets use formal communication 
methods on behalf of their institution or company and formal form of addressing.
The verb. The use of main verbs is more common in private tweets. The matching 
rate of the 20 most frequent verbs in private and corporate tweets is 60% (imeti/have, 
iti/go, morati/must, vedeti/know, videte/see, priti/come, dobiti/get, začeti/begin, čakati/
wait, dati/give, praviti/say, delati/work, dobiti/get), but the difference lies in their moti-
vation for communication: corporate accounts mainly report on events and publish 
statements, while private accounts describe personal activities and give opinions. 
Among the 20 most frequent verbs, the following main verbs are specific to corporate 
tweets: želeti/wish, preveriti/check, najti/find, iskati/search, prebrati/read, gledati/watch, 
moči/able, hoteti/want, narediti/do.
The adjective. Adjectives are 1.5 times more frequently used in corporate than 
in private tweets and the matching rate of the 20 most used adjectives is 50%: nov/
new, dober/good, slovenski/Slovenian, velik/big , lep/beautiful, zadnji/last, mlad/young, 
star/old, pravi/real, super/super. Among the 20 most frequent adjectives the following 
are specific to corporate tweets: vabljen/invited, današnji/today’s, evropski/European, 
javen/public, spleten/web/based, svetoven/world/wide, odličen/excellent, državen/nati-
onal, visok/high, domač/domestic. Positive adjectives are characteristic of corporate 
tweets (nov/new, dober/good, velik/big , lep/beautiful) which are also more formal than 
the adjectives characteristic of private tweets (vabljen/invited, odličen/excellent, visok/
high vs. hud/badass, mali/little, sam/alone). Adjectival as well as nominal pronouns 
are used in the first person plural form in corporate tweets (naše/our-Female, naši/
our-Male) when the goal is identification with the company or the institution and 
integration into the communicative circle that connects the author of the message on 
behalf of the institution with the recipient (Korošec 1998).
The particle. The difference between formality and informality can also be 
observed through particles which overlap in 80% of the cases. However, among the 
particles that are present only in tweets of one user group, our analysis showed that 
formal particles are distinctive for corporate tweets (morda/maybe, predvsem/above all, 
sicer/though, skoraj/nearly) and nonstandard and informal particles for private tweets 
(tud < tudi/also; ze < že/already, itak/off course, pač/well).
The interjection. As already mentioned, the analysis of this part of speech showed 
most notable differences. The matching rate of the 20 most common interjections 
in corporate and private tweets is 55%: bravo, hm, haha, uf, o, ej, ah, ha, aha, aja, oh. 
Among the most frequent interjections that are distinctive for one of the user groups 
are the following ones: živjo, zdravo, hej, hehe, gooool, opa, ups, na, ojoj. Interjections in 
corporate tweets are fewer in quantity as well as more formal and salutatory (zdravo, 
ups), while private tweets often contain interjections in foreign language (btw, lol) and 
swear words. 
61D. Fišer, M. Kalin Golob: Corporate Communication on Twitter in Slovenia…
Keyword Analysis
This section highlights the results of the keyword analysis performed on corporate 
tweets. In this paper, the keywords are understood as the words which are unexpect-
edly more frequent in the tweets of corporate users compared to the entire Janes-
Tweet corpus as reference.
Table 13: List of 20 most key lemmas in corporate tweets according to sentiment.
