This conceptual paper aims to explore the current state of sustainability communication research, focusing on the challenges of communicating inconvenient truths in an era of scientific mistrust. Therefore, this study aims to (1) examine the existing research landscape in sustainability communication, (2) identify unresolved problems and challenges, and (3) propose strategies for counteract misinformation through targeted communication.
For this, the authors conducted a critical literature review and analyzed the resulting sample (n = 473 journal articles) by means of qualitative content analysis to (1) evaluate existing communication approaches dealing with the communication of sustainability's inconvenient truth, (2) identify stakeholder groups involved in sustainability communication, (3) discuss limitations of current communication approaches and (4) present recommendations on (more) effective communication strategies to address the unresolved issues in sustainability communication.
The analysis reveals that when it comes to sustainability communication and its unresolved problems, literature refers to four key stakeholder groups: (1) science deniers; (2) adaptation skeptics; (3) whitewashers and (4) world saviors. Furthermore, the analysis provides valuable insights into the complex dynamics involved in communicating sustainability, emphasizes the need for tailored approaches to engage and address the concerns of each stakeholder group, and exposes limitations in current communication methods and approaches. Accordingly, the analysis highlights the necessity of developing new theories, models and methods specific to sustainability communication to tackle its unique challenges effectively.
Like our society, communication sciences need a fundamental transformation to meet sustainability communication's new challenges induced by the necessary shift toward sustainable development.
This paper provides a comprehensive overview of the current state of sustainability communication in research, specifically addressing the challenges of effectively communicating unpleasant news in the context of scientific mistrust. It fills a gap in existing literature by examining the progress made in addressing these issues and identifying the emerging challenges that need to be addressed.
]]>The climate crisis presents a global threat. Research shows the necessity of joint communication efforts across different arenas—media, politics, business, academia and protest—to address this threat. However, communication about social change in response to the climate crisis comes with challenges. These challenges manifest, among others, in public accusations of inconsistency in terms of hypocrisy and incapability against self-declared change agents in different arenas. This increasingly turns public climate communication into a “blame game”.
Strategic communication scholarship has started to engage in this debate, thereby acknowledging climate communication as an arena-spanning, necessarily contested issue. Still, a systematic overview of specific inconsistency accusations in different public arenas is lacking. This conceptual article provides an overview based on a macro-focused public arena approach and decoupling scholarship.
Drawing on a systematic literature review of climate-related strategic communication scholarship and key debates from climate communication research in neighboring domains, the authors develop a framework mapping how inconsistency accusations of hypocrisy and incapacity, that is, policy–practice and means–ends decoupling, manifest in different climate communication arenas.
This framework creates awareness for the shared challenge of decoupling accusations across different climate communication arenas, underscoring the necessity of an arena-spanning strategic communication agenda. This agenda requires a communicative shift from downplaying to embracing decoupling accusations, from mutual blaming to approval of accountable ways of working through accusations and from confrontation to cooperation of agents across arenas.
]]>The purpose of this paper is to: (1) identify strategies to (re)establish organizational legitimacy which dominates the literature; (2) propose and empirically illustrate an analytical framework that establishes the linkages between the dimensions of purposefulness, transparency and participation identified in this literature review as important resources in the creation of organizational legitimacy.
Based on a review of the academic literature, we propose a three-dimensional conceptual framework for understanding and studying strategic communication in contexts of high sustainability pressure. The empirical material we use for illustration is the letters from the chief executive officer (CEO) and the chairman published in the integrated annual report of a Danish company that is well known for its focus on sustainability.
The analysis shows that all three dimensions, i.e. purposefulness, transparency and participation, are present in this data, which the authors find supportive of the theoretical argument that strategic communication needs to encompass all three concepts in order to appear legitimate in contexts of high sustainability pressure.
In recent years, there has been an increased focus on strategic communication of sustainability. However, there is still a lack of general consensus of what is understood by strategic communication in contexts of high sustainability pressure. Overlapping concepts and dimensions make operationalization difficult. This, for example, is a problem for corporations who are increasingly asked by their stakeholders to account for their sustainability activities and engage in conversations of strategic significance to their sustainability goals.
