Understanding Public Engagement: Conceptualizing and Measuring its Influence on Supportive Behavioral Intentions

The concept of public engagement has suffered from a lack of a clear theoretical definition and sound operationalization. This study conceptualized and operationalized public engagement at the individual level and tested the micro-model of public engagement in relation to key public relations concepts and supportive behavioral intentions. Further, the study tried to bring the affective component into public relations scholarship by introducing engagement as a behavioral motivator that elicits individual publics' supportive behaviors toward an organization. The results showed the proposed 13-item scale of public engagement was sound in reliability and validity and found support for the proposed model as well as the mediation of public engagement.     

Gender and International Marriage Migration

In the last two decades, the growth of intra-regional marriage migration in Asia has stimulated scholarly interest in destination countries. Marriage migration led to social, demographic, and cultural transformations of current and future generations in these countries, and raised new issues in relation to race, ethnicity, gender, class, and nationality. Recent scholarly work on international marriage migration has moved beyond the so-called mail-order bride discourse and has critically examined various aspects of the experiences of women marriage migrants in affinal families, communities, and societies. Influenced by the postcolonial feminist perspective, a great deal of the ethnographic and qualitative research on international marriage migration focuses on women’s agency, the patriarchal and heteronormative underpinnings of marriage, and incongruous gender relations, as well as the dynamics between local transformations and the global political economy.     

Mediation Effects of Organization–Public Relationship Outcomes on Public Intentions for Organizational Supports

The purpose of this study is to demonstrate the value of organization–public relationship (OPR) outcomes by examining the mediation effects of relationship outcomes on key antecedents of stakeholders' support for a not-for-profit organization, which include awareness, attitude, and behavioral intention toward supportive relationship-building. To this end, a survey was conducted with individual donors of a not-for-profit organization. Key findings include strong positive effects of awareness of organizational relationship-building activities in beliefs about OPR outcomes and on the intention to engage in relationship-building, such as giving donations. In addition, this study found that OPR outcomes play a critical role in connecting such effects of awareness to the intention of supportive behaviors.     

From concerned citizens to activists: a case study of 2015 South Korean MERS outbreak and the role of dialogic government communication and citizens’ emotions on public activism

ABSTRACT

This study investigated the cognitive-affective-behavioral sequence of public activism by examining the role of citizens’ perception of government dialogic communication during a national pandemic crisis. Through a case study of the 2015 Middle-East respiratory syndrome (MERS) outbreak in South Korea, the results of a survey of 400 South Korean citizens showed that distrust in government and a high level of situational uncertainty were significantly mitigated by citizens’ perceptions of government efforts for dialogic communication during the crisis. Conversely, when the perception of dialogic government communication was low, high distrust in government increased cynicism, anger, and anxiety among citizens; high situational uncertainty led to higher levels of anger and anxiety, but not cynicism. Consequently, the findings showed that anger, anxiety, and cynicism significantly motivated citizens’ intentions to take actions against the government. Direct and positive effects of anger, anxiety, and cynicism on activism participation were not found and were mediated by the citizens’ activism intentions.     

Exploring crisis communication in the internal context of an organization: Examining moderated and mediated effects of employee-organization relationships on crisis outcomes

This study seeks to foster a greater understanding of effective crisis communication from the internal context of organizations. The present research conducted an online experimental study of 640 full-time employees in the United States. Results through OLS multiple regression and path analysis indicated 1) employee-organization relationships (EOR) and timing strategy of self-disclosure (stealing thunder) were positively associated with the positive internal reputation and employees’ supportive behavioral intentions, 2) the positive effects of EOR on the employees’ supportive behaviors appeared differently according to whether or not stealing-thunder was used, and 3) the effects of EOR and message strategy (accommodative response) on the positive internal reputation were varied when the negative emotions (anger and anxiety) intervened.     

Exploring trust and distrust as conceptually and empirically distinct constructs: Association with symmetrical communication and public engagement across four pairings of trust and distrust

Existing relationship research has interpreted low trust as being equivalent to high distrust and high trust as the evidence of low distrust, which has failed to capture the full scope of the functions of trust and distrust in organization–public relationships. Recent research in this area suggests that trust and distrust might simultaneously exist during relational interactions and might play uniquely positive and negative functions in certain social contexts. The main purpose of this study was to offer a new insight in trust–distrust research by providing distinctions in conceptualization and operationalization between trust and distrust. This study also empirically tested the functions of four pairings of trust and distrust on two core public relations concepts (i.e., symmetrical communication and public engagement). The results from the surveys (N = 704; in 20 companies) of US consumers showed sound discriminant validity of trust and distrust. Further, the statistical results revealed that symmetrical communication and public engagement were most strongly associated with the high trust and high distrust pairing, supporting the utilities of distrust in public relations and the coexistence of trust and distrust in social interactions.     

Measuring blog engagement: Testing a four-dimensional scale

This study proposed and validated a measurement scale of blog engagement. The researchers explicated the concept of blog engagement as the likelihood and outcomes of interactive blog communication that encompass cognitive, attitudinal and behavioral attachment. Following this definition, a four-dimensional scale was tested. This study suggests that interactive blogs can enhance self-company connection, positive attitudes toward the company and supportive WOM intentions.     

A Study on Dialogic Communication,Trust, and Distrust: Testing a Scale for Measuring Organization–Public Dialogic Communication (OPDC)

Although there is a wide range of discussion on dialogic communication, or dialogue, in the field of public relations, little research has dealt with the empirical measurement of organization–public dialogue. The primary purpose of this study was to test the proposed scale for measuring organization–public dialogic communication (OPDC). Additionally, this study aimed to demonstrate the link between dialogic communication and trust/distrust between organizations studied and their publics. For the research purpose, two anonymous online surveys were used to collect the data. The participants were American consumers randomly selected from a representative research panel of online survey participants (N = 704). According to the results, the proposed 2-factor, 28-item scale of OPDC was valid and reliable. Also, for further empirical validation, this study found that the proposed scale of OPDC is significantly related to public trust and distrust. Given the scarcity of the empirical research on OPDC, the results of this study can contribute to further research in communication management.     

Consuming Orientalism: Images of Asian/American Women in Multicultural Advertising

Past research has analyzed the gendered constructs of American consumption practices that underlie marketed images in the print media. This article re-considers the cultural constructs of multicultural advertisement strategies in the new global era. Based on an analysis of three advertisement campaigns, our contention is that the normalcy and positionality of White males in the U.S. society rely on the racialized and gendered representations of Asian/American women as the Other. It is argued that the emerging global culture has been packaged, commodified and marketed by multi-national corporations in a manner that widens their range of cultural repertoires but resurrects traditional hierarchies of American Orientalism.