Negative Keyness index Positive Keyness index Neutral Keyness index
oviran 22.2 čestitka 3.5 novice.si 10.1
trčenje 19.1 vabljen 3.5 zemljišče 8.7
trčiti 18.0 bravo 3.4 pivniški 8.3
priključek 15.4 album 3.4 ebel 8.3
evakuirati 15.3 beautiful 3.4 katarinin 8.1
ranjen 15.1 hvala 3.4 petv 8.0
poškodovan 15.0 posted 3.4 šloganje 7.9
razcep 14.9 photos 3.4 solaten 7.8
novicejutro.si 14.9 odličen 3.3 ugnati 7.8
osumljen 14.6 polepšati 3.3 pripravljalen 7.7
nesreča 14.5 odlično 3.3 koel 7.6
aretirati 14.3 prijeten 3.3 novinec 7.6
avtocesta 14.1 super 3.3 napovednik 7.4
neurje 14.1 čudovit 3.3 zoofa 7.3
strmoglaviti 13.9 čestitati 3.3 prerokovanje 7.3
osumljenec 13.1 srečno 3.3 poiesis 7.2
magnituda 13.1 facebook 3.3 apod 7.1
prometen 12.8 welcome 3.3 wt 7.1
ubit 12.8 summer 3.3 sklepen 6.9
 
Sentiment. As shown in Table 13, the highest keyness index is attributed to lexis 
from corporate tweets with negative sentiment. Among those, all 20 top-ranking key 
lemmas are part of media tweets that reference reports on crime and other accidents 
(e.g., trčenje/collision, evakuirati/evacuate, ranjen/injured, nesreča/accident). The 20 top-
ranking keywords with positive sentiment correspond to the definitions of positive 
PR communication (e.g., čestitka/congratulations, vabljen/invited, bravo/bravo, čudo-
vit/wonderful, polepšati/make sbd’s (day)). Adjectives and adverbs with highly positive 
meaning are also ranked high (e.g., lep/beautiful, odličen, odlično/fantastic, prijeten/nice, 
super/super). Furthermore, the 20 top-ranking keywords with neutral sentiment are 
part of the tweets containing media reports (e.g., novice.si/news.si, zemljišče/property, 
napovednik/preview, sklepen/final) and denote events (e.g., pivniški/beer, ebel/ebel, šlo-
ganje/card-reading, prerokovanje/fortune-telling) or names (katarinin, ebel, zoofa, apod). 
62 Prispevki za novejšo zgodovino LIX - 1/2019
This list suggests that for a more fine-grained analysis of corporate communication on 
Twitter it could be useful to consider separating the tweets generated by media from 
those that are created by companies or institutions.
Table 14: Comparison of key word forms in corporate tweets, written in standard and 
non-standard language.
Standard tweets Keyness index Non-standard tweets Keyness index
Izkl 6.4 Posetite 562.3
Novice.SI 6.4 potrazi 557.6
dražba 6.0 sjajan 553.5
[hyperlink] 5.9 Jeste 455.0
SiOL 5.8 tim 308.5
Petv 5.8 [hyperlink] 307.2
APOD 5.8 [hyperlink] 186.6
Moia 5.7 li 166.4
spletnem 5.7 koketo 145.9
Zurnal24 5.7 trombeto 143.3
ugodne 5.7 [hyperlink] 130.0
astronomska 5.7 belooranžnega 129.5
SMUČANJE 5.6 deejaytime 111.2
KOŠARKA 5.6 Živjo 111.0
oviran 5.6 Skupne 109.6
[hyperlink] 5.6 pritisne 92.8
ALPSKO 5.6 oglasiš 66.2
HOKEJ 5.6 [hyperlink] 65.9
zamudite 5.6 cheers 60.3
Preverite 5.5 hajskul 56.5
Nogometaši 5.5 [hyperlink] 49.6
TENIS 5.5 gnargnar 49.6
ciganskih 5.4 sporočimo 47.0
NOGOMET 5.4 najbrš 46.8
ROKOMET 5.4 pridte 45.3
[hyperlink] 5.4 javimo 41.9
Astrolife.si 5.4 Poslali 41.5
Izbrane 5.4 dm 41.2
Slovenske 5.4 javiš 41.2
SMUČARSKI 5.4 unc 41.0
Standardness. A comparison of the 30 top-ranking key word forms (see Table 
14) in corporate tweets written in standard and nonstandard Slovene shows that users 
write in standard Slovene when posting notifications and adds (e.g., dražba/auction, 
63D. Fišer, M. Kalin Golob: Corporate Communication on Twitter in Slovenia…
ugodne/good, zamudite/miss, preverite/check). Tweets written in nonstandard Slovene 
have a similar communication purpose, but numerous elements in foreign language 
and nonstandard spelling of Slovene words indicate that authors of such messages 
want to establish a closer connection with their target audience and make their offer 
more appealing to them (e.g. deejaytime/phoneticized spelling of DJ/time, hajskul – pho-
neticized spelling of high school, najbrš – nonstandard for I guess, pridte –nonstandard for 
come, dm – abbreviation for direct message, javiš – nonstandard for answer).
Tabela 15: Comparison of key word forms in corporate tweets written by male and 
female users.
