Thesis (MBA) - Cyprus International University. Institute of Graduate Studies and Research Business Administration Department

Includes bibliography (sheets 42-47)

ABSTRACT
Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are not often the main topic of organizational communication research. However, they are the core of the developed countries' economy and, as such, of ultimate significance for communication science and practice. This thesis work is aimed at uncovering the means SMEs communicate through social media so as to add to the literature by concentrating on SMEs. The top10 SMEs listed in 50 Best Small and Medium-Size Companies by Forbes in 2013 were used as the case study of the investigation. Secondary data were collected from the Twitter accounts of the companies, the data collected includes the twitter address of the companies, the number of tweets within 3 months of 1st of January – 31st of March 2020, the number of followers, and the number of accounts followed by these SMEs companies. The data collected from the Twitter accounts of each company were recorded under separate folders. The research used a qualitative content analysis which is thematic content analysis and rhetorical analysis. Content analysis was used to apportion the original tweets into coded units such that the distinctive phrases in the tweets were noted down and coded as themes according to the general meaning they represent. Interconnectedly, rhetorical analysis was employed to code and determine the persuasiveness of the tweets. From the 10 companies sampled, two of them do not have a Twitter account and it was seen from the data collected that the other companies analyzed have tweeted in varying percentages. The most interactive company is Dixon Schwabl among them as 43% of all tweets analyzed have been posted by Dixon Schwabl followed by Studer Group as 16% of all tweets analyzed have been posted by Studer Group. The least interactive SMEs analyzed appeared to be Talent Plus Inc. (1%) and ENGEO Inc. (2%). The thematic results revealed that companies that are included into the analysis share common distinctive themes such as; appreciation, knowledge sharing, praise, information. Furthermore, the most utilized rhetoric by the top 10 SMEs is Pathos which is the persuasion based on emotions. It can be concluded from the results that SMEs institute a positive emphasis through the use of positive themes and rhetoric. The study can be further validated by including more SMEs in the analysis and also by including large companies.