]]>The purpose of this paper is to assess online corporate communication around commitments to sustainable development goal (SDG) 12, sustainable production and consumption.
Guided by legitimacy theory, a qualitative directed content analysis was conducted on 13 companies' webpages (81 webpages, 78,947 words).
Companies broadly failed to communicate about all 11 SDG 12 targets, neglected to consistently address multiple stakeholder groups, missed opportunities to provide concrete evidence of progress and relied on a mix of substantive and symbolic legitimation strategies.
SDG 12 has been under-researched and this paper is one of the first to offer an in-depth analysis of corporate communication regarding SDG 12.
]]>The purpose of this study is to conduct a comprehensive investigation into the utilization of visual impression management techniques within sustainability reporting. Specifically, the study aims to determine whether Italian companies employ impression management tactics in the presentation of graphs within their sustainability reports and, thus, problematize visual data communication in corporate social responsibility (CSR).
The research adopts a multimodal content analysis of the 58 sustainability reports from Italian listed companies that are GRI-compliant. The analysis focused on three types of graphs: pie charts, line graphs and bar graphs. In total, 860 graphs have been examined.
The study found evidence of graphical distortion techniques being employed by companies in their sustainability reports to create a favorable impression. Specifically, graph distortions are found in column graphs and not in line or pie charts. In particular, selectivity, presentation enhancement and measurement distortion techniques seem to be extensively used when adopting column graphs in sustainability communication. Moreover, social sustainability–related topics tend to be more represented of other area of CSR reporting. This suggests that companies, whether consciously or unconsciously, engage in impression management techniques when using graphs in their sustainability reports.
The study findings suggest that more consciousness is needed for companies when engaging in the construction and selection of graphs in their sustainability reports and that decision-makers should develop a clear guide for ethical visual communication.
The paper systematically analyzes visual impression management techniques in communicating sustainability data and, in particular, advances literature on graphical distortion. The value lies in empirical evidence of distortion adoption in GRI-compliant reports as well as problematizing visual data communication as a fundamental challenge for sustainability communication management.
]]>Communicating a clear, precise, interpretable and unambiguous visual message usually relies on a cross-disciplinary team of professionals. Their complementary visions can uncover which information matter and how it could be visually displayed to inform, sensitize and encourage people to act toward sustainability. While design studies generally claim that this team has to come to a shared vision, the authors question this assumption, which seems to contradict the benefits of cross-disciplinarity. The purpose of this study is to reveal how simple visual representations displayed in a PowerPoint actively participate in the expression of various and sometimes divergent visions. Recognizing the agency of visuals also leads this study to propose the notion of (un)shared professional vision, which shows that the richness of visual representations can only reveal itself through the capacity of professional visions to maintain their differences while confronting each other.
Over a 20-month ethnography, this study documented its own cross-disciplinary reflective design process, which aimed to design collectively an experimental environmental label, focusing on interactions occurring between professionals and visuals displayed on five key PowerPoint slides.
This study first demonstrates how, in practice, a cross-disciplinary reflective design conversation with visuals concretely unfolds through boundary-objects. This study shows how these visuals manage to ex-press themselves through the multiple visions represented in the discussions, revealing their complexity. Second, this study introduces the notion of (un)shared professional vision which underlines that unsharing a vision nurtures the team’s collective capacity to express the complexity of a design situation, while sharing a vision is also necessary to confront these respective expressions to allow the professional uncovering of what should be visually communicated.
The Communication as Constitutive of Organization lens the authors chose to understand the reflective design conversation illustrates that, even though each collaborator’s vision was “(un)shared,” their many voices expand the understanding of the situation and lead them to develop an unexpected and creative environmental information ecosystem that can positively transform society through visuals.
