Fuzzy Online Reputation Analysis Framework

In the Social Semantic Web an organization, a brand, the name of a high-profile executive, or a particular product can be defined as the hodgepodge of all online conversations taking place around it, and this is happening regardless of whether or not an organization participates in the conversationscape’s dialogue. Long story short, organizations in the first place are forced to listen to the Social Web so in order to take part in and, in this way, improve their online reputation. To do that intuitively, the FORA framework is conceptualized as a pertinent listening application. So, the term FORA originates from the plural form of forum, the Latin word for marketplaces (Portmann, Nguyen, Sepulveda, & Cheok, 2012). Thus, the framework allows organizations’ communication operatives a fuzzy exploration of reputation in online marketplaces. Listening and then increasing engagement within social media elements is a hard task. There is a constant flow of information and many organizations do not know how to harness and gain actionable insights from this rich source of customer conversations. The idea beyond the conceptualization of the framework is to listen and in doing so automatically identify key social media elements 24/7 to simplify online reputation analysis and, by that, impart onto communication operatives insightful information on which they can actually act upon. To make this system reality, a design science approach is pursued.