Designing effective corporate social advocacy campaigns using valence,arousal, and issue salience

Corporate social advocacy (CSA) is a growing communications practice that involves corporations taking a public stance on a controversial social issue. Some CSA campaigns have failed in the past (e.g., Pepsi’s 2017 Live for Now Moments Anthem video) by generating public backlash and damaging corporate reputation. To test how to design CSA campaigns that are beneficial for both the corporation and the advocacy issue, the current between-subjects experiment (N = 508) employed a 2 (issue salience: moderate vs. high) X 2 (valence: negative vs. positive) X 2 (arousal: moderate vs. high) factorial design to test the effects of salience, valence, and arousal on memory and four persuasion outcomes: company attitudes, purchase intentions, political participation intentions, and social media intentions, while also analyzing the mediation of information processing. Findings support prior research suggesting that negative valence increases persuasion in CSA contexts. A high-salience issue and high-arousal language increased political participation and social media intentions but had no effect on company attitudes or purchase intentions. Practical implications for CSA campaign designers highlight the persuasive potential of negative valence in CSA messages, and the utility of high-salience and high-arousal for political action and social media engagement.     

Public relations strategies for creating mass media content: A case study of the National Basketball Association

In the relationship among public relations, mass media, and the audience, it is often the mass media who are deemed the power brokers in their ability to potentially influence an audience. The agenda-setting theoretical framework operates from the perspective of the mass media having the power to transfer the salience of an issue to the public. Perhaps, however, to much power is granted to the mass media without the consideration of the processes by which mass media content is selected and framed. This raises the question: who sets the public agenda? Public relations practitioners have the ability to assist the production of mass media content through various proactive public relations strategies that are designed to promote and present the organization they represent in the most positive manner. A case study of the National Basketball Association (NBA) reveals several public relations and promotional strategies, which indicate that much of the creation of NBA related mass media content is directed by the NBA itself.John A. Fortunato is an assistant professor of Communication at Saint Peter’s College, Jersey City, NJ.     

First- and Second-Level Agenda-Building and Agenda-Setting Effects: Exploring the Linkages Among Candidate News Releases,Media Coverage,and Public Opinion During the 2002 Florida Gubernatorial Election

This study explores the role of candidate news releases, media content, and public opinion in shaping the salience of political issues and candidate images during the 2002 Florida gubernatorial election. The study analyzed 77 news releases, 654 newspaper stories, and public opinion data from a statewide survey of 572 respondents. Significant correlations were found supporting both first- and second-level agenda building and agenda-setting effects. Theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed.     

Emergent stakeholders: Using multi-stakeholder issue networks to gain legitimacy in corporate networks

Multi-stakeholder issue networks (MSINs) are models of cross-sector cooperation dedicated to resolving a specific issue. Research to date has not demonstrated the reasons for collaboration (Sun et al., 2021). This paper merges public relations and organizational communication scholarship to theorize that MSINs are one way that marginalized groups achieve salience in corporate networks. Stakeholder salience theory (SST) states that corporations balance stakeholder claims using a manager-defined calculus of legitimacy, urgency, and power. Because these attributes are defined by managers in relation to corporate interests, corporations deny legitimacy to historically, socially, and geographically marginalized groups. MSINs that emerge to highlight the needs of these marginalized groups decenter corporations by constraining corporations’ ability to ignore the needs of groups previously dismissed as nonstakeholders. As MSINs become more active within the corporate ecology, they further limit corporate activity and encourage management to not only to see the legitimacy, urgency, and power of emergent stakeholder claims, but to act upon them. Examples in case-based studies illustrate the emergent stakeholder concept.     

Understanding Influence on Corporate Reputation: An Examination of Public Relations Efforts,Media Coverage,Public Opinion,and Financial Performance From an Agenda-Building and Agenda-Setting Perspective

Seeking to extend research on public relations evaluation, this study investigates the influence of public relations efforts and media coverage on corporate reputation and financial performance through the theoretical grounding of first- and second-level agenda-building and agenda-setting. A triangulation of research methods compared public relations content, news media coverage, public opinion, and corporate financial performance for 28 U.S. companies from the annual Harris Interactive (2005) Reputation Quotient. Evidence for agenda-building and agenda-setting propositions was found, which work to inform strategies of public relations practitioners. The implications of the findings are discussed.     

Agenda building effects by 2008 presidential candidates on global media coverage and public opinion

Grounded in first and second level agenda building and agenda setting, the relationships among public relations, global media, and public opinion were explored in the context of the 2008 United States presidential election. Two candidates’ speeches, press releases, and foreign media coverage were analyzed and compared with global public opinion. The results showed that object salience (issue and candidate) relationships were found between public relations messages and global media coverage while affective attribute (tone) salience relationships were partially found among public relations messages, global media, and public opinion.     

