Media work in change: Understanding the role of media professionals in times of digital transformation and convergence

This article discusses media work and the changes that have swept the media industry from the vantage point of professionals working in media companies and organisations. The concept of media work guides towards new understanding about the media industry and media professions under digital transition. Media work indicates a move towards more diversified job tasks, closer cooperation among different media professions, increased commercial thinking, and interaction with audiences.     

Union democracy in the international typographical union: Thirty years later

The International Typographical Union, long cited as the one deviant case to Michel’s “iron law of oligarchy,” is examined thirty years afterUnion Democracy to determine whether or not democracy can survive in the face of today’s hostile environment. An analysis of events occurring within the union as well as the results of a case study of a large ITU local indicate that an unfavorable environment poses unavoidable challenges to democracy. The author thanks Ed Gross, Phil Kienast, Dennis Quinn, Terry Mitchell, Bob Aulerich, and Northwest Typographical Union #99 for assistance at various stages of this research.     

Keeping up with the digital age: How the American Red Cross uses social media to build relationships

Forty individuals from the American Red Cross were interviewed to explore the use of social media in communicating with key publics. Results show that practicing public relations through social media is effective and necessary in the emerging digital age, as shown through the Red Cross’ development of a two-way dialogue with younger constituents, the media, and the community. This two-way dialogue has been accomplished primarily through Twitter and Facebook, with barriers such as lack of staff and time, and opportunities to improve National Headquarters and local chapter relations. The insights shared by the American Red Cross are useful for both public relations scholars and professionals to help them understand and apply social media practices to build strong, lasting relationships.     

The invisibility of age: gender and class in later life

Sociology almost entirely neglects later life. This contrasts with social policy where elderly people are largely seen as a burden on society and their carers. The article examines three areas of sociological enquiry and suggests reasons for the omission of elderly people. Parallels are drawn with sociology's earlier neglect of women. The feminist agenda has largely excluded the concerns of elderly women and at times has contributed to the pathological image of elderly people as burdens to be shouldered by their daughters. We argue that sociological theories would be enriched by incorporating the experiences of elderly people within their theoretical net.     

Operationalizing hunger in rural America: A reexamination of McMurry

The Harvard Physician Task Force report Hunger Counties 1986 evoked several critical responses, including Dan McMurry's (1991) in this journal. McMurry maintained that the Harvard report incorrectly identifies hunger counties in the United States: It is an invalid study that measures economic dependence rather than hunger and malnutrition. In this reexamination of McMurry, it is argued that his field observations lack ethnographic validity and thus draw erroneous conclusions from the data. McMurry, in addition, made false assumptions about the voting behavior of rural residents, which further weakens his arguments against the Harvard Physician Task Force. Finally, it is suggested that researchers find a more inclusive method of measuring rural hunger in America.     

Explicating communicative organization-stakeholder relationships in the digital age: A systematic review and research agenda

The digital age is a game-changer for the communication between organizations and stakeholders. Relationships are pivotal to public relations. However, their conceptualizations, measures, and normative assumptions have neither been analyzed systematically and across disciplines, nor have they been studied in light of the changing digital communication landscape. This article re-examines the relationship paradigm in public relations and marketing in an online environment. By means of a systematic review, it seeks to explicate communicative relationships between organizations and their diverse stakeholders, to review how they are operationalized and measured, and to illuminate their normative evaluations. This conceptual specification is guided by systematic sampling and content analysis of all primary research on organization-stakeholder relationships in the broader social sciences. Results of a comprehensive analysis of 74 articles suggest that studies overemphasize the business contexts, follow an instrumental orientation based on transactions rather than communication, and lack analyses of digital data. To explicate a PR understanding of digital communicative organization-stakeholder relationships, a definition is provided and a research agenda is offered on theory, measures, and blind spots.     

Professional competition and cooperation in the digital age: A pilot study of New Zealand practitioners

From early on, competition between professions has been identified as a major factor in the process of developing public relations as a profession. This paper updates consideration of the influence of inter-profession disputes by examining the interplay between public relations and advertising in the digital age. It attempts to assess how new technologies, especially social media, affect the relationships between them, with particular reference to two aspects: whether social media increases, or decreases, professional cooperation (or competition); and who takes charge in the new communication environment. In researching these issues, which form an important part of the professionalization process of public relations, the paper examined documents and online publications, and undertook interviews and a survey of public relations practitioners in New Zealand. The findings suggest that the responding public relations practitioners were not able to take advantage of the social technology in order to leverage their professional status and improve their position within the organization. In addition, it seems that while advertising and public relations are still looking for ways to benefit from social media, both are still in a process of adaptation.     

