Apps4Africa: A new State Department public diplomacy initiative

In 2010 the U.S. State Department funded an “Apps4Africa” contest to encourage development of socially conscious mobile applications for Africa. The initiative marked a significant departure from traditional public diplomacy efforts to expand diplomatic outreach beyond traditional government-to-government relationships. This case study analyses Apps4Africa to reveal its appropriateness as a model for future efforts and concludes Apps4Africa succeeded primarily because it responded to the changing dynamics of the 21st Century.     

Social media adoption among Turkish public relations professionals: A survey of practitioners

Social media is emerging as an important public relations tool and empowers two way symmetrical communications with publics and stakeholders. PR professionals are confronted with the swift rise of social media that forces practitioners to pay due and timely attention. They are not only excited about utilizing these tools together with conventional media, but are also excited about speaking directly to their publics and stakeholders without the involvement of any intermediaries. Through the perspective of UTAUT model, this paper examines the social media adoption of PR professionals in Turkey and how they employ social media tools both internally and externally. We employed a web-based questionnaire to 126 PR professionals who are members of the Turkish Public Relations Association. Findings reveal that Turkish PR professionals highly appreciate the importance of social media in recent PR practice. However, not all social media tools are equally adopted; e-mail is the most, and virtual world applications are the least adopted social media. It is also found that in the future, social networks are expected to be the most important social media, while corporate web sites get the second and mobile phone (PDA) applications get the third rank.     

Development of professional roles in the practice of public relations in Chile

Using survey responses of 577 public relation practitioners, this article examines role conceptions in Chilean public relations, as well as the effects that different individual and organizational factors have on their professional worldviews. The results show that how Chilean practitioners perceive their roles can be grouped into four different types: the long-term strategic, the short-term technical, the passive-complaisant, and the active-vigilant. In general terms, Chilean public relations practitioners distance themselves from the passive-complaisant role, giving greater importance to the other three. The findings also reveal that gender, education level, job commitment, perceived autonomy, organization type, and geographical location are the factors that better predict Chilean PR professional roles, while hierarchy level and organization's reach do not directly affect their perceptions.     

Public relations and community: A persistent covenant

In the 21st Century global public relations professional community, the need for a postmodern reformation is compellingly evident. Most theorizing begins with basic assumptions about the three main social actors for which public relations has been practiced: (1) corporations, (2) nongovernmental and civil society organizations (NGOs and CSOs), and (3) governments. Questions about society itself are rarely examined, but when they do come up, scholars and practitioners tend to assume generally accepted values and mores. Neglected has been a robust criticism of the concepts upon which such paradigms have been built.     

Institutionalizing public relations in China: A sociological analysis of the Chinese Premier's Press Conference

Unlike previous studies that focus on the problems of public relations management, this study tackles the institutionalization of PR in China from a sociological perspective. Through the process of social construction, public relations is institutionalized according to changes in the larger environment, making use of different sources of legitimation. Focusing on the evolution of the Chinese Premier's Press Conference (CPPC), this study finds that the institutionalization of PR in China, especially in the realm of governmental practices, has varied in its structure, settings and contents, which are mixed with informal features within the Chinese social–political context. The CPPC has become a venue for top-down publicity for the powers that be. Because the organizational structure of the CPPC is more centralized than that of other governmental institutions, the form and content of its PR communications are mostly predictable. However, it is the process of the institutionalization of the CPPC that is revealing of how the Chinese government rationalizes its authority and legitimacy.     

Trains,chains, blame,and elephant appeal: A case study of the public relations significance of Mary the Elephant

Using the media coverage of the hanging of Mary the Elephant, the purposes of this article are to discuss the major implications of the press agentry model of public relations, the impact of corporate decisions on the reputation of its surrounding community, and how the values related to societal issues such as animal cruelty change over time. Findings reveal that public pressure, intense police attention, and the counsel of a master press agent led the circus owner to make the decision to hang Mary and ultimately adulterate the reputation of the town of Erwin, Tennessee indefinitely.     

