An Analysis of the Relationships Among Structure,Influence, and Gender: Helping to Build a Feminist Theory of Public Relations

Feminist public relations scholars have suggested that the organizational context may be to blame for the powerlessness of some female public relations practitioners. This study assessed this claim by using feminist theory and a structural framework. This study tested whether the perceived organizational influence of men and women in corporate public relations was related to formal structural power, relationship power, or gender. Women had less formal structural power than men, but there were no gender differences in relationship power or influence. Consistent with feminist hypothesizing as well as the structural framework, practitioners' influence was related to both their formal structural power and relationship power-but not gender.     

Of Art and Drudgery: Homekeeping,Martha Stewart,and Techné

Stewart’s voice is an exceptionally influential viewpoint in how we imagine and construct the twenty-first century North American home. In an era where more women than men attend college and where women make up a (slim) majority of the workforce, Stewart’s popularity is baffling to many. Locating Stewart within North American traditions of domestic advice, the author investigates how Stewart frames domestic arts as techné, arguing that Stewart’s profitability and popularity are so robust and wide-reaching because she rescues domestic arts from denigration, refiguring homekeeping as a techné of worth and importance. This article provides a framework for understanding the meaningful ways domesticity and design function as an ethics of daily life, problematizing the gendered dichotomy between production and consumption.     

The Problems of Public Relations: Eisenhower,Latin America and the Potential Lessons for the Bush Administration

Abstract

Accompanied by intense media interest, President George W. Bush visited Latin America in March 2007. The trip, it seemed, was a rather obvious attempt to try and improve inter-American relations by demonstrating that the US did care about is neighbours to the South; to counter the seemingly endless bad press and repair some of the damage done to the American brand by Bush's policies and the influence of Venezuelan president, Hugo Chávez. As this article will demonstrate, though, this was reminiscent of another era: that of the 1950s and the presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower. Throughout his eight years in office, Eisenhower would consistently use public relations operations as a way of improving inter-American relations. However, the intense problems that this eventually brought about suggest that the present administration may have been misguided in its attempts to follow a similar path to its Republican predecessor's.     

Newspaper Editors' Perceptions of Public Relations: How Business,News, and Sports Editors Differ

In this study, I develop a feminist theory of public relations by explaining discrimination against female practitioners and positing an agenda for change. Thirty-seven "long" interviews and three focus groups conducted with female practitioners revealed that major obstacles for women are marginalization of public relations, problems stemming from male dominance at work, women's "balancing" act between career and family, and gender stereotypes. Solutions for overcoming barriers are proposed for society, organizations, public relations, and women.     

Comparing the Decision Structures of Public Relations Agencies and Clients

In this study, I use K. R. Hammond's version of social judgment theory (Hammond, Stewart, Brehmer, & Steinmann, 1975) to examine the conscious and covert judgment patterns of a group of public relations agency consultants and their clients. Respondents assessed 30 hypothetical public relations proposals that combined different mixtures of five decision factors: cost effectiveness, measurability, image support, marketing support, and feasibility. Analysis based on the lens model equation revealed that both groups emphasized bottom-line considerations over less quantifiable ones; that clients, more than agency professionals, understood how they valued the decision factors and acted on that knowledge; that the two groups' subjectively specified judgment weights showed closer agreement than their actual decisions about public relations plans; and that flawed self-understanding and inconsistent decision making, particularly among agency professionals, accounted for most disagreement in practice.     

Names in the News

Linda Rosenberg, longtime president and CEO of the National Council for Behavioral Health, who announced she would be leaving almost a year ago (see ADAW, April 30, 2018), will be replaced by Chuck Ingoglia, who has been in charge of public policy at the Washington, D.C.–based group since 2005, on June 1. “On behalf of the National Council Board of Directors, I am pleased to announce that after a comprehensive national selection process, the board is delighted to appoint Chuck Ingoglia to the role of president and CEO,” said Jeff Richardson, chair of the board of directors. Richardson said Ingoglia's more than 20 years experience in behavioral health policy made him “the clear choice to lead the National Council into the future.” Prior to joining the National Council, Ingoglia provided policy and program design guidance to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration; he also directed state government relations and service system improvement projects for the National Mental Health Association (now Mental Health America), served as a policy analyst for the National Association of Social Workers and designed educational programs for mental health and addictions professionals at the Association for Ambulatory Behavioral Healthcare. “We are very grateful to Linda for 15 years of outstanding leadership and fortunate that Chuck has accepted the position. Chuck is a proven leader and the best choice from a deep pool of interested and highly qualified candidates from across the country,” said Richardson. “His vision and strategy are exactly what the National Council needs as we enter our next chapter.”     

