Analyzing the Effectiveness of Newsjacking Public Relation Characteristics and Their Impact on Social Media Engagement (A Comparative Study of Sri Lankan Brand Campaigns)

Abstract

With the rising popularity of social media, a vast number of brands entered to advertise their products and services on these platforms. However, the monotonous nature of brands’ marketing strategies has led to a decline in social media engagement between consumers and them. As a solution, the practice called newsjacking was identified as to gain attention of consumers and media exposure. Even though newsjacking is not a new practice on social media, there is little literature discussed about it. For this reason, the researcher’s purpose was to analyze the effectiveness of Newsjacking Public Relation characteristics and their Impact on Social Media Engagement. The study utilized several newsjacking campaigns to collect the data for the research behaviour. All this data was demonstrated in a theoretical framework established for consumers’ social media engagement using valid analysis techniques. According to the findings, the study found that newsjacking is formed of six elements: rapidness, relevant to the audience, humour, ability to decode the message, virality and creativity. Furthermore, the study observed that these characteristics could influence specific social media engagement activities of consumers. Therefore, these findings supported the theoretical gap that the fact of newsjacking public relations practice influences consumers’ social media engagement.