From Agenda Setting to Refusal Setting: Survey Nonresponse as a Function of Media Coverage Across the 2004 Election Cycle

Past research suggests that there is a relationship betweensurvey response and topic salience, namely that individualsresponding to a survey are likely to find the survey topic moresalient than nonrespondents do. For election surveys, nonresponseresulting from a lack of salience can influence findings becauserespondents may be more interested in politics than nonrespondents.The agenda-setting model suggests that media coverage shouldheighten salience. Thus, as media coverage of political campaignsincreases over the course of an election, refusals to a politicalsurvey should decline. Using data from the National AnnenbergElection Survey (NAES), which was conducted nearly continuouslyin 2004, this study investigates the issue of nonresponse ina random digit dial telephone survey across the election cycleby examining daily changes in the refusal rates using time-seriesanalysis. Content analyses of the frequencies of presidentialcampaign stories mentioned in the New York Times and three networknews broadcasts were matched against a time series from theNAES to demonstrate that increases in media coverage of theelection were negatively related to the survey refusal rate. Received for publication January 15, 2005. Revision received March 18, 2007. Accepted for publication May 14, 2007.     

Issue management and the Australian gun debate

On April 29, 1996, Martin Bryant shot and killed 35 people and injured 13 others with an automatic rifle at Port Arthur in Tasmania. While there was immediate national disgust to this crime and tragedy, media attention quickly move to focus on the issues of gun control and political conflict. As these three issues remained interrelated and as images and messages were manufactured and maneuvered into the media to suit both private and public agendas, the Australia gun debate became a masterful exercise in issue management.This study examines the rise and fall of media coverage of the issues for May, 1996, to demonstrate the salience of the issues on the public agenda. At the same time, the study seeks to reveal something of the issue management process that occurred and the hidden agendas that motivated the political and media activity. The study serves to demonstrate the role of the media in the creation of issue salience and the importance of the issue management function to both business and politics.     

THE THRESHOLD OF PUBLIC ATTENTION

The analysis reviews time series data for the period 1945 to1980 on media coverage and corresponding public attention toa set of ten political issues including poverty, racial problems,Watergate, and Vietnam. The study focuses on the early stagesof public awareness and the need for a "critical mass" or thresholdto move a matter from the status of private concern to a public,political issue. The pattern of evolving public awareness variesdramatically for different types of issues. In some cases, thepublic appears to have a much steeper "response function" inreacting to real-world cues than the media; in other cases,the media seem to be more responsive. Modeling the growth ofattention to public issues with the logistic curve met withmodest success. The article concludes with a call for much closercoordination between agenda-setting research and the study ofpolitical cognition.     

Banning Abortion:

This paper contrasts bimodal and unimodal issues, and identifies abortion as a bimodal issue. While unimodal issues exhibit continuous issue positions, a range of policy options, greater possibility of consensus, and often include financial proposals, bimodal issues are charcterized by dichotomous and mutually exclusive policy options, conflict, use of emotion-laden symbols, and often include civil liberties and soical issues. This paper examined two Senate votes on abortion in 1982 and 1983-the Helms proposal to restrict abortion and the Hatch human life amendment. Social variables were more important than political variables in explaining voting outcomes. When the impacts of constituency and Senators' characteristics were compared, those of constituencies were found to have greater impact. For abortion votes, social and constituency variables outweigh political and Senators' characteristics since public opinion is very intense and the issue is of high salience to constituents.     

Drug Peddlers: How Four Presidents Attempted to Influence Media and Public Concern on the Drug Issue

This agenda-building study examined the presidencies of Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, and George H. W. Bush to determine to what degree they influenced media and public concern for the drug issue. This study found a complex reciprocal relation between the president, the public, and the press, with results differing depending what president and newspapers were studied. However, when the data are examined across the various presidents rather than on individual leaders, the agenda-setting process is especially powerful with 8 of the 9 predicted paths proving significant. This study discovered that the president plays an equal or greater role than the media in the agenda-building process. The path between presidential statements and public approval was higher than the one between the media and the public. Although public approval polls drove both media coverage and presidential statements, the polls had a greater effect on the media. Finally, the path from presidential statements to subsequent media coverage was just as strong as the one from media coverage to subsequent presidential statements. Agenda-setting researchers, then, should not ignore the effects of the president and other officials on the agenda-setting process.     

