Public Relations Review最新文献

In 2021, Netflix and Spotify became the center of debate over controversial content. As a form of protest, Twitter (X) users engaged in hashtag activism using #NetflixWalkout and #CancelSpotify. Hashtag activism provides online activists and organizers a mechanism to produce and disseminate (counter)narratives quickly. In both cases, users employed the hashtags to support the streaming services’ stances or pressure them to alter their activities. While previous studies have examined the use of hashtag activism in constructing narratives, particularly in larger social movements, much of this extant work focuses on one narrative, even though divergent and conflicting narratives emerge in these situations. To better understand how participants cultivate online discourse surrounding corporate connections to social issues, we analyze the primary competing narratives and supporting frames that emerged in #CancelSpotify and #NetflixWalkout. While the intended narrative reflected the organizers’ intentions, a counter narrative that challenged these intentions also emerged. Critically, the intended narrative was the primary driver of content and social media user engagement, suggesting that although hashtag activism has limitations and challenges, it also provides an avenue through which individuals can foster a narrative and reach audiences. In addition, findings revealed that individuals contributing to the intended narrative were more apt to provide mobilizing information than those participating in the counter narrative. However, mobilizing frames still featured less frequently than commentary-driven frames.

This bibliometric analysis examines the evolution of digital public relations research over a 27-year span and assesses its academic trajectory. This study seeks to clarify 1) the prominent contributors to the field, 2) key articles shaping the field of digital public relations, and 3) the predominant research themes explored longitudinally. The data, encompassing citations in six public relations journals from the inception of digital public relations until 2022, allow us to conclude that the growth and popularity of digital public relations is steady in the scholarship. Our findings offer a comprehensive overview of the current research and highlight the integral facets that have consistently underpinned digital public relations research.

Past crises are often collectively retold, recalled, and reconstructed on social media when a new crisis occurs, resulting in a special form of collective memory in crisis communication contexts: crisis memory. Through the lens of social constructionism, this study explores the crisis memory of SARS co-created on Chinese social media during COVID-19. First, based on a content analysis of 5677 Weibo posts, seven types of crisis memory narratives are identified (nationalism, heroism, identity, trauma, criticism, historical reference, and personal experience), and their differential usages by multiple users are analyzed. Second, with an online survey of 785 Chinese netizens, the influences of these crisis memory narratives on various perceptions (perceived organizational reputation, perceived threats, and perceived self-efficacy) and behaviors (protective behaviors) in the unfolding public health crisis are examined. Overall, this study provides a new perspective for crisis communication research that moves beyond the strategic communication of current crises to involve constructed narratives of past crises.

This paper examines how ethics of care (also known as care ethics) can be applied to public relations, drawing insights from a two-stage empirical study. The first stage explores industry best practices from award-winning campaigns, followed by elite interviews with leading practitioners to understand how care ethics can be infused into various organisational, personal, and professional contexts. The paper examines contested connections between care ethics and Aristotelian virtue ethics, building on early work by Virginia Held and others, to develop a multi-level agency model of enacting care ethics. This fuses an array of concepts: caring-about, caring-for, self-care, habitus, and the lateral integration of care as a form of ‘caring citizenship’. In turn, this fusion advances ethics of care as a shared practice between caregivers and care-receivers, shifting its focus from essentially within the private to the public sphere, locating public relations in this process.

Despite the prominence of global environmental challenges, promoting publics’ engagement with issues related to environmental sustainability has proven difficult. Publics have perceived them as distant issues that do not have imminent impact requiring immediate actions. However, publics’ disengagement has in turn accelerated environmental deterioration. Applying construal level theory, this study explores factors that cause publics’ disengagement but also ways to promote information behaviors in an environmental sustainability issue. An online survey was conducted of a nationally representative sample of 507 Australians in November 2022. Using food waste as an issue that negatively affects environmental sustainability, structural equation modeling was conducted to test the effects of the dynamics of psychological distance, feasibility, and desirability on publics’ disengagement, information seeking and information forwarding. When individuals consider food waste a distant issue, they also consider it to be undesirable and infeasible to act upon, with the result that they disengage. However, this study finds that while psychological distance is negatively associated with desirability and feasibility, it is positively associated with information seeking and forwarding. We find, in particular, that desirability positively contributes to information seeking and forwarding. However, feasibility is negatively associated with information seeking and forwarding. Implications for public relations theory and practice are discussed (203 words).

