Public Relations Review最新文献

Dyadic assumptions permeate organization-public relationship (OPR) research. However, corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives need to be understood not only in the dyadic organization-public context (i.e., examining effects of an organization’s CSR on one particular public), but also in the multifaceted organization-publics context where the interconnectedness among publics themselves needs to be considered. The purpose of this study is to examine how CSR brings relational outcomes when intergroup dynamics are considered. Through an experimental design where a public’s identity threat was manipulated, the study suggests that CSR leads to relational outcomes through establishing identity congruity and a public’s self-expansion (validating and affirming one’s identity through the organization). Moderated mediation analysis also showed that the indirect effect of CSR on the relational outcome through congruity became greater when participants were exposed to potential identity threat. The study provides important implications for how we approach and understand the connections between a public and an organization.

Although scholarship discussing public relations professionals’ roles has been abundant, ethical dilemmas facing public relations professionals remain implicit in such roles. Specifically, a theoretically-derived typology explaining the origin of these dilemmas and categorizing them into distinct profiles has been lacking so far. We address this lacuna by utilizing role theory to elucidate the origin of public relations professionals’ ethical dilemmas and employ a deductive approach to extricate such dilemmas from each part of the name “public relations professional.” Each part of the name signifies a distinct role with specific functions and inherent expectations. Put differently, each part implies specific values that role constituents expect role incumbents to uphold. As such, the name “public relations professional” has been deliberately chosen as it carries value-laden meanings, referring to an individual who exhibits an orientation and a commitment to publicness while developing, maintaining, and promoting relationships and upholding professionalism. In building our typology, we portray the “public” role as the midpoint on a continuum, with organization at one end and society at the other; the “relations” role as the midpoint between transactions and bonds; and the “professional” role as the midpoint between employee and citizen. This leads to a multidimensional typology that includes three types of ethical dilemmas: organization-versus-society, transactions-versus-bonds, and employee-versus-citizen. We advance extant scholarship by explaining the origin of public relations professionals’ ethical dilemmas and unifying such dilemmas in an exclusive-inclusive typology.

While businesses are increasingly active in raising voices for social and political issues, known as corporate social advocacy (CSA), the strategies, impacts, and ethics of controversial businesses’ CSA are largely unknown. This study draws on the visual framing theory and CSA literature to explore how visual framings are constructed in cannabis companies’ CSA and their effects on public engagement (i.e., likes and comments) on Instagram. Findings from content analysis of 502 Instagram posts by 42 cannabis companies reveal that cannabis companies construct the meaning of CSA via various visual strategies. However, they may still have a long way to go before initiating authentic image-based CSA. Regression analyses found that gender, color, and issue category are among influential visual characteristics that can foster or impede public engagement, raising critical consideration of cannabis companies’ positionality in corporate activism. This study advances the theory-driven, nuanced, and contextualized understanding of corporate communication in today’s polarized public opinion environment and increasingly visual-focused media landscape.

Cancel culture is a socio-political movement that aims to financially punish or ostracize a person from the public sphere due to a transgression. Such offenses range from criminal acts to the public expression of controversial opinions. In response, digital activism coalesces into a socio-political force that seeks to shame, silence, or punish the offending individual. This study seeks to understand the agonistic reputational wrangle facilitated by cancel culture using an original theoretical framework that combines the rhetorical paradigm from public relations with deviance theory from sociology and media studies. Specifically, this study analyzes the cancellation and reputational repair strategies of four celebrities—Louis C.K., Logan Paul, Jussie Smollett, and J.K. Rowling. It utilizes large-scale social media sentiment analysis to reveal varying degrees of reputational decay and recovery. The study shows that factors impacting the severity of cancellation and the likelihood of reputational recovery include distinguishing between criminal acts and controversial opinions, as well as social variables and the strength of a parasocial relationship between a celebrity and their fandom.

Public relations histories have frequently credited Ivy Lee as providing the first press release. This research uses primary and secondary historical sources to demonstrate that the American branch of the international peace movement was using press releases decades before Lee’s birth. Starting at least as early as 1819, the movement disseminated press releases to newspapers. This program of sending out press releases increased in size until it was reaching as many as 1,000 separate newspapers in the 1840s. At that time, a young advocate named Elihu Burritt took over the operation. Using a newspaper loophole in postage laws, Burritt was able to regularly disseminate messages to as many as 1,500 separate newspapers, averaging over 200 article placements per message and reaching hundreds of thousands of newspaper readers. This research discusses implications for public relations history.

