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This paper is an investigation of the volume, nature and tone of news media coverage of the federal Lifeline Program from its inception to 2018. It aims to examine whether news media coverage is correlated with significant episodes of reform in the program.

Using the ProQuest Major Dailies database, articles covering the “Lifeline Program” were analyzed. Specifically, a quantitative codebook was developed, based on the literature, and four coders were trained to systematically analyze the 124 articles that discussed the program between 1985 and 2018.

The findings suggest that reforms in the program were preceded by significantly higher volumes of media coverage; however, the analysis is unable to confirm that negative media coverage has a stronger agenda setting effect. In addition, no significant difference was found between positive and negative news stories in their use of research-based information.

This study is interdisciplinary in its ability to combine policy and journalism studies as a mechanism to understand the relationship between the two forces.

The purpose of this paper is to examine coverage of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement in seven US-based newspapers to determine whether the protest paradigm, “a pattern of news coverage that expresses disapproval toward protests and dissent,” and other marginalizing techniques are present, and racialized.

Relevant articles published during a six-month period of 2014 near the death of Michael Brown were retrieved from the selected outlets, including the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and the St Louis Post-Dispatch. Textual and content analyses were performed.

The articles heavily followed the paradigm. An additional characteristic, blame attribution, was also identified. Language of crime, lawlessness, violence, blame for nearby acts of violence, and inflammatory quotes from bystanders and official sources were often present. There was little discussion of key issues associated with the formation of BLM.

Mainstream outlets rather than social media or alternative outlets were examined. Future research should study coverage of BLM in other outlets.

Measures to avoid marginalizing protests and racialization of coverage, including increased diversity in the newsroom and monitoring for racialized language are suggested.

Racialization of news and coverage of BLM has widespread negative consequences, such as association of Blacks with criminality that may affect their quality of life. The protest paradigm has the ability to squelch participation in social movements, which have the possibility to bring about needed social change.

This interdisciplinary paper highlights the important role of mainstream media and news routines in affecting the BLM movement. It uses diversity research to make recommendations for media practitioners to avoid racialization of news.

Argues for the need to develop a crisis communication programme, well in advance of any catastrophe. An organization must have a definite policy and procedures to be followed during a disaster. Shows the need for organizations to wake up to the immediacy of mass media coverage and learn how to handle public relations in a crisis situation.

Political elections, especially presidential elections, have a tendency to overshadow other events, including disasters. Response to disasters during elections, such as Hurricane Matthew and the Baton Rouge flooding in 2016, are often dependent on attention given to them from the media, as well as prominent political figures and political candidates candidates. The purpose of this paper is to explore how election cycles affect government response to disasters and ultimately demonstrate the dependency of crisis communication on media agenda-setting for presenting saliency of disaster risk and needs.

Responses from presidential candidates Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, as well as President Barack Obama, in regards to the Baton Rouge flooding and Hurricane Matthew, were observed using media reports and social media accounts. These results were matched with key events from the presidential election timeline.

There is a positive relationship between news exposure and attention, and also between attention and civic response. In regards to the 2016 presidential election, news coverage of the release of the Donald Trump-Billy Bush tape distracted national attention from the approach, landfall, and recovery of Hurricane Matthew. Information subsidies provided by the candidates directed the media agenda away from the needs of the communities and individuals impacted by these disasters.

Disasters are often assumed to be value-free because they are “blind to politics.” Here, it is argued that this was not the case in relation to these two disasters. Thus, the authors encouraged more research be conducted to clarify the impact that political elections have on strategic news coverage of disasters and ultimately on disaster response.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce a template to guide practitioners in the creation of multiple marketing plans that are intended to target different groups of stakeholders – some of whom are supportive, others adversarial, namely, the business-to-business (B2B) marketer’s agenda.

The methodology involved a combination of purposeful sampling, real-time participatory observation, action research and secondary data analysis. The main method of this research is analytical and conceptual with the objective of identifying the diverse groups of stakeholders with whom business marketers must interact.

