Freedom ossified: Political culture and the public use of history in Jamaica 1

The basic thesis of this paper addresses three distinct, yet related, historical developments. Firstly, the democratic promise of freedom for Caribbean people was not fulfilled, as the planter class was not prepared to renounce its power. Secondly, when it was no longer able to hold on to its power, political responsibilities were given to the middle classes, which celebrated this transition as a major achievement. However, the actual arrangements that were made still kept the majority of the people from meaningful participation in the political process and from access to economic resources. Nevertheless, the middle classes introduced the celebratory notion of freedom, although freedom continued to be denied to the majority. Thirdly, in the current period of globalization and neoliberal economics, this ethos has now attained a quasi‐mythical status in many Anglophone Caribbean countries and, at the very same time, the notion of freedom has been emptied of its practical meaning and has in many instances become counter‐productive. In short, Caribbean freedom has become ossified.     

How public relations executives perceive and measure the impact of social media in their organizations

Decisions about social media in organizations are not made lightly. Corporate executives are faced with an ever changing and in many cases, uncontrollable opportunity with social media. This study provides insights obtained from 25 interviews with communication and public relations executives to identify their opinions about what drives social media in organizations, what challenges they face, and what questions they have about social media and its measurement.     

Recipes for Attention: Policy Reforms,Crises, Organizational Characteristics,and the Newspaper Coverage of the LGBT Movement, 1969–2009

Why do some organizations in a movement seeking social change gain extensive national newspaper coverage? To address the question, we innovate in theoretical and empirical ways. First, we elaborate a theoretical argument that builds from the political mediation theory of movement consequences and incorporates the social organization of newspaper practices. This media and political mediation model integrates political and media contexts and organizations' characteristics and actions. With this model, we hypothesize two main routes to coverage: one that includes changes in public policy and involves policy‐engaged, well‐resourced, and inclusive organizations and a second that combines social crises and protest organizations. Second, we appraise these arguments with the first analysis of the national coverage of all organizations in a social movement over its career: 84 lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender rights and AIDS‐related organizations in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and Wall Street Journal from 1969 to 2010. These analyses go beyond previous research that provides either snapshots of many organizations at one point in time or overtime analyses of aggregated groups of organizations or individual organizations. The results of both historical and fuzzy set qualitative comparative analyses support our media and political mediation model.     

Democracy and government public relations: Expanding the scope of “Relationship” in public relations research

The author argues that the unique nature of the US government poses significant barriers to democratic governmental public relations practiced in and by the US. By exploring challenges in relationship management that surface while analyzing a particular instance of government public relations, the author posits that relationship management research should take into account publics’ (non)desire for a relationship as well as different types of organization–public relationships (OPRs) including government–public relationships. The author analyzes the US Government's official apology, administered by President Clinton, to Tuskegee study survivors, introduces the communicative conception of distance to PR to broaden relationship management frameworks, and argues for broader understanding of what constitutes democratic public relations.     

How publics respond to crisis communication strategies: The interplay of information form and source

Through an experiment with 162 college students this study empirically evaluates an emerging communication model: the social-mediated crisis communication model (SMCC). As part of a series of studies testing the SMCC model, this study focuses on two of the SMCC model's components: the effects of crisis information form (traditional media, social media, and word-of-mouth) and source (third party and organization) on publics’ acceptance of crisis response strategies and publics’ crisis emotions. The findings clearly indicate the importance of strategically matching crisis information form and source when organizations respond to crises. In addition, the selection of crisis information form and source affects publics’ attribution independent and dependent emotions.     

Strategizing for social change in nonprofit contexts: A typology of communication approaches in public communication campaigns

Public communication campaigns aim to create social change by influencing audiences’ behaviors and thus help nonprofit organizations fulfill their mission. These campaigns, however, often fail to deliver their anticipated impact. Using public relations research as a theoretical lens, this paper's contribution is twofold: first, we develop a typology that classifies the different communication approaches used in public communication campaigns. Based on one of the most prominent public relations theories, the Four Models of Public Relations, we differentiate communication approaches along the dimensions of communication purpose and communication style. Combining these two dimensions in a typology, we identify the following communication approaches: directing, platforming, mobilizing, and involving. We provide numerous real‐life examples of public campaigns for each one. Second, we formulate propositions about these communication approaches’ effectiveness relying on a key concept of public relations research: namely, audience segmentation. Using the transtheoretical model, we show that audiences can be segmented along five “stages of readiness to adopt a promoted behavior.” Conceptualizing behavior change as an iterative, dynamic process that entails stage progresses as well as backdrops, we derive how audiences’ “stage of readiness” relates to the effectiveness of the identified communication approaches.     

