Public Relations Review最新文献

This article argues that sustainability also appeals to the creation of PR content when organizations compete for attention. It starts with the idea that attention is a valuable resource in society and organizations compete for attention, increasing the quantity of content and messages and releasing them through multiple media channels. Content inflation, hyperbole, and exaggeration are the norm since competition is strong to attract attention. And, since attention is limited, this almost unlimited amount of content detracts society’s attention from more relevant collective and social problems. This article describes how contemporary public relations, especially after the implosion of social media, contributes to the Tragedy of the Commons (TOTC), providing relevant data about the impact of corporate content on journalism and social media. This article, appealing to the concept of sustainability and philosopher Byung Chul-Han’s ideas of the hypertrophy of storytelling, concludes that an ecology of PR would solve the problem and represent an inexpensive method of CSR for corporations, and that this “reduction of noise” would make the public sphere more viable.

Social network analysis (SNA) has developed as a salient area of research within public relations, particularly for examining the structure, dynamics, and outcomes of interactions among social actors. Yet, SNA is both theory and method, the latter of which needs to be further explored in networked public relations research, especially given the predominance of the quantitative paradigm. Network research is not required to use quantitative methods as it should not be seen as prescriptive of one approach. This paper thereby proposes the integration of a qualitative approach to SNA by introducing a visual mapping approach for networked public relations scholarship, detailing a four-step process to design, conduct, and analysis. It further presents how an advancement of this methodological lens and technique connects to various parts of the wider public relations field.

Inspired by propositions founded on the Communication as Constitutive of Organization literature, this paper employed a mixed method combining Cultural Discourse Analysis (CuDA) with Corpus Linguistics to investigate how companies manage aspirational talk-action tensions in corporate social responsibility (CSR) discourses for social license to operate. Ten sustainability reports of five companies in Singapore and Hong Kong were accessed to examine the emergence of CuDA discursive hubs (identity, relation, emotion, action, and dwelling), the articulation of linguistic elements via concordance analysis, and the adoption of socio-cultural dimensions in addressing tension mechanisms. Findings revealed intricate communication dynamics resulting in four strategies that companies undertook to address and manage discrepancies, thereby enabling the construction of effective narrative CSR communication. These strategies provide valuable insights for public relations practitioners who engage in sustainability reporting and seek to adequately handle aspirational talk-action tensions that can possibly cause negative impacts.

The purpose of this study is to explore the role of agent type and voice tone on publics’ perceived organization-public relationships and behavioral intention towards an organization. Through a 2 (agent type: human vs. AI) x 2 (voice tone: conversational human vs. organizational) between-subjects experiment, the study shows that organizational messages communicated by a human agent generated significantly higher perceived control mutuality among participants in a Twitter setting than messages communicated by an AI agent. The use of conversational human voice resulted in significantly stronger relational outcomes. A significant interaction effect was found between agent type and voice tone on control mutuality. This study contributes to the public relations literature and practice by examining the potential role of AI agents in organization-public relationships and supportive behavioral intention towards an organization in the setting of Twitter.

In today's globalized economy and highly interconnected media landscape, the impact of country-of-origin (COO) effects on crisis spillovers has attracted growing interest. However, the majority of the relevant studies are limited to case studies. A clear understanding of the relationship between COO effects and crisis spillovers has yet to be established. To address this gap, a meta-analysis of 24 causal pairs from 9 papers (n = 5746, combined n = 10942) was performed. The results indicate that COO effects can somewhat limit crisis spillovers. Specifically, the COO effect has a medium degree of mitigating effect on morality (r = 0.403) and competence crises (r = 0.240). When the COO is a developed country (r = 0.345), the COO effect can effectively mitigate crisis spillovers to a medium extent, while when the COO is a developing country (r = 0.180), the COO effect is small. Using organizational impressions (r = 0.357) rather than purchase intentions (r = 0.157) as a measurement instrument makes it easier to observe the dampening effect of COO on crisis spillovers. These findings enrich the theoretical framework of public relations and crisis management and provide strategies for business organizations to cope with spillovers.