]]>Via the lens of the ego-depletion phenomenon (Baumeister et al., 1998) and Higgins' (1998) regulatory focus theory, this paper seeks to explain why current controlled communications are failing to achieve coherence between people's free will and their actions pursuing sustainable goals in a society. This paper explains how ego-depletion triggered by controlled communications can lead to confusion and decision fatigue in a society, thus potentially sabotaging people's participation in sustainable behaviour.
The authors applied Jaakkola's (2020) theory synthesis approach to integrate concepts from previously unconnected disciplines in order to generate novel insights in the area of controlled communication management.
The authors develop a theoretical framework and present research propositions that can help advance research and the discourse at the intersection of controlled communication and self-regulation theories.
This paper possesses the limitations associated with conceptual papers, e.g. the lack of empirical support of the study’s conceptual arguments.
This paper generates novel insights to assist communication practitioners and policymakers to improve vehicles and mechanisms of controlled communication with the public regarding sustainable goals pursuit.
To the best of authors' knowledge, this is one of the first papers that has merged the domains of self-regulation, ego-depletion, and controlled communication in an integrative framework in order to explain the mechanisms of how to enhance the effectiveness of controlled communication associated with sustainable goals pursuit.
]]>This paper aims to find out if there is a relationship between access to climate change information and student activism.
Exploratory study focused on the survey of 400 [n = 400] students from 10 universities in Spain from April to May 2022. A questionnaire with 19 questions was divided into blocks of knowledge, awareness, and action and bivariate analysis with a margin of error of ±5% and a confidence level of 95%.
The greater the degree of information received, the greater the activism of university students, who tend to use digital media and social networks to get informed. However, they perceive that the university generates little information and a low number of activities related to climate change. Students demand that universities implement informal, formal, and service-learning environmental education strategies on sustainable consumption.
Given the results of previous studies showing the variable “type of degree” does not show differences at the beginning and end of studies, it has not been considered in this research. Nevertheless, it would be convenient to introduce it in future investigations to confirm if this may have an impact on informational habits.
This paper urges universities to act as sources of environmental education, given the relationship between the information received and the pro-environmental attitudes of students.
The universities are powerful social actors that can shape public and political discourses for eco-social transition.
This research adds the variable access to information in studies on pro-environmental attitudes. Furthermore, this research provides data about student perceptions of the university, government, industry, and NGO climate actions.
]]>The research seeks to evaluate stakeholder perceptions of firms, the extent these assessments impact trust in firms and possible implications for sustainability communications.
Three studies were undertaken involving two experiments (n = 436, n = 393) and one survey (n = 217). Analyses of variance was used in all three studies and in studies 2 and 3—to test for possible mediators—each variable was tested using Hayes' PROCESS macro (Hayes, 2013) with bootstrapping of 5,000 samples.
Results demonstrate significant favouring of sustainability-minded firms. Some differences between consumers and investors were found but also notable commonalities such as a general propensity to favour purpose-oriented firms and similar determinations of trust in firms.
Findings could support more effective sustainability communications and firm decisions regarding investments in purpose- and sustainability-oriented initiatives. The results may also support designs to pursue and promote designations (e.g. B Corp) that legitimize sustainability claims.
This research was unique in its evaluation of two stakeholder types in the same context. Further, it provides new insights into how a firm’s profit-purpose orientation affects stakeholder perceptions and assessments of trustworthiness.
]]>This study operationalizes risks in stakeholder dialog (SD). It conceptualizes SD as co-produced organizational discourse and examines the capacities of organizers' and stakeholders' practices to create a shared understanding of an organization’s risks to their mutual benefit. The meetings and online forum of a German public service media (PSM) organization were used as a case study.
The authors applied corpus-driven linguistic discourse analysis (topic modeling) to analyze citizens' (n = 2,452) forum posts (n = 14,744). Conversation analysis was used to examine video-recorded online meetings.
Organizers suspended actors' reciprocity in meetings. In the forums, topics emerged autonomously. Citizens' articulation of their identities was more diverse than the categories the organizer provided, and organizers did not respond to the autonomous emergence of contextualizations of citizens' perceptions of PSM performance in relation to their identities. The results suggest that risks arise from interactionally achieved occasions that prevent reasoned agreement and from actors' practices, which constituted autonomous discursive formations of topics and identities in the forums.