The civility of social capital: Public relations in the public sphere,civil society,and democracy

Scholars have analyzed public relations’ role in democracy via proxy concepts like the public sphere and civil society. However, some have critiqued the public sphere on grounds of equal access and portrayed civil society as a guise for first-world imperialism. These critiques have implications for the role of public relations in the public sphere and civil society. This article suggests the normative role of public relations in democracy is best perceived as creating the social capital that facilitates access to spheres of public discussion and in maintaining relationships among those organizations that check state power. To that end, the paper argues that social capital does much to advance public relations theory and prescribe the role of public relations in democracy. Several implications for public relations from a social capital perspective are offered, including the creation of generalized societal trust, the building of cross-cutting or “weak” ties, the engagement of media on behalf of subaltern counterpublics, and the (re)creation of community or a fully functioning society.     

Inverting the boomerang: examining the legitimacy of North–South–North campaigns in transnational advocacy

The boomerang model is typically used to describe campaigns in which international NGOs respond to requests from local activists, often from marginalized populations, for assistance in addressing local needs. Such campaigns are perceived to represent local interests and have some accountability to local actors. However, while the local–international–local pattern is often accurate, it does not capture the full spectrum of campaign development. This article theorizes an international–local–international or ‘inverse’ boomerang, in which international NGOs facing an international policy blockage initiate a transnational campaign, recruiting local activists to assist in the international advocacy effort. The article demonstrates the theory's plausibility using several cases of Northern‐initiated advocacy. It then examines the implications of the model for campaign legitimacy. It finds that inverse boomerang campaigns benefit from the same presumptions of legitimacy as traditional boomerang campaigns, but that representivity and accountability are substantially weaker, potentially disempowering the campaigns' claimed stakeholders.     

The Cat and the Cloud: ACT for LGBT Locus of Control,Responsibility, and Acceptance

Advocating acceptance, committed action, and value-guided behavior over experiential avoidance, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) may aid lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) clients affected by hetero/homonormative social pressure. By conceptualizing LGBT paradigms of internal/external control/responsibility (IC-IR; EC-IR; IC-ER; EC-IR), ACT may be adapted to a myriad of multicultural worldviews. This article presents locus of acceptance as the attributed worth of internal/external cues perceived necessary by the client to achieve self-acceptance. Recognizing visibility and isolation as recurrent LGBT issues, locus of acceptances balances identity as individual (internal acceptance) with identity as community (external acceptance).     

How the Right Usurped the Queer Agenda: Frame Co‐optation in Political Discourse

This article draws on a case study of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) and queer politics in Vermont to explain the conditions under which radical discourse gains and loses a public voice. In contrast to claims that the marginalization of queer discourse is due to silencing by LGBT rights activists or to litigation strategies, we argue that variation in queer discourse over time is the result of the co‐optation of queer discourse and goals by opponents. Extending the social movement literature on frame variation, we argue that opponents co‐opt discourse when they adopt aspects of the content of a movement's discourse, while subverting its intent. We show that conservative LGBT rights opponents co‐opted queer discourse. As a result, queer positions lost their viability as the discursive field in which those arguments were made was fundamentally altered. Because queer positions became less tenable, we see the withdrawal of queer discourse from the mainstream and alternative LGBT media. Our work both supports and builds on research on frame variation by demonstrating how discourse can change over time in response to the interplay between changing aspects of the political and cultural landscape and the discourse of opponents.     

Crisis communication in higher education: The use of “negotiation” as a strategy to manage crisis

This case study examined the crisis response strategies of Louisiana State University after its women's head basketball coach resigned amid charges of inappropriate conduct with former basketball players. This case study draws on relationship management and negotiation as the theoretical lens to examine the efforts of the University in managing relationships and restoring its image. Data for this study was collected through opened-ended questionnaires from students, faculty, and staff at the University. The findings from this study indicate that the good reputation of the University was responsible for the positive evaluation of the crisis management. In addition, results from this study suggest that “negotiation” can play an important role in managing a crisis when the conflicting parties are not willing to participate in a dialogue.     

The social-mediated crisis communication research: Revisiting dialogue between organizations and publics in crises of China

The rapid diffusion of social media is ushering in a new era of crisis communication. To enhance our understanding of the social-mediated dialogue between organizations and their publics in crises of China, this study conducts a content analysis of 61 relevant journal articles published in 2006–2018. Results of this research present an overview of ongoing research trends such as theoretical frameworks and methodological preferences. This research also explores how the unique Chinese social media characteristics affect the dialogue between types of organizations and their publics. Contextual factors such as face and favor, relationship (Guanxi) and sentiment (Renqing), and the centralized political system that may facilitate/inhibit dialogue in crises of China are identified as well. Finally, this study suggests promising new directions such as a scholarly assessment tool for the social-mediated crisis communication research in China.     

Crisis communication online: How medium,crisis type and emotions affected public reactions in the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster

Social media play in today's societies a fundamental role for the negotiation and dynamics of crises. However, classical crisis communication theories neglect the role of the medium and focus mainly on the interplay between crisis type and crisis communication strategy. Building on the recently developed “networked crisis communication model” we contrast effects of medium (Facebook vs. Twitter vs. online newspaper) and crisis type (intentional vs. victim) in an online experiment. Using the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster as crisis scenario, we show that medium effects are stronger than the effects of crisis type. Crisis communication via social media resulted in a higher reputation and less secondary crisis reactions such as boycotting the company than crisis communication in the newspaper. However, secondary crisis communication, e.g. talking about the crisis communication, was higher in the newspaper condition than in the social media conditions because people consider traditional media as more credible. We also found higher levels of anger in the intentional crisis condition than in the victim crisis condition. Anger in turn was related to reputation, secondary crisis communication and secondary crisis reaction. The results stress the need for more complex models of crisis communication.     