The current study examines how communicated commitment to diversity relates to employee voice behaviors through the mediating role of perceived organizational authenticity and organizational identification. Through a quantitative survey with 657 employees who work for a variety of organizations in the United States, the study’s results indicated that communicated commitment to diversity plays a critical role in fostering perceived organizational authenticity, which in turn encourages organizational identification and employee voice behaviors. The study also found that diversity management moderated the relationship between communicated commitment to diversity and perceived organizational authenticity.

Despite a growing trend in corporate social advocacy (CSA), public responses to a company’s stance on controversial issues have been understudied. Using an online survey targeting U.S. adults, this study examines the theoretical mechanisms underlying consumers’ multifaceted reactions to CSA using Dick’s stance on gun control as a specific case of CSA. Drawing on attribution theory and moral emotion theories, this study finds that positive moral emotions—gratitude and elevation—fully mediate the relationship between perceived intrinsic CSA motives and brand loyalty intention (primary impact), as well as willingness to pay more for companies advocating the same cause (secondary impact), thereby amplifying the overall impact of the advocacy. In contrast, CSA lacking intrinsic motives triggers negative moral emotions (anger), which in turn undermines brand loyalty intention. However, perceived extrinsic CSA motives have no significant influence. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

This article extends research on organizational crisis management by explaining how a firm’s post-crisis corporate social responsibility (CSR) actions help it secure improved media reputation which, in turn, plays an important role in rebuilding the firm’s image. We draw on Godfrey et al. (2009) to highlight that firms’ CSR activity can be categorized into two types: Technical CSR (TCSR) activity involving those primary stakeholders most crucial to the successful operation of the firm, and Institutional CSR (ICSR) activity directed toward a firm’s secondary stakeholders. Our study examined 176 crises that occurred in China between 2011 and 2018 and involved 161 publicly listed firms. The analysis demonstrated that the intensity of both TCSR and ICSR activities have a positive effect on post-crisis media reputation. The implementation paths of CSR activities from TCSR to ICSR contributes positively to post-crisis media reputation. Our findings also show that the concentration of TCSR activities negatively affects a firm’s post-crisis media reputation, while the concentration of ICSR activities has the opposite effect. Furthermore, in a firm crisis with high-responsibility attribution, the effects of both the intensity and concentration of TCSR activities are more pronounced, while the impact of the concentration of ICSR activities is weakened. This study provides new theoretical insights into how firms can better manage their media reputations following a crisis.

In recent years, there has been a discernible upswing in the attention dedicated to artificial intelligence (AI) within the domains of public relations, advertising, and marketing. Notably, the subdomain of investor relations has maintained a significant historical engagement with AI, actively employing AI and AI-enabled tools for several decades, a practice traceable back to the 1980s. This protracted involvement presents a reservoir of invaluable insights germane to comprehending the broader integration of AI within the purview of public relations. This scholarly inquiry embarks on a Delphi panel examination to scrutinize the deployment of AI in investor relations, proffers a systematic classification of AI-enabled tools within this realm, and prognosticates the trajectory of AI's influence on investor relations and financial communications. The panel of Delphi participants comprises seasoned authorities in the field, boasting a cumulative professional experience spanning 161 years. Leveraging the depth of expertise inherent in investor relations, the study not only illuminates the current landscape but also posits conceivable trajectories for the evolution of AI across other subfields within the domain of public relations.