What constitutes great IDEA? An examination of corporate diversity communication on facebook and external and internal stakeholder reactions

This study conducted a quantitative content analysis to examine corporate Inclusivity, Diversity, Equity, and Accessibility (IDEA) communication (n = 1216) from 48 corporations on Facebook through the lens of dimensionality, stakeholders, drivers (legitimation), and level of investment. Findings indicated that most of the IDEA communication on Facebook focused on gender and racial/ethnicity diversity, employee, and community stakeholders. The IDEA communication was almost equally value- and performance-driven and reflected external promotion level of investment. External stakeholders engaged more with performance-driven and external promotion IDEA communication. The volume of IDEA posts reflected corporate internal diversity practice and was positively related with Glassdoor ratings of the corporation by African American, Middle Eastern, and LGBTQ+ employees.     

How publics react to situational and renewing organizational responses across crises: Examining SCCT and DOR in social-mediated crises

The prevalence of social media among networked publics calls for more research regarding how organizations can conduct effective crisis communication on social networking sites. Based on the situational crisis communication theory (SCCT) and the discourse of renewal (DOR) theory, this study examined how social media publics’ sentiments were affected by situational and renewing organizational responses in various clusters of crises. Twitter data of six crises representing three crisis clusters varying in the responsibility attribution (i.e., ambiguous, accidental, and preventable) were collected. We conducted a content analysis on organizations’ official tweets during crises (N = 59) and sentiment analysis on publics’ replies on Twitter (N = 4,340). The results showed that publics’ positive sentiments toward organizations were affected by organizational crisis responses that included instructing information, sympathy, systemic organizational learning, and effective organizational rhetoric. We recommend that crisis managers express sympathy toward publics as well as organizational learning that prevents a crisis from happening again.     

Truth® ads,receptivity, and motivation to use or quit tobacco among college students

Abstract

Objective: Examine receptivity and motivation to use/quit tobacco among college students after viewing Truth ads. Participants: Random sample of 10,000 college students invited to complete online survey February 2016 (8.5% response rate). Methods: Quasi-experimental. Participants (N?=?854) watched four ads and answered survey items for each ad. Results: Students rated ad receptivity and decreased motivation to use tobacco higher for the Catmageddon ad than the others. Regardless of ad, men and current cigarette smokers reported lower receptivity. Younger age was associated with lower motivation to use tobacco for all ads. Tobacco users reported greater motivation to quit with the Catmageddon ad. Conclusions: College students were receptive to the Truth ads, and many indicated lower motivation to use tobacco. Men, older college students, and current cigarette smokers were less receptive to the ads, reinforcing the need to develop tailored campaigns to reach these subgroups.     

Searching for the “Sleeping Giant”: Racialized News Coverage of Latinos Pre-2020 Elections

Latinos are often thought as potential game changers in the political world in the United States. As the media discusses and analyzes the 2016 election and the path to the 2020 elections, narratives on the role of Latinos leading up to the 2020 election have started to emerge. In this article, I seek to examine how U.S. daily newspapers frame the role of Latinos in the 2016 election and leading up to the 2020 elections. Previous literature has focused on the racialized media coverage of African American politicians and the effects of racial priming; however, extant literature has not explored how Latinos are framed in U.S. media when it comes to electoral politics. Using a sample of newspaper articles from the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal, I found that newspapers largely focus on the demographic changes while operating under various assumptions about those changes. First, newspapers frame Latinos as more likely to vote for a politician if they are Latino. Second, they construct Latinos as a monolithic ethnoracial group that has simplistic interests in immigration. Third, Latino voters and African American voters are often lumped into the same category when discussing mobilization. These narratives continue a tradition of framing Latinos in monolithic ways, while also showing slight departures from previous narratives.     

The Solidary Relationship’s Consequences for the Ebb and Flow of Activism: Collaborative Evidence from Life-History Interviews and Social Media Event Analysis,

Acting in solidarity with deprived others has become a central topic in social movement research. The explanations of solidarity activism or political altruism are few. However, social movement researchers have claimed that solidarity with out-of-group others is a by-product of in-group interaction. In contrast, we argue that out-group interaction with the deprived other and the formation of a solidary relationship is central to the ebb and flow of solidarity activism. We investigate the Danish refugee solidarity movement and show that the meeting with the deprived other 1) brings about an interaction order which makes an ethical demand on the activists to care for the other both within the bounds of the situations and in the future; 2) enacts and amplifies activists’ values and beliefs because the deprived other becomes an exemplar of the injustice and the need to help the broader group of people in the same fragile situation. We develop and test this theory drawing on 42 life-history interviews and a social media dataset containing a panel of 87,455 activists participating in refugee solidarity groups.     