Female Keyness index Male Keyness index
foodwalks 7.7 Moia 41.7
Posodobljen 7.0 dražba 39.9
Patsy 6.1 APOD 37.2
KOEL 5.9 astronomska 36.4
[hyperlink] 5.9 premičnin 35.4
info@patsy.si 5.5 UGANKA 33.9
[hyperlink] 5.5 [hyperlink] 30.7
foodwalk 5.5 Izhodišče 30.3
Lylo 5.3 FOTOGRAFIJE 30.0
ORTO 5.1 GLASBA 29.6
UriKuri 4.6 Dopolni 29.5
yummy 4.6 UE 29.1
Ordered 4.4 javna 27.5
Shellac 4.4 sedežna 27.2
Cosmo 4.2 GCC 26.5
LPG 3.8 PRIPOROČAMO 26.4
Starševski 3.7 Espargaro 26.4
e-trgovine 3.5 [hyperlink] 26.3
[hyperlink] 3.5 zemljišča 26.0
Elle 3.3 [hyperlink] 25.3
info@tjasaseme.si 3.3 Pomurskem 24.8
boxa 3.2 ENERGIJE 24.5
derivatov 3.2 Žurnal24 24.4
IBU 3.1 LITERATURA 24.3
Onaplus 3.1 gozda 24.2
Aquafresh 3.0 [hyperlink] 23.5
naftnih 3.0 PRS 23.1
Watercolour 3.0 Ekipa24 22.8
[hyperlink] 3.0 [hyperlink] 22.3
foodwalks 7.7 Moia 41.7
64 Prispevki za novejšo zgodovino LIX - 1/2019
Gender. While a comparison of the key word forms from female or male corporate 
accounts in Table 15 does not offer any insights into possible linguistic differences 
between them, it does give us information about differences in topics and style in 
regard to language choices made when addressing female or male target audience. 
Female accounts include names of magazines, URLs and proper names related to fash-
ion, shopping, food and parenting, while in male account these elements are related 
to real estate, sport and music. 
Conclusions
Social media have revolutionized corporate communications by allowing com-
panies to communicate directly and instantly with their stakeholders, marking a shift 
from the traditional one-way output of corporate communications, to an expanded 
dialogue between company and consumer (Matthews 2010). This paper presents the 
results of the first comprehensive, large-scale and corpus-driven analysis of the char-
acteristics of corporate communication on Twitter in Slovenia that could serve as a 
starting-point of further, data-driven and linguistically enhanced investigations of the 
importance of social media for fostering corporate communication. In the study, we 
combined the analysis of the available metadata, Tweet content and corpus annota-
tions to study three key aspects of the communication of Slovene corporate Twitter 
users: (1) the participation, posting dynamics and posting volume, (2) the utilization 
of new media elements, and (3) the language choices observed through several levels 
of linguistic discription.
Based on the Janes-Tweet corpus, Twitter appears to be mainly used for private 
communication in Slovenia. The majority of corporate accounts belong to the low-
activity category but the volume of content generated by the corporate users is stable. 
Corporate tweets are more homogenous length-wise and are predominantly longer 
than those of private users.
The analysis of the usage of the new media elements suggests that corporate tweets 
come short of the true dialogic approach as most Slovene companies and institutions use 
Twitter as yet another channel for unidirectional communication of regular (shortened) 
PR messages, while the prevalent communication function remains informative and posi-
tively presentational. This can be seen from a much less frequent usage of emoticons and 
all other interactive elements typical of private accounts, which display a distinct conver-
sational communication function that can be seen in their frequent usage of non-standard 
particles, interjections, punctuation and language, and a large number of favourites.
A very strong feature of corporate communication is the almost exclusive usage 
of Slovene which is undoubtedly strategic with a clear focus on the Slovene mar-
ket.  While standard language and formal elements do prevail in corporate tweets 
of Slovene companies and institutions, the infrequent occurrences of informal and 
non-standard elements seem to be used deliberately and tailored to the specific target 
65D. Fišer, M. Kalin Golob: Corporate Communication on Twitter in Slovenia…
audience, which points towards a growing awareness of adapting the style to the con-
tent that is communicated (level of formality, linguistic standardness, discursiveness), 
target audience (general public – neutral style vs. specific public – variations between 
neutral and colloquial style) and the organization profile (public institution – neutral 
style, standard language, companies – visible, colloquial, non-standard features).
