The Digital Social Status of Institutions

Do institutions have social status just as individuals do? Can a smaller company occupy a higher position within a professional community than an institution that is older, wealthier, and more famous? We are accustomed to describing institutions in terms of success, reputation, strength, and presence. However, organizational sociology has for decades recognized the concept of “Organizational Status,” meaning the position an institution occupies relative to others within a social or professional field. This position is not determined solely by its assets and profits; it is also shaped by the recognition it receives from others, its relationships, and its position among them.

As a significant portion of the relationships that institutions maintain with their audiences, competitors, and specialists in their respective fields has moved to social media platforms, another level emerges that can be viewed as the digital social status of the institution. This refers to the relative position conferred upon an institution by a digital community, together with the recognition, influence, and authority associated with that position. Thus, a company may have millions of followers without being a reference point within a particular professional community, while a less famous institution may reach a position that leads others to monitor its practices, learn from them, and use them as benchmarks for some of their own work.

Perhaps one of the clearest manifestations of such status is when an institution acquires a function that was never specified in its founding decision or commercial registration. In Saudi Arabia, the Government Communication Center at the Ministry of Media was established to operate within the government communication system, enhance the efficiency of media work, unify messages and identities, and strengthen coordination among government entities. Yet the accumulation of its practices and visual products has made it, for many professionals working in communication and media, a model to look to in terms of presenting data, designing infographics, and simplifying information visually. Its official responsibilities did not change, but its position within the professional community expanded, and another function was added to its institutional role—one that was not granted to it by regulations, but rather by practice and by the recognition that others gave to that practice.

This idea is not far removed from the sociological origins of status. A study published in 1996 in Industrial and Corporate Change by Joel Podolny and Damon Phillips, after examining the dynamics of organizational status among investment banks, demonstrated that an institution’s status is influenced by its past performance and by the status of the entities with which it is connected. This means that status is not an internal attribute possessed solely by the institution; rather, it is a position that is also shaped by the network of relationships and recognition surrounding it.

Status, however, is not the same as reputation. Reputation generally concerns how people evaluate an institution and the accumulated impressions they hold about it, whereas status concerns the position they assign to it relative to others within a particular field. A study published in 2021 in Long Range Planning, based on 8,793 annual observations of 1,186 venture capital firms, showed that reputation and status are closely related but distinct concepts, and that improvements in reputation over time can positively affect status. Reputation may contribute to building status, but it does not encompass it.

On social media platforms, this distinction becomes even clearer because the institution is no longer the sole actor shaping its image. A theoretical study published in 2019 in the Academy of Management Review showed that platforms have changed the way judgments about institutions are formed and disseminated, as audiences have become more involved in producing and circulating those judgments. An institution can therefore plan what it wants to become, create its content, and define its identity, but it cannot independently decide where the digital community will place it.

The Saudi media company Thmanyah offers another path. It is a media organization whose position does not derive from governmental status or regulatory authority. Yet its approach to presenting content, the visual identities of its products, its use of Arabic typography, and its packaging of podcasts and media materials have made its experience a visible part of the professional discussion surrounding Arabic content production. Indeed, the development of its identity was based on creating a flexible visual and typographic system capable of accommodating multiple media products. The issue is no longer simply whether a podcast succeeds or an episode goes viral; rather, it is whether the institution’s way of presenting a product becomes something industry professionals consider when thinking about the form of the media product itself.

Success may produce work that attracts attention, whereas status may turn the experience itself into an unwritten standard. Others do not necessarily have to reproduce the institution’s design literally, use its fonts, or adopt its tone. It is enough for its experience to enter into their calculations when they develop their own experiences. At that point, the institution is no longer addressing only the audience of its product; it is indirectly influencing the very people who produce such products.

Globally, Duolingo offers a different example. The language-learning application did not merely build accounts to promote its services. Instead, it created a distinctive communications persona on TikTok around the green owl representing its brand. It used humor, trending topics, interaction with audiences and other brands, until its communications practices themselves became a subject of study. A communications study published in 2024 analyzed 135 of the company’s TikTok videos to understand the strategy behind the success of its presence on the platform. At the time of the study, the account had reached approximately 8 million followers and 176 million likes on the platform. But the figures themselves are less important than the fact that others had begun studying how Duolingo achieved this.

The three cases do not offer a single formula, and this is precisely what makes them more significant. The Government Communication Center acquired visual and professional authority; Thmanyah became influential in the way media products are created and presented; while Duolingo’s communications practices became a case from which others could learn. What they have in common is that, in each case, the institution moved beyond merely reaching an audience and began, to some degree, influencing the practices surrounding it.

The value of this status becomes even clearer in strategic planning. When institutions assess their current position and then move toward selecting benchmarks and identifying best practices, they do not always choose the largest institutions or those with the highest levels of spending. Rather, they look for those whose practices are worth studying in the field they seek to develop. An institution that is repeatedly referenced when studying content, design, engagement, or data presentation has moved beyond the boundaries of successful practice to occupy a position of reference within its professional community. Accordingly, examining the institutions that others choose for comparison and learning can become one of the indicators that help us map digital social status within any sector.

But a successful campaign does not create status, nor is a design that others imitate for months sufficient to create it. Millions of views may also pass without changing an institution’s position relative to others. Status requires a degree of continuity and recognition that extends beyond a moment of virality. Being a reference point is not its only manifestation, but it is one of its clearest forms.

At this point, managing the digital social status of institutions becomes far broader than managing social media accounts. The question is not how many posts we will publish this month or how many followers we will add, but rather: What position does the institution want to occupy within the communities that matter to it? In what practice does it want to become known? What signals will enable others to recognize that position? And how can its movement from presence to influence and then to authority be measured?

This may be the most important change that the concept introduces to communication planning and public relations. Instead of asking only, “How can we increase our visibility?” an institution must also ask: What do we want others to come to us to learn how to do? It could be data presentation, design, knowledge, customer service, sustainability, communication style, or crisis management. Once an institution identifies the space it wants to occupy, content becomes a means of building a position rather than merely another piece of material waiting for its turn on the publishing schedule.

Institutions can choose what they say about themselves, invest in their image, and improve their reputation. But they cannot grant themselves status. Perhaps this is why the highest point of an institution’s digital success is not when everyone becomes its follower, but when some people, without being asked to do so, look to it in order to learn from it.