In cases where multiple marketing plans were used for different stakeholder groups, B2B firms encountered lower levels of negative attribution from social network systems, mass media and subsequently public and governmental stakeholders.

This paper suggests the need for multiple marketing plans that target not only supportive customers but also neutral and adversarial stakeholders who represent a source of negative attribution because they have the potential to derail or even destroy the B2B firm’s marketing agenda. It is suggested that practitioners must also address those stakeholders who distrust or even dislike their firm and its marketing objectives.

Throughout April/May of 2009 a new type of virus surfaced in Mexico and the USA, denominated H1N1 or swine flu, that has been immediately disseminated worldwide. Even though the mortality of this virus has been slow, comparing with other antecedents, the mass‐media articulated a troublesome discourse that put the world in tenterhooks waiting for the evolution of the symptoms. Emulating the mythical archetype of what we knew as Spanish flu, which affected more than 50 million people during 1918 and 1920, journalism triggered panic in the four corners of the world. Under such a context, the purpose of this paper is to explore the connection between the coverage of mass‐media and press of swine flu in Buenos Aires (Argentina), and how the principle of resilience in this conjuncture works.

In order to understand this issue in an all‐encompassed manner, the author conducted ethnography in Buenos Aires during April to June of 2009 combining informal with formal interviews and analysis of contents extracted of press coverage. It is important to mention that the role of observer was hidden to capture vividly the social behaviour as long as a context of health emergency.

The findings of this research reveal that fear becomes an efficient instrument to keep the status quo in context of disasters. In addition, it is important to clarify that virtual disasters do not permit societies to learn of their tragedies and affects considerably their abilities for resilience.

Unfortunately, there is no abundant literature to support the outcomes of the present paper in respect to swine flu. Beyond ethical boundaries of journalism, the point of discussion, here, seems to be whether news should be edited or transmitted in rough during a moment of uncertainty. As a whole, the debate is circumscribed to non‐edited news which can result in uncontrollable society response, while edited news jeopardizes the freedom of the press.

This paper provides an original point of view that contrasts the thesis of Baudrillard in respect to the spectacle of disaster. The panic disseminated by media blurs the boundaries between culprit and innocence presenting to the poorest sectors as the main concerns of society. That way, the earlier imbalances that allowed the disasters are replicated once again. In contrast with Baudrillard, this paper considers that Swine flu really took place and was something other than a show. An event like this, elaborated and commercialized is of course, aimed at reinforcing the legitimacy of privileged groups.

Internet-based intangible network good (IING) has revolutionized multiple industries in recent years. This paper aims to reveal the laws of consumer’s decision-making on IING from a perspective of kinetic energy and potential energy.

In this paper, 4 aspects and 17 factors influencing IING adoption were generalized. Based on the theory of social physics, an agent-based simulation model, introducing physical energy theory to depict consumer’s decision-making, was built. An agent’s kinetic energy reflects the agent’s perceived effect of mass media on the agent’s decision-making on IING adoption. An agent’s potential energy reflects the agent’s perceived effect of social interactions on the agent’s decision-making on the adoption of IING. An agent’s final energy is the sum of the kinetic energy and potential energy, which reflects the agent’s final decision.

Some factors mainly influence the diffusion velocity, while other factors have a dramatic impact on both diffusion velocity and diffusion scale. The agent’s personality can make a difference at the early and middle stages of IING adoption, but a faint impact at the later stage because of the effects of network externalities and word of mouth. There is a critical value of the number of initial adopters which can dramatically speed up IING adoption.

This study provides new insights for firms on the effects of factors influencing consumers’ decision-making on IING adoption.

This paper defines a new kind of innovation, IING, and generalizes IING’s special characteristics. As a new application of social physics, the physical energy theory has been creatively introduced to depict consumer’s decision-making on IING adoption. A kinetic and potential energy model of IING adoption has been built. Based on simulation experiments, new insights of IING adoption have been gained.