This study disentangles actors' practices, mutuality orientation and risk enactment during SD. It advances the methodological knowledge of strategic communication research on SD, utilizing social constructivist research methods to examine the contingencies of organization-stakeholder interaction in SD.
]]>This article aims to (1) increase the knowledge of how coworkers experience voicing the organization on external social media and (2) deepen and nuance the knowledge of the sources of voice control involved in such communication processes. The study helps understand coworker voicing on social media as situated identity expressions through which coworkers negotiate and contest the organizational identity, thereby co-constituting a polyphonic organization.
The study draws upon a constitutive perspective on communication and a communication-centered perspective on identity and organizational identification to investigate the voicing of organizational members of the Swedish Police Force on social media. The article is based on a qualitative study where interviews with police officers and communication professionals at the Swedish Police Authority constitute the main empirical material. A content analysis of selected social media accounts provided important background information to the interviews and enriched the understanding of coworker voice.
This analysis shows that coworkers voice the organization differently. Furthermore, the study of how coworkers experience this voicing indicates that these variations in how coworkers voice the organization depend on how strongly they identify or disidentify with organizational identity and image expressions voiced by significant others. Based on the analysis, this study presents four voice positions highlighting coworkers' varying degrees of identification/disidentification when voicing their organization on social media and reflecting upon their experiences of voicing. Furthermore, the analysis also demonstrates four sources of voice control: (1) management, (2) colleagues, (3) significant non-members and (4) the status and position of the coworker's voice. These four sources of voice control influence coworkers' voices on social media.
This study also contributes with practical implications, for example that the traditional idea of monophonic organizations must be revised and also embrace a polyphonic, bottom-up approach to strengthening internal trust and organizational identity. This comes naturally with the price of less control and predictability by management but with the benefits of increased coworker engagement and pride.
This study contributes new knowledge and a nuanced understanding of coworker voice on social media and the sources of control that influence coworkers' voices.
]]>The debate on digitalization in the public relations (PR) literature has fragmented considerably over the past decade because of its focus on upcoming media-technological innovations, required professional skills and management concepts. Yet the field has difficulties in developing an integrative perspective on the implications of digitalization as a broader socio-technological transformation with a balanced consideration of prospects and risks.
This paper proposes an integrative perspective that focuses more on the enduring imaginaries of how digitalization can transform society for better or worse. It traces the historical roots of five imaginaries of digitalization, which have already emerged over the past century yet have experienced a significant revival and popularization in the current debate. Based on these five imaginaries, the authors performed a narrative literature review of the digitalization debate in 10 leading PR journals from 2010 to 2022.
The five imaginaries allow for a systematization of the fragmented digitalization debate in the field, reconstructing recurrent narratives, prospects and risks.
The originality of this contribution lies in its reconstructive approach, tracing societal imaginaries of digitalization and their impact on the current disciplinary debate. This approach provides context for a balanced assessment of and engagement with upcoming, increasingly fragmented digital advancements in PR research and practice.
]]>In this study, we applied the strategy-as-practice (SAP) framework to analyse strategic communication practices. SAP implies approaching strategy as something that organisational members do and is useful for understanding the tensions between emergence and formalisation and between planning and improvisation that characterise the everyday communication work of communication practitioners.
The paper is based on an ethnographic study of a record company and on qualitative interviews with various actors from the music industry.
Tensions exist between the emergence of inputs from active consumers that require flexibility and attempts to strategically formalise and continuously adapt plans and encourage consumers to act in anticipated ways. The findings revealed five strategic communication practices—meetings, working in the office, gathering and analysing consumer engagement and related data, collaboration and storytelling—that practitioners used to conduct strategic communication and navigate the tensions.