Techniques of disinformation: Constructing and communicating “soft facts” after terrorism

Informed by social media data collected following four terror attacks in the UK in 2017, this article delineates a series of “techniques of disinformation” used by different actors to try and influence how the events were publicly defined and understood. By studying the causes and consequences of misleading information following terror attacks, the article contributes empirically to the neglected topic of social reactions to terrorism. It also advances scholarship on the workings of disinforming communications, by focusing on a domain other than political elections, which has been the empirical focus for most studies of disinformation to date. Theoretically, the analysis is framed by drawing an analogy with Gresham Sykes and David Matza's (1957) account of the role of “techniques of neutralization” originally published in the American Sociological Review. The connection being that where they studied deviant behaviour, a similar analytic lens can usefully be applied to disinformation cast as “deviant” information.     

College Students’ Perceptions of Media Portrayals of Divorce

This study takes an exploratory, qualitative approach to examine college students’ perceptions about divorce in the media. Findings suggest that participants perceived both positive and negative representations of divorced families in the media they consume, highlighting the complex nature of navigating and communicating through a divorce. Specifically, college students reported on aspects of the ex-spousal relationship, how children are affected, and the contrast between life pre- and postdivorce. An inductive theme analysis revealed several positive and negative media representations of divorce. Largely, college students perceive media messages about divorce to be accurate portrayals and impactful representations.     

Do rich teens get richer? Facebook use and the link between offline and online social capital among Palestinian youth in Israel

Studies have shown that using social networking sites contributes to social capital. This study investigated the association between specific features of Facebook and online social capital. Two contrasting hypothesis were tested. The first posits that the rich get richer, meaning that the creation of social capital online reflects the stock of offline resources already available. In contrast, the compensation hypothesis argues that disadvantaged ethnic minorities are more likely to use social media to compensate for their lack of social capital offline. We tested these two theories among a representative sample of Palestinian teenagers (N?=?567). While we found no gender differences in the use of Facebook’s features, our results highlight the positive correlation between the use of active and passive communication features and perceived social capital online. Moreover, the results support the rich-get-richer model; in that, even among this socially disadvantaged group, the youngsters who already had a store of social capital offline benefitted more from using Facebook.     

Deciphering blog users: young adults’ personalities,motivations, and perceived importance of blog features

The present study examines the cyberpsychology of blog readership as well as the digital content preferences of the Millennial generation by examining the links between college students’ personality traits, motivations to read blogs, and preferred blog features. Results indicate that personality influences motivations for reading blogs, which in turn helps predict perceived importance of blog characteristics. Notably, extraversion and neuroticism were related to reading blogs for social interaction; extraversion negatively predicted use of blogs to meet identity needs; openness was related to blog reading for entertainment purposes; and conscientiousness was positively associated with information seeking via blogs. Additionally, motivations for blog readership as explanatory mechanisms for the relationships found between personality traits and perceived importance of blog features are discussed.     

The echo chamber is overstated: the moderating effect of political interest and diverse media

ABSTRACT

In a high-choice media environment, there are fears that individuals will select media and content that reinforce their existing beliefs and lead to segregation based on interest and/or partisanship. This could lead to partisan echo chambers among those who are politically interested and could contribute to a growing gap in knowledge between those who are politically interested and those who are not. However, the high-choice environment also allows individuals, including those who are politically interested, to consume a wide variety of media, which could lead them to more diverse content and perspectives. This study examines the relationship between political interest as well as media diversity and being caught in an echo chamber (measured by five different variables). Using a nationally representative survey of adult internet users in the United Kingdom (N?=?2000), we find that those who are interested in politics and those with diverse media diets tend to avoid echo chambers. This work challenges the impact of echo chambers and tempers fears of partisan segregation since only a small segment of the population are likely to find themselves in an echo chamber. We argue that single media studies and studies which use narrow definitions and measurements of being in an echo chamber are flawed because they do not test the theory in the realistic context of a multiple media environment.