The paper reports findings and recommendations from doctoral research in Belgium. The objective is to present insights related to the consumer decision‐making process towards fresh meat. A four‐component conceptual framework is proposed. Information required to investigate links and associations between different elements of the framework is collected through exploratory and conclusive research procedures, with data originating from consumer surveys and household panels. Major attention is paid to the impact of communication and information from mass media, as well as to the impact of socio‐demographic characteristics such as age and presence of young children in the household. Recommendations extend to livestock farming, the meat industry, government, mass media and future research. Key attention points include increased orientation towards satisfying consumer needs and re‐establishment of trust through the production of intrinsically safe products and reliable and effective communication.

This qualitative paper is about social reporting in response to an incident that involved the loss of human life. It examines Loblaw’s disclosures following the Rana Plaza building collapse that killed over 1,100 Bangladeshi workers.

This article draws on Suchman’s (1995) comprehensive legitimacy typology to interpret Loblaw’s disclosures about the collapse in both mass media coverage of the tragedy and the company’s quarterly, annual and corporate social responsibility (CSR) reports.

Loblaw worked on many fronts to secure stakeholders’ support in the aftermath of the fatal incident. Through their social disclosures, Loblaw simultaneously managed exchange, dispositional, consequential, procedural, structural, personal and cognitive legitimacy, striving to demonstrate that, notwithstanding the incident, the company was still conforming to its social contract.

This research operationalizes all aspects of Suchman’s legitimacy typology in the context of social reporting. In particular, the paper further develops the concept of cognitive legitimacy. This should be of benefit to other CSR researchers.

The loss of human life during business operations is one of the most terrible events an organization can face. Corporate activities leading to loss of human life are obviously far from being socially acceptable. Stakeholders are likely to disapprove such activities and reconsider their support, which can threaten the survival of the organization. It is thus of utmost importance to understand the strategies used by corporate managers in their attempt to secure ongoing stakeholder support.

This paper innovates by focusing specifically on social disclosures about a negative event. In so doing, it also contributes to a small, but important, literature within CSR research that examines incidents resulting in the loss of human life. The paper adapts and applies Suchman’s legitimacy framework to interpret social reporting in response to a specific instance of loss of life, the Rana Plaza building collapse. Finally, this paper mobilizes the notion of cognitive dissonance to further develop Suchman’s notion of cognitive legitimacy.

The purpose of this paper is to understand the crisis communication strategies used by the Caribbean medical tourism industry in the 2017 hurricane season, and also evaluate the quality of the disaster communication messages delivered via digital mediums.

This study includes a comprehensive, qualitative content analysis of 149 risk and crisis messages from 51 healthcare organizations distributed through digital media. The medical tourism providers (MTPs) include hospitals, medical tourism facilitators, practitioners/private physicians, specialty clinics, and dental and cosmetic providers.

Nearly half of the MTPs included in the data set delivered no post-disaster information to external audiences. The most prominent post-disaster message strategy utilized was conveying operational messages. Furthermore, an unexpected finding was the sheer magnitude of unrelated health-oriented and promotional destination marketing content disseminated before, during and after these events.

This analysis excludes internal organizational channels of communication which may have been used to communicate risk and crisis messages during these events (i.e. employee e-mails, announcements made through intercom systems, etc.). Our analysis does not include content disseminated through medical tourism forums (i.e. Realself.com, Health Traveler’s Forum, FlyerTalk Forum).

Small-scale MTPs can improve on any weaknesses through proactive planning and preparation by creating organizational goals to complete basic crisis communication training courses and in doing so support the applied professional development of disaster and crisis responders in the Caribbean region. Second, MTPs exposed to similar risks of natural disasters may use these findings for comparative analysis purposes to support their own organizational planning. Finally, this study supports the continued utility of the National Center for Food Protection & Defense guidelines for analyzing and evaluating organizational performance.

Currently much of the academic scholarship of applied disaster communication narrowly focuses on the response strategies of one organization, or analyzes one social media platform at a time (i.e. Twitter). A strength of this analysis is the inclusion of an organizational sector (i.e. Caribbean medical tourism providers) and the range of platforms from which the content was captured (e.g. websites, org. blogs and social media networks).