Some organizations are highly visible in the media. This media coverage informs employees about others’ perceptions of their organization. Consequently, perceived visibility may be related to how employees think about their organization and how they construe organizational identity. This study empirically tests this proposition. It therefore combines aspects of Hatch & Schultz’ model of organizational identity dynamics with mediatization to understand to what extent employees are sensitive toward their environment when forming an organizational identity. In two online surveys comparing employees’ (N = 109) and a representative sample of citizens’ (N = 1417) views on a highly visible Dutch public organization from the crime sector, we disentangle the identity-reputation process considering the role of perceived media impact. We further compare identity perceptions of two intraorganizational sub-groups. We find that citizens view the organization more positively than employees, which points to a misalignment between employees’ and citizens’ perceptions of the organization. In one of the two organizational sub-groups, the findings show that the larger the misalignment between construed reputation (how do employees think that citizens perceive their organization?) and actual reputation (how do citizens in fact perceive the organization?), the weaker employees’ perception of identity. Furthermore, employees appear to be sensitive toward the media coverage of their organization and citizens’ reputation perceptions. Yet, this environmental sensitivity does not impact on their organizational identity. We interpret this as a resilient identity, which represents the maneuvering of employees between their organizational identity perception (what they perceive as central, distinct, and enduring) and external stakeholders’ (i.e., the media, citizens) perceptions of the organization that over time positively distinguishes what the organization is and will remain.

The concept of community expresses a variety of responsibilities that public relations has in building connections, good will, and wellbeing amongst collectives of people. Community also parallels many U.S. expectations of government; however, public relations has few studies that investigate the collaboration between government and citizens or how different government services (e.g., public works, public health, building enforcement, etc.) influence community building. Specifically, parks and recreation has been overlooked in the public relations literature as citizens and government collectively support these lifelines of community wellbeing and social connectedness. Through qualitative analysis of focus groups with city residents and interviews with city parks and recreation personnel, I present thematic findings that explicate how citizens and city staff engage in community building and the specific role that leisure plays in community building processes. Lastly, I offer implications for public relations theory that argue to shift local community and governance theory to be citizen-centered and use the concept of family to explicate the function of community in small municipal contexts.

Public relations practitioners and academics have long debated the merits of licensing; however, licensing has not been adopted due to a lack of appetite among practitioners as well as concerns about the First Amendment of the United States Constitution. Using an analogy with the professions that practice therapy, we argue that licensing of public relations can comply with the First Amendment by providing incentives to licensees, as opposed to restricting the practice of the unlicensed. We identify several potential incentives and provide a detailed analysis of a proposed right to legally privileged communication. We conclude with suggestions for next steps toward creation of licensing and resources that may help in this endeavor.

ESG has arisen as a key priority of investors in making sustainable investment decisions. Despite its growing popularity in the business and investment sectors, ESG has yet gained momentum in public relations research. The purpose of this study is to develop a Perceived ESG Scale (P-ESG), a valid and reliable measure to examine public perceptions of an organization’s ESG activities. Following a legitimate procedure of scale development, this study developed a three-dimensional P-ESG scale with 26 items. A series of measures (i.e., content validity, construct validity, concurrent validity, and predictive validity) were implemented to test the validity of the scale. The results indicate that the P-ESG is a reliable and valid assessment tool that can be applied to examine public’s perception on organizations’ ESG performance. The present study also revealed the superiority of the P-ESG model over the corporate social reliability (CSR) model in predicting attitudinal as well as behavioral outcomes of the public (i.e., corporate reputation, purchase intention, investment intention). The Perceived ESG Scale would aid PR research on ESG, providing theoretical insight into how an organization's ESG initiatives lead to concrete behavioral results and business achievements. Such research can highlight the importance of incorporating PR into an organization's ESG outcomes by determining whether key stakeholders and the public endorse the organization's ESG initiatives and achievements.

This study uses the organization-public relationship approach to investigate the relationship cultivation strategies employed by an organization within the metaverse. This study also explores the highly immersive nature of metaverses, investigating both system and narrative immersion features. A content analysis of 101 existing metaverses reveals that networking (99%), positivity (98%), and assurance (76%) are most frequently used strategies by organizations, highlighting the unique affordances of the metaverse, such as embodiment, interactivity, and navigability. The findings suggest that organizations leverage the immersive properties of the metaverse to establish and cultivate relationships with their publics effectively. Furthermore, the majority of metaverse spaces exhibit medium to high levels of system immersion, while only a few incorporate clear narrative immersion features. These findings have implications for organizations seeking to engage with their audiences in immersive virtual environments.