Drawing on a discursive approach to legitimation (Erkama and Vaara, 2010; Higgins and Walker, 2012; Glozer et al., 2019), this study investigates the (de)legitimation strategies used by companies and (potential) customers in private and public CMC complaint communication, and the interactional dynamics between them. Using the Aristotelian framework of persuasive appeals ethos, logos, and pathos, we analysed (1) 91 emails (replies to complaints from a varied sample of large UK companies), (2) 91 customer reactions to these replies on companies’ public Facebook pages and Twitter, and (3) 383 additional comments to these posts made by the company, the customer, and other stakeholders. The results reveal a clear shift in companies’ private versus public discourse: While they mainly seek legitimacy in email replies by substantiating their complaint decision (logos) and by accommodating to the customers’ feelings (pathos and ethos), their social media interventions are mainly about redirecting customers to a private channel to avoid having to deal with the transactional side of complaint handling in public. Customers, in their turn, delegitimate these companies by primarily criticizing companies’ service failures and service recovery efforts (ethos) and – to a lesser extent – by defending their case (logos) and expressing negative emotions (pathos). In terms of interactional dynamics, the results show that companies are not comfortable with implementing a dialogic approach. Their attempts at discursive finalization, i.e., silencing consumers’ negative feedback, clearly expose social media agents’ lack of agency and power to build up relationships with customers and perform adequate service recovery.

这项研究采用了一种不拘一格的合法化方法（Erkama和Vaara，2010; Higgins和Walker，2012; Glozer等人，2019），研究了私有和公共CMC中公司和（潜在）客户使用的（去合法化）策略投诉沟通以及他们之间的互动动态。使用亚里士多德的说服性吸引力精神，徽标和情感框架，我们分析了（1）91封电子邮件（回复了来自英国大型公司的各种样本的投诉），（2）91名客户对公司公共Facebook页面和Twitter上这些回复的反应，以及（3）383条对这些帖子的其他评论由公司，客户和其他利益相关者做出。结果表明，公司在私人和公共话语上发生了明显的转变：尽管他们主要通过证实投诉决定（徽标）并适应客户的感受（情感和风气）来寻求电子邮件回复的合法性，但他们的社交媒体干预主要是有关将客户重定向到私人渠道的信息，以避免在公共场合处理投诉处理的交易方面。反过来，客户 通过主要批评公司的服务故障和服务恢复工作（ethos）来使这些公司合法化，并在较小程度上通过辩护他们的案件（logo）和表达负面情绪（pathos）来使这些公司合法化。从交互动力学的角度来看，结果表明公司不愿意采用对话方法。他们的尝试话语敲定，即消减消费者的负面反馈，明显暴露出社交媒体代理商缺乏与代理商建立联系和进行适当服务恢复的能力和力量。