How climate change organizations utilize websites for public relations

This study is designed to examine climate change organizations (CCO)’s online public relations. It analyzes CCOs’ communicative efforts to build and maintain relationships with key stakeholders including media, donors, volunteers, and communities by using their websites and social networks. To accomplish this, a content analysis of 60 CCO websites was conducted. The result indicates that CCOs utilize websites primarily for media relations and fund raising purposes. The function of building and maintaining relationships with communities, current donors/volunteers was not actively utilized on CCOs’ websites. The interactivity of communication with stakeholders was somewhat limited in CCO's online communication activities.     

Government websites and social media's influence on government-public relationships

Recent years have witnessed the increasing use of online media, such as websites, blogs, and social networking sites, by the government for various public relations purposes. These government communication channels are often regarded to promote democratic values and public trust in government by helping the government provide the public with information and respond to citizen inquires. Further, such channels help the public provide the government with feedback. This study questions whether individuals’ experience with government websites and social media do, in fact, influence their perception of the government-public relationship (represented by public trust in government). The results, which are based on a nationwide survey of more than 2000 American citizens, showed support for a positive relationship between this online experience and public trust in government. In particular, experiences with informational online services and social media were associated with greater trust in government at the local and state levels, while those with transactional online services conveyed greater trust in the federal government. However, successful experience with the channels was more important than the experience itself, and an unsuccessful experience could even backfire in terms of trust in government.     

Relationship-building by Chinese ENGOs’ websites: Education,not activation

This study extends previous public relations research that has evaluated how the websites of Northern NGOs facilitate relationship-building (Taylor, Kent, & White, 2001), affect the media agenda (Reber & Kim, 2006), and gather and disseminate information about civil society activities (Brophy & Halpin, 1999). The study explores the relationship-building functions of Chinese ENGOs. The content analysis suggests that Chinese ENGOs’ websites reflect the realities of activism in China. They provide information to members, the public, and the media but these organizations do little to organize their publics to participate in environmental social movements. The findings provide a picture of the early years of the Chinese environmental movement and the use of the Internet in their public relations and advocacy.     

The influence of customer use of corporate websites: Corporate social responsibility,trust, and word-of-mouth communication

This study investigates the potential of organization websites from the customer's perspective. The findings include significant direct effects of customers’ use of corporate websites on their perceptions of a company's corporate social responsibility and their trust in the company, and indirect effects of their use of corporate websites on positive word-of-mouth through trust. The results also indicate a close link between perception of corporate social responsibility and trust.     

Corporate responsibility in U.S. corporate websites: A pilot study

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has become an essential component in the management of companies around the globe. Any key strategy used for CSR administration must reflect strong and effective communication channels to show CSR efforts. This study analyzes how the top 50 American profitable corporations from the Fortune 500 of 2009 communicate their CSR initiatives to different stakeholders through their corporate websites. To do this, an evaluation framework has been designed to examine features presented in CSR corporate websites.     

How U.S. state tourism offices use online newsrooms and social media in media relations

This study examined the use of online newsrooms on U.S. state tourism websites. A content analysis of 50 state tourism websites was conducted to investigate the availability of online newsrooms as well as their contents and overall usability. The social media availability on the state tourism websites was also analyzed. The results revealed that most state tourism websites provide online newsrooms to media but many of them do not meet the needs of journalists in terms of usability, content availability, and information distribution. All of the websites integrated at least one type of social media; the most commonly used were Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Flickr. The detailed results by state and implications are discussed.     

Online strategic communication: A cross-cultural analysis of U.S. and Chinese corporate websites

This study applied a cultural divergence approach to examine online marketing interactivity and corporate public image on corporate websites. It analyzed different online strategic communication of corporate websites from two different nations—the United States and China. Results indicated that U.S. corporations were more likely to highlight online marketing interactivity and social responsibility, which integrated marketing and public relations as their online communication strategy. Chinese corporations provided more online spaces for the consumer–consumer interactions and emphasized corporation-oriented information.     

PR practitioners’ use of social media tools and communication technology

As social media moves from “buzz word” status to strategic tool, more practitioners are developing skills related to this online communication technology. This study surveyed working public relations practitioners about their adoption of 18 social media tools and their perception on the growth of social media trends in public relations practice. Results provide an overview of the adoption of social media, as a whole, in the industry.     

Health and commercialism: a content analysis of popular Chinese children's websites

This paper analyzed 113 popular children's websites and the children's sections of general websites in China. It also examined 511 ads that appeared on the homepages of these websites. Commercialism and health concerns were the primary focus of the analysis. The results showed that these websites did not adequately protect children's health and privacy online. Less than 20% of the websites surveyed contained any type of health warning. Nearly half of the websites collected personal information from children, but only a handful of them asked for parental permission. Each website hosted more than four ads on its homepage, most of which were graphical and unlabeled. The implications of this negligence for mitigation actions are discussed.     

