Authors:
Karine Berthelot-GuietBrands are ubiquitous in social media for the few last years [2]. This presence in linked to different aims and accompanied by a string of commentaries. Mainly, the professional point of view has been focused on the idea that social media provide the possibility of conversation supposedly based on transparency, equality of places and proximity. Common word running through these professional discourses (interviews and papers) whenever it comes to social media marketing is the idea that these devices are supposed to enable brands to "speak directly" with "consumers" and to avoid communicating only with "classical" advertising, in this case called "paid media".
This paper intends to question the common, professional, sense about brands on social media through the socio-semiotic and semio-linguistic analysis of some of the most popular brand pages on Facebook in USA and France and some of their homologues in each country.
