My dissertation is dedicated to semantic technologies and dialogical theory with a view to the theoretical research and practical applications in the field of digital marketing communication on the Web.
I studied the conceptualization of marketing communications as a set of practices of dialogic communication and data exchange. I have built a framework that I hope will serve for the practical application of this conceptualization. I argue, both theoretically and with a lot of empirical data, “the World Wide Web has a dialogic potential in its aspect of a data federation environment.”
The main hypothesis of my empirical research is the following: “Companies do not use to the fullest the dialogic potential of the World Wide Web in terms of the machine-readable aspect of the content of their marketing communication.”
I formulated 7 research tasks, the completion of which aims the modeling of key artifacts, agents and participants in the process of digital marketing communication on the Web. The tasks are as feasible as possible, such as task 1 “to collect, systematize and analyze the main characteristics of users, platforms and web content in a digital environment with a view to marketing communication.” Later in my dissertation I describe in detail the solution of each one of the 7 research tasks obtaining rich information about the digital environment in terms of marketing communications.
The object of my research is digital marketing communication on the Web, and the subject of the research are the dialogical and semantic aspects of the content of the digital marketing communications in the Web.
The main research methods I used are comparative analysis, modeling, typology, design of an interdisciplinary framework, descriptive research and collection of empirical data. For example, I created a two-modal framework for web content analysis that allows digital marketing communications to be studied both in their function as digital objects and as elements of dialogic communication. I then planned and conducted an empirical study using the presented two-modal framework and obtained data that enriches the the understanding and practive of creating content for digital communication on the Web.
My study of digital marketing communication on the Web and the semantic annotation of its content in terms of the dialogic potential of the Web is structured in three chapters, which are essentially the structure and content of the dissertation.
The first chapter “Digital Marketing Communications on the World Wide Web – Aspects of the Communication Environment and Web Content” outlines the key players in digital marketing communications online and the main layers of media content on the Web. The communication situation is modeled to reflect its complexity caused by the algorithmic environment. The chapter serves as an overview and includes plenty of related literature on the topics addressed in it.
Both theoretical analyzes and empirical research in the field of digital marketing communications are presented. I introduce concepts, such as the human user as a multi-text being and the Web as a complex textual assembly of information, experience and knowledge. The model, built on the understanding of the person on the Web as a person actively communicating with texts, builds on the model of marketing communications in the hypermedia environment of Hoffman and Novak.
The second chapter studies the relationship between research in the field of dialogic theory and research in the field of the Semantic Web. In this chapter I present the various aspects of the Semantic Web and, above all, identify it as a key factor for digital marketing communications and the digital objects that result from them.
Special attention is paid to the dialogue in marketing communications, to its importance for the content of marketing communications. Theoretical frameworks and formulations are considered, with a view to operationalizing dialogue in the context of organizational communication. The socio-technological construct Semantic Web is also studied and presented in detail, highlighting the intersections between the Semantic Web technology and the digital marketing communication challenges. The origin, development and current state of the Semantic Web from the perspective of digital marketing communications are also presented.
I made an analysis of the potential uses of semantic technologies in the process of marketing communication on the Web. In a separate section, many examples are given that illustrate the idea of using semantic technologies for dialogic marketing communications, and in particular for the knowledge graph. The main features of the technological architecture called the “knowledge graph” are described. A theoretical model of the knowledge graph, created especially to serve the dialogic communication in marketing communication, is also presented.
The third chapter seeks to answer the question “To what extent the studied web content of marketing communications on the websites of the researched companies adheres to the dialogical principles of communication and whether this content is annotated with formal descriptions from the vocabulary schema.org.
The first part of this chapter describes the object and the objectives of the research, presents the research issues and the limitations of the dissertation. The second part describes the tools of the research: the sources of empirical data are presented; the interdisciplinary framework designed for the purposes of the research is described.
The third part contains summarized results from the analysis of the data from the empirical research with references to a detailed description of the empirical research given as an appendix to the dissertation. An overview of the research can be found here: Marketing Communications and the Semantic Web: Theoretical Intersections and Practical Implications
The fourth part presents the conclusions of the research and examines future directions of research and analysis in the field of marketing communications and the dialogic potential of semantic annotations of web content.
Among the contributions I hope to prove helpful for the practice of content ceration and digital marketing communication on the Web are:
A model of user communication with the content of the Web has been created, which takes into account the multifaceted nature of the Web and allows the analysis of marketing communication which incorporates elements and phenomena of the communication scenario such as algorithmic audiences, platforming, multimodality of the website and more.
The concept of “content marketing” has been clarified and the definition of “web content” has been refined so that it works to analyze digital marketing communications, which takes into account the presence or absence of (semantic) metadata with which they are described.
An interdisciplinary framework has been created for analysis according to mixed criteria of marketing content on the Web in view of its dialogical and semantic (in the sense of machine-readable) aspects.
Empirical data on the use of schema.org by the top ten companies in the S&P 500 ESG index have been collected and studied.
An analysis of the degree of use of dialogic potential of the Web has been conducted in parallel with the use of formal descriptions of web content by leading technology companies.
For this thesis to become live and useful, I know we need more interdisciplinary collisions and encounters that would allow synthesis based on the immense potential of the knowledge graph technology and the art of connecting to person thorugh text.
I hope this is just the beginning :)