Parenting and Digital Media: From the Early Web to Contemporary Digital Society

Parents have accessed websites, online discussion forums and blogs for advice, information and support since the early days of the World Wide Web. In this article, we review the literature in sociology and related social research addressing the ways in which digital media have been used for parenting‐related purposes. We begin with the longer‐established media of parenting websites, online discussion forums, blogs, email, mobile phones and message and video services and then move on to the newer technologies of social media and apps. This is followed by a section on data privacy and security issues. The concluding section summarises some major issues arising from the review and points to directions for further research.     

Is your church “liked” on Facebook? Social media use of Christian congregations in the United States

Despite the increasing interests in social media platforms among religious congregations, little is known about the patterns of these organizations' social media use. This study examines religious congregations' adoption of Facebook, using the data from the 2012 National Congregations Study. The results show that Christian congregations' involvement in nonreligious activities, both social service and political activities, predicts their Facebook adoption. Congregations' membership size and staff resources are also positively associated with their Facebook use. Other organizational characteristics, including religious tradition, clergyperson's age, and urban location, also explain congregations' Facebook use. Overall, the findings suggest that Christian congregations' adoption of social media platforms is closely related with their community outreach and social marketing activities as well as their resources. This study concludes with suggestions for narrowing the gap in social media use between resource‐rich and resource‐restricted congregations, as well as between urban and rural congregations.     

An analysis of the mobile readiness and dialogic principles on Fortune 500 mobile websites

With the rise in mobile technologies, companies must be aware of how various stakeholders are using their websites through their mobile devices. Using a content analysis, this study analyzed the five dialogic principles of Fortune 500 websites accessed from mobile phones and also assessed their mobile readiness. While most companies did not have mobile websites, more non-mobile websites featured the dialogic principles due to their targeting of multiple stakeholders as mobile websites appeared to be more customer-centric.     

University websites and dialogic features for building relationships with potential students

Using Kent and Taylor's dialogic principles, a content analysis of 232 university websites was conducted. Results indicate that liberal arts institutions tend to use more dialogic web features than national doctoral universities. Tier 3 institutions have a more significant number of dialogic website features than Tier 4 institutions. Finally, a small correlation was found between the use of dialogic features on the websites and higher rates of student retention and alumni giving.     

Corporate citizenship and public relations: The importance and interactivity of social responsibility issues on corporate websites

Recently, corporate responsibility has become a prominent issue internationally. It has also become a research priority in public relations, having been considered one of the key aspects of that field for decades. Several studies have shown the importance of the Internet and of corporate websites as public relations tools and the growing relevance of corporate websites for communicating approaches to corporate responsibility. This paper discusses the importance of corporate responsibility information on those websites, and their levels of interactivity. The authors have designed a specific tool to analyse these aspects of corporate websites.     

Portuguese PR consultancy websites: Content and presence

The overall objective of this work is to understand the online presence of Portuguese PR, Consultancies associated with APECOM by undertaking an analysis of the content and features of their, websites. This analysis will demonstrate how the PR Consultancies are promoting themselves and their, services.     

Youth in Foster Care and Social Media: A Framework for Developing Privacy Guidelines

Although youth in foster care most likely use social media websites, there appears to be a lack of policy guidelines related to this use. When one considers youth in foster care, the state's mandate to provide safety, and foster parents' rights to exercise parenting responsibilities, the notion of privacy and the use of social media becomes complex. Critical Systems Heuristics will be introduced as a tool in developing policy recommendations. An application of this framework will be provided which can serve as a guide for an agency or workgroup tasked with developing policy guidelines for social media use by youth in foster care.     

Constructing the digital patient: Patient organizations and the development of health websites

In order to understand the constraints and challenges of realizing the democratic potentials of the Internet, this paper focuses on the attempts of three Dutch patient organizations to develop health websites. The authors describe how these patient organizations had to overcome specific barriers to develop their digital services. All three organizations faced certain constraints that had negative consequences for the plans they wanted to realize. Lack of financial resources and manpower were the main reasons why these patient organizations could not develop interactive parts of their website or provide personal advice services. Other barriers the patient organizations had to overcome were getting access to digital expertise to build the websites. The paper shows that the development of a website is a very demanding task, even for patient organizations that have in-house expertise with computers and Internet. Moreover, the paper shows that patient organizations do not consider the involvement of patients as crucial for the design of health websites. This research thus confirms previous research findings that users, in this case patients, are largely absent from the design process of information and communication technologies Finally, the paper shows how patient organizations' websites contribute to a redefinition of the patient from being a passive actor towards one who is an active participant in his or her care.     

Career Outcomes Data From Social Media: Examining Quality in Current Practices

Social media websites contain information that can be used to assess career outcomes. Yet, questions remain about the quality of this data source. This study examined social media data collected from a large sample of recent college graduates (N = 3,094), considering how well those data represented the broader population of graduates and to what extent social media data matched survey responses on 5 employment variables. Results indicated that indiscriminately using social media data can lead to biased inferences about career outcomes. Specifically, social media data matched survey data in just 67% to 76% of comparisons. Despite these limitations, findings also revealed strategies to improve agreement between data sources, leading to more trustworthy inferences about career outcomes from social media. Results indicate a need to heighten practitioner awareness of data quality issues related to career outcomes data sources. A framework for examining data quality is offered, with suggested directions for future research.