Protest leadership in the age of social media

This article challenges the idea that social media protest mobilization and communication are primarily propelled by the self-motivated sharing of ideas, plans, images, and resources. It shows that leadership plays a vital role in steering popular contention on key social platforms. This argument is developed through a detailed case study on the interaction between the administrators and users of the Kullena Khaled Said Facebook page, the most popular online platform during the Egyptian revolution of early 2011. The analysis specifically focuses on the period from 1 January until 15 February 2011. It draws from 1629 admin posts and 1,465,696 user comments, extracted via a customized version of Netvizz. For each day during this period, the three most engaged with posts, as well as the 10 most engaged with comments, have been translated and coded, making it possible to systematically examine how the administrators tried to shape the communication on the page, and how users responded to these efforts. This analysis is pursued from a sociotechnical perspective. It traces how the exchanges on the page are simultaneously shaped by the admins’ marketing strategies and the technological architecture of the Facebook page. On the basis of this exploration, we argue that the page administrators should be understood as ‘connective leaders’. Rather than directing protest activity through formal organizations and collective identity frames, as social movement leaders have traditionally done, connective leaders invite and steer user participation by employing sophisticated marketing strategies to connect users in online communication streams and networks.     

Rethinking migration in the digital age: transglocalization and the Somali diaspora

In this study, we examine the transnational networks of the Somali diaspora online. We explore the claims that the web signifies a shift towards a de‐territorialized, transnational diaspora, which constructs its identity and engagement around a transnational imagined community. Based on a network and web content analysis, we assert that the claims about the transnational as the territorial locus of identity and engagement should be revisited. The analysis shows that the Somali diaspora's engagement has a specific multi‐territorial topology through which information and resources are exchanged and a hybrid identity is constructed. Somalis' online engagement, however, is mainly directed towards community‐based practices and social integration in their host‐land, as opposed to transnational advocacy for the homeland. We argue that web data show a particular territorial arrangement and engagement, which we conceptualize as transglocalization, meaning local, networked formations existing alongside the national and transnational, each operating with awareness of the other yet acting separately. The study demonstrates that online network analysis offers promising approaches to diasporic social integration, policy‐making and issue advocacy.     

Maintaining family stability in the age of digital technologies: An analysis of d/Discourse informing domestic screen media practices in three US families

This article examines d/Discourses about screen media and parenting as reflected in parents' discursive construction of their decision-making processes connected with domestic media practices. The analysis focuses on three parent interviews from a dataset of 51 parent interviews conducted in three states in the USA. The article illustrates ways d/Discourses connected with health, education, ethnicity and disability that are specific to these three households intersect with d/Discourses concerning children and media. The article argues that general categories describing parenting practices overlook the microcultures of households, erasing the emotional labour embedded in processes of decision-making.     

Disability activism in the new media ecology: campaigning strategies in the digital era

This article examines the changing nature of disability activism through the influence of social media. As disabled people in the United Kingdom have been subjected to acute austerity, this has coincided with a new era of disability activism channelled through increased social media participation. Drawing on the analysis of one group’s online activities and a qualitative content analysis of disability protest coverage in traditional news media during the 2012 Paralympic Games, this article positions this shift in the broader framework of ‘new media ecology’. We explore how emerging structures of disability activism have begun to offer a more visible profile to challenge government policy and negative stereotypes of disabled people. This highlights the usefulness of campaigning strategies for generating favourable news coverage for disability protest.     

THE PARTICIPATION DIVIDE: Content creation and sharing in the digital age

This paper looks at the prevalence of creative activity and sharing in an age when the barriers to disseminating material have been considerably lowered compared with earlier times. The authors use unique data to explore the extent to which young adults create video, music, writing and artistic photography, as well as the prevalence of sharing such material online. Findings suggest that despite new opportunities to engage in such distribution of content, relatively few people are taking advantage of these recent developments. Moreover, neither creation nor sharing is randomly distributed among a diverse group of young adults. Consistent with existing literature, creative activity is related to a person's socioeconomic status as measured by parental schooling. The novel act of sharing online, however, is considerably different by gender with men much more likely to engage in it. However, once internet user skill is controlled for, men and women are equally likely to post their materials on the Web.     

Adolescent and family development: Autonomy and identity in the digital age

Adolescence is a time when youth are faced with multiple tasks that intersect and influence one another, e.g., increased desire for autonomy, salience of identity issues, peer orientation, self-focus and self-consciousness, and a continuing need for a safe environment in which to explore autonomy and identity. These all occur in a dynamic ecosystemic environment, which in the past would have mostly included family, peers, and school, but today also includes cyberspace as both a system, and a means to interact with many other systems through the use of multiple forms of information technology (IT). This paper uses the voices and experiences of 128 adolescents, captured in qualitative interviews, to look at autonomy and identity in the digital age as they talk about their parents vis à vis their use of IT. Thematic analysis revealed two major themes: 1) Adolescents spoke of their expertise. In particular they commented on their knowledge to repair equipment, ability to use IT well, their sense of pride in their own ability and their parents' acknowledgement of this ability. 2) Subjects perceived little need for their own supervision, but assessed that other adolescents and younger children needed to be watched closely by their parents. Implications of this work are discussed.