The study contributes to understanding the role of strategic communication practices in contemporary organisations and how practitioners manage the tensions within them. The study shows that an SAP approach can account for improvisation and emergence, as well as planning and formalisation. It also shows how SAP resonates with emergent and agile strategic communication frameworks.
]]>The question of whether and how communication departments contribute to organizational value creation has rarely been addressed in research. Such evidence is crucial, however, as communications compete internally with other functions (e.g. marketing and human resources (HR)) for budgets and staff. This article fills the gap by applying the business model concept, an established approach from management theory and practice, to communication units.
Based on an interdisciplinary literature review, the authors propose the Communication Business Model (CBM) as a new management approach for communications. To this end, pertinent definitions, frameworks and typologies of business models are analyzed and combined with insights from corporate communications literature.
The CBM outlines the generic architecture of business models for communication departments. Such models describe the basic principles of how such a unit operates, what services and products it provides, how it creates value for an organization and what revenues and resources are allocated.
The approach stimulates the debate on communication units as objects of observation when researching communication management practices. Further research with appropriate empirical methods is needed to identify and study different types of business models for communications.
The CBM can be used as a management tool to analyze, explain and innovate communication management in organizations. It is a fertile approach for communication practitioners to make the work of their department visible and to position themselves internally and externally.
Transferring a well-known concept from general management to communication management enriches the value creation debate in theory and practice. It allows communication leaders to align their work with organizational goals and make it accessible to top management and other decision-makers in the organization. It also opens up new avenues for research and education.
]]>This paper aims to systematically unpack the ideal of organizational transparency by tracing the concept's origins in the era of Enlightenment. Based on a genealogical reconstruction, the article explores different transparency understandings in key areas of online public relations (PR) and discusses the opportunities and challenges they present for the field.
This is a conceptual paper that unfolds a genealogical reconstruction to uncover different transparency ideals of modernity. These perspectives are then transferred to the field of online PR to discuss their ethical and practical implications in the context of digitalization.
Claims for transparency manifest in three distinct ideals, namely normative, instrumental and expressive transparency, which are also pursued in online PR. These ideals are related to associated concepts, like dialogue, control and authenticity, which serve as transparency proxies. Moreover, each transparency ideal inherits an ambivalence that presents unique opportunities and challenges for PR practitioners.
Instead of an unquestioned belief in the ideal of organizational transparency, the paper urges communication practitioners to critically reflect on the ambivalent nature of different transparency regimes in the context of digitalization and provides initial recommendations on how to manage digital transparency in online PR responsibly.
The paper contributes to the vivid debate surrounding organizational transparency in the context of digitalization by offering a novel and systematic analysis of the multifaced concept of transparency while opening new research avenues for further conceptual and empirical research.
]]>In today's risk society, foundations are essential for sustaining democracies. However, the proof of a value-creating function of foundations is rarely assessed. Therefore, this study uses sensemaking theory and the communication value framework to explore to what extent a foundation achieved its overall mission in tackling societal challenges as opportunities.
This study employs a case study approach of a Swiss foundation. Through 20 semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders, insights about the value-creating function of the foundation were gained, showing how strategic communication activities contributed to the foundation's overall mission in various spheres of action.
The stakeholders overall identified a value-creating function of the foundation. The feedback obtained from the interviews could be structured along the lines of the communication value framework, with minor adjustments, showing that the foundation brought about value through its strategic communication regarding tangible assets (e.g. publicity), intangible assets (e.g. unique reputation), room for maneuver (e.g. renowned network) and opportunities for development (e.g. new formats). However, on each level, value-limiting factors have also been identified (e.g. limited publicity).
This study is the first to employ sensemaking theory to assess a foundation's value-creating function in achieving its overall mission by interviewing direct stakeholders. It is also one of the few studies in the field that analyzes strategic communication of foundations. Thus, this study adds methodological, theoretical and practical knowledge to foundation communication, value-creation and strategic communication management.
]]>This paper refines the Digital Media–Arena (DMA) framework to address the diversity of stakeholders contributing to the production, (re)appropriation and (re)distribution of organisational messages in digital environments. It also presents a case analysis for the purpose of demonstrating the applicability of the revised conceptual framework to a critical situation.
