Help or hype: Symbolic or behavioral communication during Hurricane Katrina

Public relations professionals increasingly rely on the World Wide Web to communicate with their publics on a variety of issues, including the corporate social responsibility (CSR) efforts the organization has undertaken. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, there is an opportunity to discover how the Best 100 Global Brands used their corporate websites and the power of their brand equity to help the victims of the disaster, as well as to communicate their own CSR efforts. Results show that 51% of these Top 100 firms had messages on their homepages about Hurricane Katrina, and 86% of those firms made donations totaling $105,000,000. The remaining 14% of firms exhibited symbolic communication only, with links to philanthropic organizations aiding rescue efforts.     

An analysis of other countries’ international public relations in the U.S.

The purpose of this study was to examine the various aspects of international public relations by other countries in the U.S. Based on the Foreign Agency Registration Act (FARA) report in 2002, this study analyzed client, activity types, purpose of activity, and key U.S. partners for activity. This study found that (1) business organizations and central governments were major clients of international public relations in the U.S., (2) meeting with governmental officials and congressional leaders was the primary type of activity followed by information dissemination, and (3) economic purpose led by trade promotion was the primary motive for these activities.     

Qualified privilege: A defense for the public relations function

Technology continues to challenge the public relations practitioner to find ways to inform key constituents. The new technology has given rise to the “new journalism” that includes a declining traditional media and exploding internet media filled with websites and bloggers. The question posed by this research asks: Does the public relations practitioner inherit the same protection offered by “qualified privilege” that is most often associated with the traditional “press” or “reporter?” The research lays a foundation with an examination of defamation and the defense of qualified privilege. The research concludes that if information gathered by the public relations practitioner meets the “intent” and “content” tests, the information qualifies as news. Passing the “news” test, the defense of “qualified privilege” also attaches to the public relations practitioner.     

Low dose risk estimation via simultaneous statistical inferences

Summary.  The paper develops and studies simultaneous confidence bounds that are useful for making low dose inferences in quantitative risk analysis. Application is intended for risk assessment studies where human, animal or ecological data are used to set safe low dose levels of a toxic agent, but where study information is limited to high dose levels of the agent. Methods are derived for estimating simultaneous, one-sided, upper confidence limits on risk for end points measured on a continuous scale. From the simultaneous confidence bounds, lower confidence limits on the dose that is associated with a particular risk (often referred to as a bench-mark dose ) are calculated. An important feature of the simultaneous construction is that any inferences that are based on inverting the simultaneous confidence bounds apply automatically to inverse bounds on the bench-mark dose.     

Local spatial data infrastructure, Trujillo-Peru

The development of a Municipal Information System, or currently better known as a local spatial data infrastructure, is considered complex due to the required inter-institutional relationships. In many developing countries Geographical Information Systems (GISs) are introduced but the benefits are modest as no changes take place in technical and organisational structure of organisations. Digital databases and computer-aided design (CAD) maps are mushrooming in great variety within different private and public institutions, municipal organisations and even within single departments and with structures similar to the paper period and thus operating on a stand-alone basis.Many national mapping agencies are not able to provide large-scale digital urban base maps, while the absence or low quality of cadastres makes those basic core data sets unavailable or inaccessible. The result is that duplication and incompatible data are frequently observed and also donor-driven stand-alone projects have a limited impact through the lack of institutional embedding and are not able to mature from the project to the institutional level. However, a positive sign is that there is an increasing awareness among data producers and consumers that investments in the development of digital data sets should be combined to reduce costs and increase benefits from especially GIS, and information and communication technology (ICT) in general.Within Trujillo a long-term vision was developed to make full use of ICT and GIS to modernise all operations of the Municipality to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of its tasks. However, large investments are not feasible due to the very limited municipal budgets. To guarantee the support of the municipal council, short-term results are required. This paper describes three ‘products’ as part of the vision to develop through a step-by-step approach a local spatial data infrastructure for Trujillo.The three, rather different, products are:

1. fiscal cadastre, to increase municipal revenues through property taxation;

2. an ‘environmental atlas’ based on a compatible spatial and attribute data sets from a variety of organisations; and

3. a municipal website with interactive GIS and meta data information.

The paper concludes with some comments on the institutional and political requirements for the successful development of a local spatial data infrastructure and stresses that such an infrastructure is not a product but an incremental development process that will progress only in case such a process is simple, cost effective, user-friendly, and flexible with clear products.Political interest and institutional stability and genuine interest for inter-institutional cooperation will add much to the success of this process.     

浅谈生态伦理及其教育问题

生态道德教育是一个普遍性的社会伦理问题。生态危机的特征 ,生物共同体的联系以及我国生态环境的现状 ,都客观地要求我们必须注重人与自然界的和谐发展 ,加强全民性的生态道德教育。     

开展我国环境审计的新思考

在我国,环境审计对于国家审计、内部审计和民间审计来说都是一个新内容。作为环境管理系统的重要组成部分,环境审计具有重大的意义。因此,建立健全环境审计制度,采取切实可行的措施,是环境管理和环境审计的重要任务。     

公共行政道德建设浅析

实现以德治国,提升整个社会的道德水准,只有加快以限权为中心的政府体制改革,改变政府的不道德作为,推进行政道德的法制化建设,加强行政人员的思想道德教育,建立道德的社会惩戒机制,把道德考核作为职务晋升的重要依据,才能实现高度的政治文明、精神文明和物质文明。     

PKI技术与应用

PKI是基于公钥加密体制的提供公钥加密和数字签名服务的系统或平台,主要由认证中心(CA)、数字证书库、密钥备份及恢复系统、证书撤销处理系统和应用程序接口(API)组成。其中CA是PKI的核心环节,具有证书发放、更新、撤销和验证等功能。PKI技术已在很多领域得到了广泛的应用。     

国内外公共突发事件应对研究述评

本文分别回顾了中外有关社会公共突发事件应急和企业危机管理的研究过程,从纷繁的研究文献中概括了有关突发事件应急的研究框架,认为对突发事件应急的研究可以归纳为静态系统和动态过程两个方面。近十几年来的研究重点主要放在了动态过程的研究上,而对静态系统的研究相对比较薄弱。