Both sentiment- and part-of-speech-based keyword analyses show an interest-
ing landscape of corporate tweets. The usage of evaluative adjectives is prominent 
throughout this subcorpus, among which superlatives stands out in particular. The 
negative keywords originate from the coverage of accidents and crimes by the media, 
and the positive fully correspond with the definition of promotional elements. These 
results indicate an important difference between the negative reporting-style tweets 
by the news outlets, and the positive promotional style of companies, public institu-
tions and non-governmental institutions, suggesting the need for a more fine-grained 
categorization of corporate accounts, which will be refined in our future work. We 
also plan to focus on analyzing the reception of corporate tweets which contain non-
standard language and interactive elements which are more typical of private com-
munication on social media.
An important original contribution of this study is its demonstration of the meth-
odological potential of corpus approaches in communication studies, media studies and 
related disciplines in social sciences which are based on language data, which is not yet 
utilized in the Slovene context. Apart from theoretical relevance, the results of this analy-
sis therefore also have practical implications for PR practitioners and organizations in 
that they reinforce the importance of properly trained PR practitioners who use social 
media in a dialogic, two-way symmetrical model, understand their role as boundary span-
ners and the need to seek opportunities to engage in and stimulate dialogue with stake-
holders. The results of our study also clearly illustrate to the PR practitioners that social 
media should not be treated as just another means through which to disseminate the 
same advertisements and publicity pieces that stakeholders are already receiving through 
other traditional media channels. According to Matthews (2010), social media offers an 
opportunity for direct and instant corporate communication as well as an opportunity 
to get back to the ideal basics of public relations – building and maintaining relationships 
– and to change some of the negative stereotypes typically associated with the industry.
Acknowledgments
The work described in this paper was funded by the Slovenian Research Agency 
within the national basic research project “Resources, methods, and tools for the 
understanding, identification, and classification of various forms of socially unaccep-
table discourse in the information society” ( J7-8280, 2017–2019) and the Slovenian-
Flemish bilateral basic research project “Linguistic landscape of hate speech on social 
media” (N06-0099, 2019–2023).
66 Prispevki za novejšo zgodovino LIX - 1/2019
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Darja Fišer, Monika Kalin Golob
CORPORATE COMMUNICATION ON TWITTER IN 
SLOVENIA: A CORPUS ANALYSIS
SUMMARY
In the past decade, social media have transformed corporate communications by 
enabling direct and instant communication with the stakeholders. In communication 
studies, three main strands of research into corporate communication practices on 
social media can be identified: posting behaviour, content analysis and perception 
studies. Investigators are mostly interested in corporate communication styles, reputa-
tion management and corporate social responsibility. A better understanding of the 
language practices used by public companies and institutions for presentation, persua-
sion and reputation management on social media is still lacking.
This paper addresses this gap with the first comprehensive, large-scale and cor-
pus-driven analysis of the characteristics of corporate communication on Twitter in 
Slovenia. In the study, we combined the analysis of the available metadata, Tweet con-
tent and corpus annotations in the Janes-Tweet corpus to study three key aspects of the 
communication of Slovene corporate Twitter users: (1) their participation, posting 
dynamics and posting volume, (2) the use of social-media specific communication 
elements, and (3) the language choices observed through several levels of linguistic 
discription.
Our analysis shows that, in comparison to private accounts, corporate tweets pre-
dominantly use formal communication and standard language characteristics with 
68 Prispevki za novejšo zgodovino LIX - 1/2019
seldom usage of informal and non-standard choices. In the event of those, however, 
they are chosen deliberately to address a specific target audience and meet the desired 
communicative goals. The analysis of the utilisation of the new media elements by 
corporate users clearly show that their tweets come short of the true dialogic approach 
and that most Slovene companies and institutions use Twitter as yet another channel 
for unidirectional communication of regular (shortened) PR messages in which the 
prevalent communication function remains informative and positively presentational. 
A keyword analysis reveals an important difference between the negative reporting-
style tweets by the news outlets, and the positive promotional style of companies, 
public institutions and non-governmental institutions, suggesting the need for a more 
fine-grained categorization of corporate accounts, which will be refined in our future 
work.
