Conversational Style of Personality Radio Station Posts on Twitter: Applying Hall’s Proxemics to Digital Communication

Abstract

ABSTRACT Social media are essential to radio station communications, including program personalities who use social platforms to connect with their listeners. Social networks allow program hosts to feature a behind-the-scenes glimpse of the station and staff, photos and videos, and afford the audience a way to give feedback. This study used proxemics theory and conversational style through coding and linguistic analysis (LIWC) to examine how personality radio hosts in the US were connecting with their audiences through Twitter. Using a quantitative and qualitative mixed methods approach, the study found that tweets exhibited implicit and explicit content on the two dimensions of closeness and distance.