How publics use social media to respond to blame games in crisis communication: The Love Parade tragedy in Duisburg 2010

Crisis communication scholarship has been criticized for its “managerial bias” and for its tendency to marginalize the perspective of publics and audiences. However, the understanding of how publics cope with and interpret crises is crucial for developing the body of knowledge in crisis communication, from both critical and managerial/functionalist perspectives. This case study of the Love Parade crisis in Germany 2010 aimed at exploring how publics perceived the crisis response of the festival organizers and how they used social media to communicate about it shortly after the outbreak of the crisis. A content analysis of 1847 postings at two relevant message boards produced support for the assumption that attributions of cause and responsibility are important predictors of publics’ evaluations of organizations in crisis situations. Findings also revealed that stakeholders actively engage in such attributional inferences spontaneously without being prompted by researchers. The analysis of responsibility perceptions as well as evaluative judgments over time supported the situational crisis communication theory. Blaming others and denying responsibility in the context of a crisis that was perceived as human error accident triggered negative reputational outcomes for the organizations involved in the Love Parade.     

Emergency management communication: The paradox of the positive in public communication for preparedness

Government emergency management agencies use public communication to inform and educate around risks such as floods, fires, storms, and earthquakes with the aim to help communities understand how to prepare for these emergency events. This study of government communication relating to emergency management preparedness examines an Australian context to understand the types of messages preparing community members for natural hazards. Findings suggest that agencies employ a two-track approach combining warranting and engagement messages. Yet a deeper look at the messages suggests a “paradox of the positive” that overemphasizes the capacity of local agencies to respond to crises and underemphasizes citizen shared responsibility. Implications for the paradox of the positive in other national contexts and public relations theory building are also discussed.     

A hegemon fighting for equal rights: the dominant role of COC Nederland in the LGBT transnational advocacy network

Networks are alternatives to hierarchical organizational forms. However, actors in networks have different resources at their disposal, and more powerful participants will try to influence the network as a whole. We identify a dominant node in the European LGBT advocacy network, and explore whether a hegemonic actor in the transnational advocacy network will affect less powerful groups' issue framing. Our project uses software that locates the issue network on the internet, highlighting how transnational advocacy work and digital communication have become inextricably connected. We confirm that Cultuur – en Ontspannings Centrum, known as COC Netherland has higher‐than average centrality measures in the LGBT network. Noting the limitations of hyperlink analysis, we conduct a content analysis of select nodes illustrating the impact of a hegemon. We focus on marriage equality and find tentative support for our hypothesis: organizations with links to COC advocate for stronger forms of legalized same‐sex union than do organizations without ties.     

The quest for legitimacy and the communication of strategic cross-sectoral partnership on Facebook: A big data study

Nowadays, many wicked problems such as environmental issues require organizations from multiple sectors to form cross-sectoral alliances. Cross-sectoral alliance networks can transfer resources and signal affiliations and value alignment between strategic partners. The communication of cross-sectoral alliances is a form of CSR communication that serves organizations’ strategic goals and objectives. Drawing on the literature on digital CSR communication and legitimacy theory, this article examines which legitimacy needs shape the formation of cross-sectoral ties on Facebook in addressing environmental and sustainable development issues in the United States. Combining data-mining, text-mining, social network analysis, and exponential graph modeling, this research investigates the structure of a network among 3071 organizations across multiple sectors. Findings show that organizations’ cross-sectoral tie formation is mainly driven by social legitimacy and alliance legitimacy needs.     

The history of public relations in Greece from 1950 to 1980: Professionalization of the “art”

The early development of public relations in Greece is explored through a focus on the period between 1950 and 1980. Specifically, the, article considers the origins and early developments, important actors, international influences, professional bodies and the field of practice. It is found that Greek business public relations were greatly influenced by American practices and through influential practitioners’ contact with the International Public Relations Association (IPRA).     

Restoring trust through transparency: Examining the effects of transparency strategies on police crisis communication in Mainland China

Employing a 2 (accepting crisis accountability vs denying crisis accountability) x 2 (high vs low information substantiality) x 2 (high vs low participation) online experiment (N = 293), this study examines how different transparency strategies influence public anger and trust in a Chinese police crisis context, offering insights on government social media crisis communication. In general, transparency is crucial for Chinese local governments, especially police agencies, in managing crises on social media. Reporting organizational crisis accountability, delivering sufficient and evidence-based messages, and enabling public discussion on social media are three transparency strategies that can help minimize public anger and rebuild public trust. Results suggest the positive effects of delivering messages in crisis situations by using transparency. Furthermore, the study points out that police organizations in China should consider the possibility of information overload and unexpectedly low overall expectations for government transparency among Chinese publics.