Job advertisements hold a wealth of knowledge for the public relations field about complex internal and external organizational dynamics. They reflect enduring social and sectoral cultural proclivities and associated stereotypes about workers. We examine the presence of stereotypical frames in job advertisements from sectors with varying gender and age social group composition. Guided by social categorization framing and the stereotype content model, we operationalize stereotypical warmth- and competence-related frames in candidate sourcing communication. Automated content analysis was conducted on a dataset of online job ad sentences (n = 308,583) from 16,135 job ads. Results indicate warmth-related frames are most observed in ads from female-dominated (vs. male-dominated) sectors and younger-dominated (vs. older-dominated and mixed-age) sectors. Conversely, competence-related frames are most observed in ads from male-dominated (vs. female-dominated and mixed-age) sectors and older-dominated (vs. younger-dominated and mixed-age) sectors. We additionally find candidate gender stereotypes may supersede age stereotypes in hiring contexts. Implications are discussed in light of socialization and structuralist forces and their influence on organizational communication in homogeneous and heterogeneous sectors.

This special issue contains ten articles covering a wide range of topics that examine crisis contagion, showcasing the diverse approaches and methodologies employed in understanding this critical aspect of Crisis Communication. The articles in this special issue represent a wealth of knowledge in an under-researched area of Crisis Communication, highlighting both the complexity and the importance of mitigating crisis spillover risks. By bringing together these varied perspectives, this special issue not only enriches the academic discourse but also offers practical insights for practitioners. We believe that this collection of articles will serve as a cornerstone for future research, encouraging scholars to explore and address the gaps in our understanding of crisis contagion. Through this special issue, we aim to spark a broader conversation about the strategies that organizations can employ to navigate the turbulent waters of crisis communication more effectively, thereby contributing to the resilience and sustainability of organizations in the face of crisis spillover risks.

The prior research suggests that an organization’s crisis can damage publics’ evaluation of the industry, which is known as crisis spillover. To examine the crisis spillover and differential effects of the response strategies in the charitable sector, the study conducted a web-based experiment with a mixed-subjects design of 3 response strategies (bolstering vs. denial vs. differentiation) × 2 charity types (local vs. global) × 3 time periods (pre-crisis vs. post-crisis vs. post-response). The results confirm crisis spillover in the charity context and suggest that an innocent organization’s response can mitigate the effects of crisis spillover on the entire charitable sector. Furthermore, the study found that bolstering and denial strategies were more effective in improving public attitudes, trust, and donation intentions toward the responded charity compared to the differentiation strategy. These effects were not moderated by charity types. These findings provide insights into effective response strategies to mitigate crisis spillover in a charity context.

The spillover effect of crises has become an emerging research topic in the field of crisis communication, however to our knowledge a cross-disciplinary review of the literature on the topic has not been conducted yet. Also, the complexities associated with crisis spillover and their management call for a synthesis of existing findings which can provide future research directions. This review focuses on empirical studies about crisis spillover and incorporates articles from different disciplines examining this topic. We identified 56 articles about crisis spillover that were published in 35 different journals between 1985 and 2021, and examined the conceptualization of crisis spillover across disciplines, crisis types, industries, stakeholder groups, spillover types, risk factors, and response strategies discussed in these articles. Our suggestions for future research based on the literature review will help guide researchers to explore areas that will help us gain a better understanding of the spillover effect phenomena, and how organizations can respond to spillover crises.

Recent crisis spillover research expands our understanding of the effects of crisis spillover on reputation, legitimacy, consumer attitudes and behaviours, as well as how organisations can respond to these types of crisis spillover events. However, there remains scant exploration of the impact of crisis spillover on trust and limited if any consideration of distrust as a separate and distinct concept from trust. In a crisis, trust is an important relationship outcome, and the present lack of empirical understanding of it in crisis spillover can limit future research and practice. Consequently, this study’s examination of message strategies that address both trust and distrust concerns, and in turn repair these key relational concepts, can address the current void in public relations theory. In addition, the research record provides limited insights into the strategies employed by multiple organisations with varied responsibility for crisis spillovers. To address these gaps in our understanding about complex crisis spillover, this study adopts associative network theory and extends its application via a case study approach focussing on the Australian banking industry. The findings contribute new knowledge to the crisis communication, trust repair and crisis spillover literature.