Another major contribution of the paper is its demonstration of the methodo-
logical potential of corpus approaches in communication studies, media studies and 
related disciplines in social sciences that are based on language data, which is not 
yet utilized in the Slovene context. Apart from theoretical relevance, the results of 
this analysis therefore also have practical implications for the PR community which 
highlight the importance of properly trained PR practitioners who use social media 
in a dialogic, symmetrical model, understand their role as boundary spanners and the 
need to seek opportunities to engage in and stimulate dialogue with their stakeholders.
Darja Fišer, Monika Kalin Golob
SLOVENSKO KORPORATIVNO KOMUNICIRANJE NA 
DRUŽBENEM OMREŽJU TWITTER: KORPUSNA ANALIZA
POVZETEK
V zadnjem desetletju so z omogočanjem neposrednega in takojšnjega stika z dele-
žniki družbena omrežja močno vplivala tudi na korporativno kominiciranje. V komu-
nikologiji korporativne komunikacijske prakse na družbenih omrežjih raziskujejo z 
opazovanjem vedenja korporativnih uporabnikov, analizo vsebine in percepcijskimi 
študijami. Komunikologe zanimajo predvsem slogi poslovnega sporočanja, upravlja-
nje ugleda in družbena odgovornost podjetij, medtem ko še vedno primanjkujejo jezi-
koslovno usmerjene raziskave, ki bi omogočile boljše razumevanje jezikovnih praks, 
ki jih podjetja in institucije uporabljajo za predstavljanje svojih izdelkov, vplivanje na 
potrošnike in odzivanje v kritičnih situacijah.
To vrzel naslavlja pričujoči prispevek, v katerem predstavimo prvo celovito, na 
obsežnem korpusu zasnovano analizo korporativnega komuniciranja med sloven-
skimi uporabniki družbenega omrežja Twitter. Izvedli smo jo s kombinacijo besedilnih 
69D. Fišer, M. Kalin Golob: Corporate Communication on Twitter in Slovenia…
podatkov, metapodatkov in korpusnih oznak, ki so na voljo v korpusu Janes-Tviti, pri 
analizi pa smo se osredotočili na tri vidike korporativnega komuniciranja v slovenskih 
uporabnikov: (1) njihovo prisotnost, aktivnost, dinamiko in količino objav, (2) rabo 
novomedijskih komunikacijskih elementov in (3) jezikovne izbire, opazovane na raz-
ličnih ravneh jezikovnega opisa.
Izvedene analize so pokazale, da v primerjavi z zasebnimi računi v korporativ-
nih tvitih izrazito prevladujejo standardne jezikovne prvine formalnega sporočanja, 
sicer redkejše neformalne in nestandardne izbire pa so uporabljene premišljeno glede 
na naslovnika sporočila in namen sporočanja. Analiza izkoriščanja novomedijskih 
elementov jasno kaže, da komuniciranje slovenskih korporativnih uporabnikov na 
družbenem omrežju Twitter ne sledi dialoškemu pristopu in da večina slovenskih 
podjetij in institucij Twitter razume kot dodatni kanal za enosmerno sporočanje kla-
sičnih (skrajšanih) sporočil za javnost, sporočanjska vloga katerih ostaja pretežno 
informativna in pozitivno predstavitvena. Analiza ključnih besed razkrije pomembno 
razliko med negativnim poročanjskim slogom medijskih računov in med pozitivnim 
promocijskim slogom podjetij, javnih ustanov in nevladnih organizacij, kar nakazuje 
na potrebo po natančnejši kategorizaciji korporativnih računov v korpusu, ki jo načr-
tujemo za prihodnje raziskave.
Pričujoči prispevek je dragocen tudi zato, ker demonstrira potencial korpusnih 
pristopov v komunikologiji, medijskih študijah in drugih sorodnih družboslovnih 
disciplinah, ki temeljijo na jezikovnih podatkih, kar v slovenskem okolju še ni ustaljena 
praksa. Poleg teoretične relevantnosti imajo rezultati predstavljene analize tudi prak-
tično vrednost za komunikološko stroko, saj izpostavljajo pomen ustrezno usposo-
bljenih strokovnjakov za odnose z javnostmi, ki obvladajo dialoški, simetričen model 
družbenih omrežij, razumejo svojo posredniško vlogo med deležniki in podjetjem, ki 
ga zastopajo, ter proaktivno iščejo priložnosti za navezovanje pristnih stikov z delež-
niki in spodbujajo dialog z njimi.