Tweeting about emergency: A semantic network analysis of government organizations’ social media messaging during Hurricane Harvey

While social media like Twitter have been increasingly adopted by public-sector organizations, it remains less explored as to how government and emergency management (EM) organizations use these platforms to communicate with the public in response to emerging natural disasters. Extending the Situational Crisis Communication Theory (SCCT) to the realm of social media, this study examines the emerging semantic networks from 67 government and EM organizations’ official tweets during Hurricane Harvey over a three-week period. It identifies how multiple crisis response strategies—including instructing information, adjusting information, and bolstering—are constituted of different issues, actions, and organizational actors before, during, and immediately after the disaster event. Results suggest that government agencies use the strategy of instructing information predominantly before and during the disaster, whereas adjusting information and bolstering strategies are utilized more during post-disaster recovery. The study offers theoretical and practical implications of using a semantic network approach to studying organizational crisis responses.     

Examining multiplicity and dynamics of publics’ crisis narratives with large-scale Twitter data

The new reality of networked publics on social media calls for crisis communication practitioners and researchers to understand the narratives generated by publics on social media during organizational crises. As social media publics possess diverse, unique characteristics and communicative needs during a crisis, they form interpretative communities and co-create various symbolic interpretations of the crisis. Extending the public-centric and narrative perspective to the context of social media crises, we examined what crisis narratives were constructed by social media publics (i.e., multiplicity) and how these narratives changed by crisis stages (i.e., dynamics). Using topic modelling based on large-scale Twitter data of the Chipotle E. coli crisis (N?=?40,610), we identified ten narratives subsumed under two themes (i.e., sharing-based and conversation-based) based on publics’ social constructions of their perceived risks and crisis experience. On the one hand, sharing-based narratives, heavily impacted by publics’ shared media coverage, reflected media crisis narratives and salient risk perceptions aligning with the news agenda. On the other hand, conversation-based narratives, fueled by publics’ opinion expression and emotional venting, demonstrated publics’ interpretations of their experience with the organization in the crisis with less salient but more diversified risk perceptions. Crisis managers are recommended to produce and deliver compelling narratives resonating with different groups of social media publics during crises.     

Revisiting gendered assumptions of practitioner power: An exploratory study examining the role of social media expertise

The purpose of this exploratory study was to expand upon previous literatures in public relations power, and fill the need for more scholarship regarding practitioners’ perceptions of social media work, power, and gender. Findings from a survey of PRSA members showed that there is a gendered difference in power perception between males and females regardless of their PR roles or level of experience, but social media expertise was perceived equally between both genders. We argue that while social media expertise may serve to reduce a gendered power divide in public relations, continued critical exploration of social media and gender inequality is necessary.     

Focusing on Focusing Events: Event Selection,Media Coverage,and the Dynamics of Contentious Meaning‐Making

Despite the prevalent assumption among scholars of social movements and contentious politics that transformative contentious events are also the focus of public attention and discussion, there has been little attempt to substantiate this. After making a case for why to focus on focusing events and suggesting that these events should be thought of as products of a dialogical contentious meaning‐making process, we develop a coverage attribute‐based method for identifying focusing events. For illustrative purposes, we apply our method to the coverage of contentious events during the “first” intifada by Israeli‐Jewish, Jewish settler, and Palestinian newspapers. Findings from analyses of 11,868 news items reveal that newspapers are likely to strategically quiet contentious events that are strategically amplified by newspapers affiliated with opposing or targeted parties, and vice versa, depending on their interpretation of these events as political opportunities or threats. Analyses of variations across and within contending parties reveal the role of structure and agency in the dialogical seesaw‐like dynamics of contentious meaning‐making.     

浅谈我国体育新闻如何避免侵犯人格权

体育新闻要起到舆论监督作用,就必须做到内容的公开透明,这就会与体育名人的人格权相冲突。本文在分析体育新闻自身特点与体育名人的人格权的基础上,探寻了冲突产生的原因。在现实的新闻报道中,经常会有媒体侵犯体育名人的权益的事件发生,对体育名人的姓名权、肖像权、名誉权、荣誉权、人身自由权、隐私权等造成影响。本文从新闻立法和媒体自律两个方面着手,具体阐述了如何避免侵犯体育名人人格权的方法,具有一定的现实意义。     

新媒体环境下大学生写作方式的改变及其影响

随着新媒体的发展与普及,大学生中形成了各种新的文化景观,最明显的是他们对文化的认知方式、思维模式和表达手段正发生着改变。以在大学生群体中的相关社会调查为依据,考察了新媒体环境下大学生写作方式的变化和影响,研究了大学生的新媒体写作与传统文学和写作教学的关系。文章认为,新媒体的发展虽然对大学生写作的媒介运用、内容表达、传播方式等方面带来了巨大变化和深刻影响,但大学生的写作也仍然受传统文学和写作形式的文化制约,大学的文学与写作教学需要顺应时代发展形势,将新媒体写作尽快纳入到教学体系之中去。     

新媒体对当代青年工作的影响及对策

新媒体时代的到来,对人们的生活方式、交往方式和工作方式都产生了重要的影响。青年是当前社会中最为活跃的群体,新媒体对青年的影响最为突出。新媒体在满足青年求知、交流需要的同时,也深刻地影响着他们的价值取向和行为模式,如果得不到正确引导,容易对生活、学习和工作带来不良影响。青年对新媒体的广泛涉入和新媒体对青年的重要影响,为做好当前青年工作提供诸多机遇,同时,也带来了众多挑战。因此,根据新时期青年发展的特点和规律,及时总结运用新媒体引导青年的工作实践和经验,对存在的问题提出思考和建议,对做好新形势下的青年工作具有重要意义。     

新闻媒介舆论引导力的内在特征及其运作机制

舆论引导是新闻媒介的基本社会功能之一,舆论引导力的高低决定舆论引导的效果。从舆论的形成及传播、导向来看,新闻媒介舆论引导力由事实报道能力、舆情研判能力、意见整合能力、新闻舆论传播能力、社会舆论导控能力等五要素构成。在新闻媒介的舆论引导实践运用中,这五要素相互融合、相互影响、相互作用,共同形成舆论引导力的有机共同体,并以合力的方式作用于舆论引导的各个环节。     

Multi-method analysis of transparency in social media practices: Survey,interviews and content analysis

With the decline of public trust in corporate America, organizations must consider ways to improve their relationships with key publics. One of the best strategies to build trust is through engaging in transparent communication (Rawlins, 2009). The increase in the popularity of social media has brought both challenges and opportunities for organizational transparency. This study used multiple methods to explore whether public relations professionals believe they are using social media to communicate transparently, to investigate how social media can be used to improve transparency along with its benefits and challenges, and to identify how transparency is used in social media campaigns.     

Engaging stakeholders through Twitter: How nonprofit organizations are getting more out of 140 characters or less

While it may seem difficult to communicate in a meaningful manner with 140 characters or less, Twitter users have found creative ways to get the most out of each Tweet by using different communication tools. This paper looks into how 73 nonprofit organizations use Twitter to engage stakeholders not only through their tweets, but also through other various communication methods. Specifically it looks into the organizations utilization of tweet frequency, following behavior, hyperlinks, hashtags, public messages, retweets, and multimedia files. After analyzing 4655 tweets, the study found that the nation's largest nonprofits are not using Twitter to maximize stakeholder involvement. Instead, they continue to use social media as a one-way communication channel as less than 20% of their total tweets demonstrate conversations and roughly 16% demonstrate indirect connections to specific users.