DEMOCRATIC POLITICS AND THE LONG MARCH ON GLOBAL WARMING: Comments on McCright and Dunlap

The political impasse over global warming legislation stems from obstacles in the mass media arena, public awareness, electoral politics as well as governmental policy. Advocates of global warming policy have to be simultaneously successful in all four major public arenas to prevail. This article provides an overview of the obstacles in each public arena in the United States highlighting the broader context in which McCright and Dunlap's analysis of polarized public opinion operates. Global warming advocates have had their greatest success in the media arena but are checked by the rise of a conservative counter‐campaign as well as media reporting norms, which have contributed to polarized public opinion and limited salience of the issue. Global warming never ranks in the top issue list to which electoral candidates attend, giving it little priority in national electoral contests. Although the House of Representatives passed the Waxman‐Markey Bill in 2009, the bill died in the Senate and will not resurface until the Democratic margin is again large enough to overcome opposition vetoes. At the same time, major legislation has often incubated on the margins of these public arenas for significant time until a political crisis removes the normal obstacles to such major “watershed” legislation. For global warming, the long march through American public arenas appears to have begun.     

Social comparison,group identity and professional identity. A study with bank clerks

Abstract

This study consisted of analyzing several hypotheses derived from Tajfel and Turner's social identity theory (Tajfel and Turner, 1979) within a real-life situation. We identified the intergroup relations among three banks in Brazil as an ideal chance to test the salience hypothesis (Oakes & Turner, 1980; Doise & Sinclair, 1973) and also the relationship between discrimination and social identity (Brown et al. 1983b). In general, results did not support the hypotheses, and alternative explanations of results, in terms of the groups ' real life conditions, are discussed.     

Exploring the role of the Senate Majority Leader's political public relations efforts

Grounded in first- and second-level agenda building, this study explored the role of the U.S. Senate Majority Leader in shaping the salience of issues and issue attributes in news media coverage and policymaking in 2011. A total of 358 public relations messages, 164 newspaper articles, and 83 policymaking documents were analyzed. Significant correlations were found supporting agenda-building linkages at both levels. Different types of information subsidies were explored, including press releases, blog posts, Facebook posts, and Twitter messages.     

Prayer in Public Schools: When Church and State Collide

Prayer and Bible reading in public schools have led to threemajor Supreme Court decisions and the introduction of numerousconstitutional amendments in the U.S. Congress which would permitvoluntary prayer in public schools or limit federal court jurisdiction.Public opinion polls beginning in 1964 have suggested widespreadsupport among the American public for prayer in public schools.Little is known, however, concerning the characteristics ofthose supporting and opposing prayer in public schools. Thisarticle addresses the school prayer issue through an analysisof three national surveys which were conducted in 1974. 1980.and 1982. Those favoring school prayer were found to be older,less educated, and socially, politically, and religiously conservative.Multivariate analysis revealed that the key predictor variableswere religious orthodoxy and religious salience, a finding whichmay stem from the observation that school prayer is both a politicaland a religious issue. Issue salience, congressional votingdecisions, and demographic characteristics of school prayeradvocates are considered as possible explanations for the failureof Congress to act in accord with public opinion.     

An Anomaly in Political Perception

This article uses two theories of political perception, displacementtheory and political cue theory, to analyze the abortion issue.Although both theories are supported, neither can account forthe anomaly of collective misperception of Ted Kennedy's position.Experimentally manipulating the salience of politics and religionaffected perception of Kennedy's position in a way that supportedan extended version of political cue theory.     

Social media dialogues in a crisis: A mixed-methods approach to identifying publics on social media

Despite the promise of social media to engender dialogue, the common approach to studying social media may prioritize monologue, whereby research considers the strategies organizations use in targeting publics, particularly in a crisis. This study uses a mixed-method approach to analyze dialogue in a crisis—semantic network analysis and content analysis. Specifically, this study examines the emotional expression and crisis coping behaviors on social media during two separate terror attacks: the Paris terror attacks in 2015 and the Barcelona terror attacks in 2017. Results demonstrate how publics may be identified and understood through semantic network analysis and content analysis. This study also shows the connection between emotions and coping, expanding the crisis communication literature in public relations, and suggests the need to consider agenda-setting and resilience in crisis communication research. Finally, we discuss this study’s implications for assuming a dialogic orientation in public relations.     

An Examination of the Moderating Influence of Breadwinner Role Salience on the Pay Life Satisfaction Relationship

This study examined the pay life satisfactionrelationship and the moderating influence of breadwinnerrole salience among a sample of Hong Kong Chineseprofessional and managerial employees (N = 255). The results of zero-order correlational andmoderated regression analysis revealed support for thepay life satisfaction relationship. The interaction termof pay satisfaction by breadwinner role salience made a significant but rather modestcontribution to the explained variance in lifesatisfaction and this finding was not gender-specific.Results of a subgroup analysis also revealed that thepay life satisfaction relationship was significant amongthe low breadwinner role salience group but wasnonsignificant among the high breadwinner role saliencegroup. In general, the findings highlight the importance of breadwinner role salience to employees'reactions to the economic conditions of work.