Who Do You Say That I Am? A History of How Religion Communicators Have Often Avoided “Public Relations”

ABSTRACT

This article argues that Religion Communicators Council members have historically avoided identification with public relations—especially practices associated with Edward Bernays. Council members appear to consider Bernays’ research-based approach evil and manipulative. Instead, religion communicators follow in Ivy Lee's footsteps. The one-time journalist promised to provide honest, accurate news about his clients, not advertising. Comments in council documents have shown that since 1929 members describe themselves more as technicians and in-house journalists who provide news about their organizations than as management-level public relations counsels. These comments reflect Lee's 1905 Declaration of Principles and a public-information approach to public relations.     

Challenging assumptions of international public relations: When government is the most important public

To learn more about international public relations it is important to explore the assumptions underlying each nation's practice. Through such analysis, we learn that many of the assumptions that guide Western theories and practices are not applicable in other regions of the world. This article examines one assumption—that the practice of public relations targets a variety of key organizational publics. In many developing nations it is government officials rather than the general public who are of greatest importance to effective public relations. If government is the most important public in developing nations, then this relationship will influence the practice of public relations.Maureen Taylor is an Assistant Professor of Communication at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey. Michael Kent is an Assistant Professor of Communication at SUNY-Fredonia in Fredonia, New York.     

Conundrum of Sexual Decision Making in Marital Relationships: Safer-Sex Knowledge,Behavior, and Attitudes of Married Women in Zambia

Recent research suggests that Zambian women face an increasing risk of contracting human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) within marital relationships. Married women's perceived ability to negotiate safer sex or adopt self-efficacy practices is recognized as critical in preventing new infections within marriage. Yet women's self-efficacy practices, such as requesting condom use or refusing sex within marriage, are influenced by individual and context-specific factors. Using the 2007 Zambia Demographic and Health Survey data from 4,306 married women, this article examines the association between married women's perceived ability to negotiate safer sex and a range of attitudinal, knowledge, and sociodemographic variables. Results from complementary log-log regression models reveal that married women who have factual knowledge about HIV transmission and prevention, as well as those who have been tested for their HIV serostatus, were more likely to report they can request that their husbands use a condom. Rural married women were more likely to report they can refuse their husbands sex compared to woman in urban areas. Likewise, married women who agree that a wife is justified in refusing her husband sex if he sleeps with other women were more likely to report they can negotiate safer sex compared to women who disagree. These findings suggest that married women are able to negotiate safer sex if they have correct factual knowledge about HIV transmission and are aware of their rights within marital relations.     

The change process to agile public relations

Despite agility’s increased importance for public relations, the change process from traditional, hierarchically structured public relations to a dynamic agile entity has not yet been comprehensively investigated. This article tackles the research desideratum by discussing this change process from a structuration-theoretical perspective. The subsequent empirical analyses via two qualitative studies from the field of corporate communications focus on the perspective of consultants. These experts support the communication management in this change process with their expertise and neutrality, which the public relations departments themselves lack. Thus, consultants are key contacts for an explorative analysis of the change process toward more agility. In the first study, 39 consultants were interviewed about the change processes that they have guided in order to transform public relations into an agile department. The subsequent case study focuses on an internationally active medical technology manufacturer and analyzes their experience with consulting throughout the agile change process in their public relations department. The results show that the concept of recursiveness is central to the successful implementation of agility in public relations. Expressed in the language of structuration theory, consultants aim to develop rules and resources as modalities that describe an agile structure and then translate them directly into actions. These modalities are continuously developed via sprints, a dynamic process that results in the constant adaptation of the agile structures until the desired result is achieved. The results illustrate the advantages of a neutral, outside authority for the implementation of such a change process.     

创新工作理念真情服务妇女——专访四川省妇联主席吴旭

1970年出生的吴旭,是个土生土长的“川妹子”,她对家乡以及这片土地上的妇女姐妹有着深厚的感情。在她看来,四川是中国国情的一个缩影,多民族、地域辽阔、地理复杂,且全省4500多万妇女60％左右在农村,造成妇女需求多元化、妇女工作点多面广,挑战极大。她希望可以借鉴各国在管理和服务妇女方面的工作经验,努力建设服务型、学习型的妇联组织,为发展当地妇女事业争取更大的空间。     

Socially distributing public relations: Twitter,Haiti, and interactivity in social media

Social media and communication technology have shifted the power of communication from public relations practitioners to social media users who may not have a recognized role or defined interest in an organization. What results is a social model of public relations in which traditional public relations responsibilities are distributed to social media users, and which depends on interactivity, legitimacy, and a user's social stake. This study explores social public relations through a qualitative analysis of user involvement on Twitter regarding relief efforts to support Haiti following the 7.0 earthquake that hit Port-Au-Prince in January, 2010. This analysis of Twitter posts also expands understanding of interactivity online and demonstrates social media user fulfillment of public relations objectives.     