“Either Side of Delphy Bridge”: A deep mapping project evoking and engaging the lives of older adults in rural North Cornwall

This article reports on work to date by an arts practice-led research team exploring older adults’ conceptions of, and connectivity with, the physical, social and cultural landscapes in which they locate themselves. The team is based at the Department of Art and Design, University of the West of England (UWE) and has conducted fieldwork, interviews and small-scale interactions in an area of rural North Cornwall with a view to “deep mapping” older adults’ “lived landscapes” using a variety of practical methods derived from creative arts practices, critical reflection on deep mapping, ethnographic approaches, and referencing a range of theoretical positions. The project forms part of a work package within “Grey and Pleasant Land? An interdisciplinary exploration of the connectivity of older people in rural civic society” (abbreviated below as GaPL), funded by the UK Cross-Research Council ‘New Dynamics of Ageing’ Programme. In what follows we will describe and critically discuss the fieldwork undertaken and the various ways in which the performative interactions and the creative multimedia evocations that draw on the team’s interactions with older people might extend the growing dialogue between deep mapping, visual and other innovative ethnographies, and critical gerontology.     

The Brazilian organic food sector: Prospects and constraints of facilitating the inclusion of smallholders

The Brazilian organic food sector has experienced important growth during the last two decades. Brazilian smallholders, however, are facing huge challenges to enter and benefit from this growth in a sustainable way. Combining the lens of New Institutional Economics and socio-anthropology, we analyze six experiences of Brazilian smallholders who converted to organics in the 1990s’. Three different food systems are featured in this analysis: an alternative food system, which is strongly interwoven with the Brazilian Agro-ecological movement and two commercial food procurement systems oriented towards domestic and an export markets driven mainly by supermarket chains. The analytical focus was on 1) the governance of these food systems, 2) the constraints farmers are facing within these food systems and, 3) the benefits that they can expect from market inclusion. We highlighted the roles that NGOs, Faith-based organizations and public-related agencies play in supporting the inclusion of smallholders into all three food systems. We confirmed the arguments in support of pursuing the agro-ecological development based model in Brazil, but underlined that there is a critical lack of support for farmers included in the commercial market-oriented food systems. Such a lack is even more critical as the food systems driven by expanding supermarket chains are characterized by strong asymmetric power relations at the expense of smallholders. Considering the reluctance of NGOs and Faith-based organizations to support these farmers, we call for efforts to be made to provide a policy framework to enable public-related entities to secure sustainable inclusion into these systems and exit strategies for those experiencing exclusion from these highly competitive food systems.     

Interculturalism and the pendulum of identity

This article offers a critical appraisal of the role played by cultural identity in intercultural bilingual Arabic–Hebrew schools in Israel. While engineered as oases of interculturalism amidst a life of ethnic segregation, such schools ultimately confront serious difficulties in escaping the constraints of identity politics and representation. This is expressed by the leading part that group identity plays in the schools’ everyday life. By drawing on the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze, we argue that this state of affairs diminishes the potential of the intercultural encounter to overcome emotional and conceptual inhibitions reigning in larger society. Interculturalism, in order to distance itself from a politics of ressentiment that can only restrict its capacity to flourish, needs to place itself before representation.     

Limits to “Jewish power”: how Slovak Jewish leaders negotiated restitution of property after the Second World War

This article examines how Jewish leaders in post-war Slovakia negotiated the restitution of property with the legislative and executive powers in Bratislava and Prague. The Jewish leaders were affiliated with two Slovak Jewish organisations founded in 1945: the Central Union of Jewish Religious Communities in Slovakia (Ústredný sväz ?idovských nábo?enských obci na Slovensku, ÚS?NO) and the Organisation of Victims of Racial Persecution at the Hands of the Fascist Regime in Bratislava (Sdru?enie fa?istickým re?imom rasovo prenasledovaných v Bratislave, SRP). The Secretary General of the SRP, Dr Vojtech Winterstein, was the main voice negotiating and promoting the interests of the post-war Jewish community. His invaluable collection of documents – the Winterstein collection – provides the source base for this article.