Grounded in key public relations, corporate communication and strategic communication research, this study first extends the DMA framework by introducing six new forms of media-arenas. Next, the study takes a public sector perspective to analyse the revised framework against a critical situation involving the Finnish prime minister in summer 2022.
The application of the revised DMA framework to analyse the critical situation shows the importance of mapping and understanding diverse discourses across multi-arenas and their communication role in a rapidly unfolding scandal surrounding the prime minister of Finland. Findings also reveal the diversity of stakeholder voices forming their own versions of organisational messages and sometimes converging organisational messages within and across DMAs.
The DMA framework can offer practical suggestions to guide communicators to make strategic choices in what, where, how and with whom they can communicate.
The revised DMA framework contributes expanding the field's knowledge of the strategic communicative use of the digital environment in typically highly volatile and multi-vocal situations by offering instrumental understanding of the conflicting challenge between subjugating and liberating organisational messages across the digital spectrum.
]]>The research aim of this article is to generate novel insights into how public sector organizations (PSOs) strategically communicate with the public about critical issues on social media. To this end, the study explores the public's experiences of the Swedish Police's sense of safety communication on Instagram in the third largest city in Sweden, where the lack of a sense of public safety is a main societal challenge.
The research was designed as a case study employing photo-elicitation interviews as a method to collect the empirical material. A phenomenography approach was used to analyze public experiences of the Swedish Police's Instagram communication in Malmö, Sweden.
Findings show that the police's strategic communication of safety on Instagram is experienced along the dimensions of a sense of protection, a sense of proximity and a sense of ambiguity. Taken together, these dimensions broaden and develop the knowledge of what communicating a sense of safety in the public sphere entails.
This study adds to previous research on strategic communication in public sector organizations by demonstrating what strategic communication accomplishes at the receiving end outside of the organization.
]]>The purpose of this paper is to investigate how gamification in advertising affects the effectiveness of advertising on social media.
Drawing from the gamification literature, immersion, achievement and social interaction features were identified as features, and advertising effectiveness factors were brand attention, brand liking and recall. A questionnaire was used for collecting data, and a structural equation modeling approach was applied to examine the model.
The results indicated that immersion, achievement and social interaction features affect advertising effectiveness. Furthermore, advertising effectiveness factors had a significant effect on purchase intentions.
The study contributes to the combination of gamification in advertising by offering characteristics for gamification that can enhance advertising effectiveness through brand attention, liking and recall. Finally, it provides managerial guidance on how they can use gamification in their advertising process.
]]>This study examines a controversial issue (biotechnology) and how news disputes about misinformation related to the issue impacts individuals' attitudes toward a biotechnology company and their trust in the media source.
This study conducts a 2 (risk: low vs. high) x 2 (pre-existing attitude: anti gene-editing technology vs. pro gene-editing technology) x 2 (dispute message: absent vs. present) x 2 (media source: Buzzfeed vs NYT) factorial online experiment using a Qualtrics panel (N = 1,080) to examine the impact on individuals' attitudes toward a biotechnology company and trust in the media source.
Results indicate that dispute messages enhance attitudes toward the company but decrease trust in media sources. Interaction effects between pre-existing attitude and the dispute message, along with perceived risk and the dispute message, illustrate stark differences in how individuals with favorable vs. unfavorable pre-existing attitudes assessed the company after viewing the dispute message.
This study applies arguments from extant literature about prebunking and debunking misinformation. Specifically, this study investigates how dispute messages, a form of debunking through source derogation, actually impact individuals' perceptions of media credibility and/or their attitudes about the content they are reading. The study findings also reveal new insights regarding the interaction between pre-existing attitudes and perceived risk, as well as how dispute messages interact with each of the aforementioned factors.
]]>Between 1985 and 2000, the six largest US pharmaceutical firms entered a very active period of partnerships with other pharmaceutical firms to expand their knowledge of biotechnology-based research and development (R&D) frameworks and to bolster the growth of their drug portfolios. The purpose of this study is to examine the annual reports published by these companies for evidence of strategic framing of these partnerships.