The definition,dimensions, and domain of public relations

By not developing a widely accepted definition and a central organizing principle or paradigm, the field of public relations has left itself vulnerable (1) to other fields that are making inroads into public relations' traditional domain, and (2) to critics who are filling in their own definitions of public relations. While opportunities abound, public relations is unlikely to fulfill its promise until it is willing and able to identify its fundamental nature and scope. This article proposes a definition (“managing strategic relationships”), along with a three-dimensional framework, with which to compare competing philosophies of public relations and from which to build a paradigm for the field.Dr. James G. Hutton teaches marketing and public relations at Fairleigh Dickinson University in northern New Jersey, just outside New York City.     

The fear of public relations in foreign affairs: an examination of the 1963 Fulbright Hearings into foreign agents

Public relations has long been looked at with suspicion given its use of persuasion to influence public opinion. That suspicion turns to fear when public relations is linked to propaganda. The 1963 Senate Foreign Relations Committee's investigation into the Foreign Agents Registration Act provides an opportunity to explore the fear of the public's susceptibility to propaganda and the perceived role of public relations in shaping public opinion. Public relations practitioners working for foreign clients were portrayed in the hearings as mercenaries who worked behind the scenes to influence American foreign policy.     

Practitioner Roles,Public Relations Education,and Professional Socialization: An Exploratory Study

This study builds on the body of literature about public relations practitioner roles by examining the relationship of workplace socialization and formal public relations education to idealized practitioner roles. Data come from an exploratory survey of public relations students and practitioners. As in several previous studies, two main practitioner roles were identified, corresponding to the communication manager and communication technician roles. Formal public relations education was associated with the manager role type, but professional socialization in the workplace was not.     

为了150万藏区妇女的福祉——专访西藏自治区妇联主席江措拉姆

“做妇女工作，尤其需要爱心、责任心、平常心。”西藏妇联主席江措拉姆说。她做过畜牧专业的技术人员，又在县和工、县委书记等基层职位上接受过历练，2013年进入妇联工作，丰富的履历让她对妇女工作有着深刻的感受。     

Martha Stewart behaving Badly: Parody and the symbolic meaning of style1

This study addresses the issue of how to correlate social meaning with linguistic style through an investigation of the parodic speech genre. The analysis examines two parodies of lifestyle entrepreneur Martha Stewart and compares linguistic strategies used in parodies of Stewart to her own linguistic performance on her talk show. Features considered include phonological characteristics, lexical items, politeness strategies, and voice quality. A comparative quantitative analysis of aspirated and released /t/ as employed by Stewart and her parodist reveals that a variable feature of Stewart's style is rendered categorical in the parody. It is demonstrated that both parodies exploit elements associated with Stewart's ‘Good Woman’ image in order to expose Stewart as a ‘Bad Woman’, a reputation she earned for her 2003 insider trading conviction. This study suggests that parodic performance may serve to strengthen and even iconize indexical connections between stylistic variants and their social meaning in particular contexts.     

Vision and state health department public relations practitioners: Prepared to lead?

Visions are important to organizational effectiveness. Although providing vision has been identified as one of the behaviors that best captures organization-wide public relations leadership, little public relations research has focused on vision. Similarly, state health departments have drawn little interest among public relations scholars even though states are a central part of the nation's public health system. This study addressed the perceptions of the top public relations professionals at state health departments concerning vision and their involvement in the visioning process. The practitioners were nearly unanimous in their belief that organizational visions are important. However, results indicate that some top public relations practitioners at state health departments are not prepared to make optimal contributions to the visioning process. In order to take full advantage of opportunities to serve as organization-wide leaders, public relations practitioners should seek out information about visioning in order help chart their organization's future and enhance their careers.     

Palestinian National Authority's public relations policies relating to Israel: Current attitudes among Palestinian officials and media experts

This study investigates attitudes about Palestinian public relations policies during the Palestinian struggle in the Israeli media war and future challenges that will face the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) in public relations planning. This study shows that Palestinian groups have mixed attitudes toward PNA's public relations plans and policies. The media experts tend to see the PNA's efforts as reactive, not pro-active. The experts think that PNA's main concern has been to follow up on daily political events, and thus its approach to public relations has been more of a reaction to Israeli practices rather than a strategic pro-active plan.     

Sex Composition,Masculinity Stereotype Dissimilarity and the Quality of Men's Workplace Social Relations

Previous research suggests that the quality of men's work group social relations varies depending on the sex composition of the work unit. Previous studies also suggest that men derive different benefits from working with other men than with women and that the higher status associated with men and masculinity advantages men in their relations with women workers. Previous sex composition studies tell us little, however, about the extent to which the quality of men's work group social relations with women and other men depends on how well a man fits dominant masculinity stereotypes. Drawing on sex composition and gender constructionist approaches to gender and work I investigate in this study the effects of men's individual similarity to masculinity stereotypes on the affective quality of their social relations with coworkers, given the sex composition of their work groups. The data for this study consist of male, mostly white, non‐faculty employees of a public university in the northwest United States. I discuss my results in terms of both individual outcomes and implications for understanding sex and gender inequalities in work organizations.