A content analysis method was most appropriate for this study, as it allows for analysis of a large amount of information and accurate analysis over time. Ninety-six annual reports from the six major US pharmaceutical firms (Abbott, Bristol Myers Squibb, Eli Lilly, Johnson and Johnson, Merck, and Pfizer) were coded. The final codebook included 18 categories derived from framing theory. After collection, the data were uploaded to SPSS for statistical analysis.
Results indicate that mention of partnerships grew considerably in depth and length over time, but companies did not consistently employ frames to describe why or how they engaged in external partnerships.
This is the first study to assess mentions of pharmaceutical firms' external efforts to build their R&D programs and drug portfolios, from the intersecting perspectives of framing theory and the resource-based view (RBV) of the firm, to illustrate how changes were communicated to shareholders during a dynamic period of change within the industry.
]]>Fake news stories have become a central element of crises that corporate public relations practitioners have confronted. Whether such stories are rumors, outright lies or deliberate attempts to discredit corporations, they have the same impact and require specific strategies for public relations practitioners to effectively respond. The purpose of this study is to uncover strategies to manage crises that arise from fake news and if and how these strategies differ for other corporate crises.
In this multi-method study of 21 in-depth interviews and a 8-person focus group with senior-level corporate public relations practitioners, authors explored decision-making strategies for responding to fake news crises. Transcripts of interviews and the focus group were thematically analyzed.
Results reveal insights regarding how public relations practitioners determine if and when to respond to fake news crises in corporations; what response strategies public relations practitioners have the autonomy to employ for fake news crises in corporations, and how public relations practitioners control media narratives during fake news crises in corporations.
The findings guide public relations practitioners to craft an autonomous decision-making process and effective online listening strategies—establishing a watchful waiting approach—and determine if the fake news issue is a passing moment or movement swirling into a crisis.
Few studies have examined the perspectives of crisis communication experts about minimizing and managing fake news crises. The study identifies opportunities for future research focused on crises originating from fake news and disinformation.
]]>This paper sought to understand the communication activities of employees who were required to work from home because of the COVID-19 pandemic. The authors examined the relationship between these individuals' efficient and interrupting communication with their peers in other locations and with individuals who were colocated with them at home. The authors also investigated these workers' job engagement and willingness to speak out about organizational issues.
This paper drew upon a survey of 579 employees via an online panel.
Efficient communication positively predicted employees' job engagement, whereas interruptions negatively predicted job engagement. Additional analyses showed that efficient communication was positively associated with job engagement, which in predicted a higher level of employee voice. Managers showed significantly higher levels of job engagement and voice than nonmanagers.
Recommendations are made for communication managers to cultivate job engagement and to manage interruptions with home-based employees.
Scholars with an interest in job demands and resources have not fully examined how interpersonal communication shapes job engagement and voice scholars have often overlooked teleworkers' communication needs. This study adds depth to the communication management literature in both areas.
]]>The purpose of this paper is to contribute to science communication literature by further highlighting the underexplored role of organizational and corporate perspectives in science communication.
The paper takes the form of a conceptual article that uses two illustrative vignettes to highlight the power of corporate science communication.
The key argument is that corporate science communication is a compound ideology that results from merging the hegemonic corporate voice with the ultimate/god-term science (see the work of Kenneth Burke) to form a mega-ideological construct and discourse. Such communication can be so powerful that vulnerable publics and powerful advocates speaking on their behalf have little to no recourse to effectively challenge such discourse. While critiques of corporate science communication in practice are not new, what the authors offer is a possible explanation as to why such discourse is so powerful and hard to combat.
The value of this paper is in the degree to which it both sets an important applied research agenda for the field and fills a critical void in the science communication literature. This conceptual article, in the form of a critical analysis, fills the void by advocating for the inclusion of organizational perspectives in science communication research because of the great potential that organizations have, via science communication, to shape societal behavior and outcomes both positively and negatively. It also coins the terms “compound ideology” and “mega-ideology” to denote that while all ideologies are powerful, ideologies can operate in concert (compound) to change their meaning and effectiveness. By exposing the hegemonic power of corporate science communication, future researchers and practitioners can use these findings as a foundation to combat misinformation and disinformation campaigns wielded by big corporate science entities and the public relations firms often hired to carry out these campaigns.
]]>This paper develops a typology of argumentation strategies used in lobbying. Unlike in other strategic communication functions such as crisis or risk communication, such typologies have not been proposed in the sub-field of public affairs.
The article synthesises the strategic communication, political communication and policy studies literature and employs exchange theory to explain the communicative-strategic exchange in public affairs. It showcases its explanatory potential with illustrative examples from Big Tech lobbying.
The paper describes that categories of argumentation strategies that a public affairs professional will choose are based on the contingency of the issue, policy objective and lobbying objective. The descriptive typology will require empirical testing to develop further.
The paper describes how public affairs professionals influence public policy through their argumentation strategies, which sheds light on the usually opaque activities of lobbying.
The proposed typology is the first of its kind for the field of public affairs. Beyond, it contributes communication-scientific insights from a rhetorical tradition to strategic communication research and other social science fields where lobbying is studied, e.g. policy studies.
]]>When a crisis occurs, do corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities protect organizational reputation by buffering negative effects or do CSR activities intensify negative effects, potentially leading to a worse reputation compared to if the organization had no prior CSR engagement? The authors hypothesize that if a crisis emerges in a domain aligned with an organization’s CSR initiatives (crisis-congruent CSR) backfire effects would arise, adversely affecting the organization’s reputation. Conversely, in cases of incongruence, where the crisis emerges in a domain not aligned with an organization’s previous CSR involvement, a buffering effect would manifest, protecting the organization’s reputation.
The authors conducted an experiment with a 3 (crisis-congruent, crisis-incongruent, and no CSR activities) × 2 (repeated measures) mixed factorial design. In the first scenario, no information was provided concerning a company’s social commitment. Alternatively, participants were exposed to an article illustrating the company’s dedication either to healthcare (crisis-incongruent commitment) or to combating sexism (crisis-congruent commitment). Afterward, participants were presented with a newspaper article addressing allegations of sexism against the company’s CEO.
The findings demonstrate that prior CSR activities have the potential both to serve as a buffer and to cause backfire effects in times of crisis. Domain congruence is the decisive moderator of these effects: Crisis-incongruent CSR activities acted as a buffer, crisis-congruent CSR activities “backfired” and led to more negative perceptions of the company’s reputation.
The study directly contributes to the understanding of CSR effects in crisis communication, while also addressing the often paradoxical and contradictory findings of prior studies.
]]>In today's volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous world, organizations deal with fragmented publics in contested public spheres. At the core, public opinion is not so much divided by issues per se but by deeply rooted moral concerns. Hence, while normative perspectives on morality prevail in strategic communication research, understanding the moral motives of stakeholders and publics from a descriptive standpoint becomes vital. In this light, the present conceptual paper discusses the implications of moral foundations theory (MFT), as an influential evolutionary-anthropological approach to morality, for strategic communication research and practice.
Adopting micro-, meso- and macro-perspectives, MFT's potential contribution to strategic communication research is explored regarding three foci: (1) moral framing, (2) narratives and (3) public discourse dynamics.
The paper concludes that frames and more complex narratives in strategic communication allude to MFT's five foundations – care, fairness, loyalty, authority and purity – in diverse ways and are given different readings by stakeholders and publics. Building on MFT, novel empirical tools are available to access and understand the complex web of moral meaning infused in public discourses.
For the first time, MFT is discussed systematically and in detail in the context of strategic communication research. The theory contributes to deepening the understanding of the conditions, e.g. for issues management and strategic mobilization. On broader view, this paper adds to the discussion on evolutionary perspectives in strategic communication research.
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