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The purpose of this study is to refine and expand an emerging US government communication model, the government communication decision wheel, by testing the differences between the communication practices of US public sector communicators working for non‐elected officials versus those employed by elected officials.

Drawing from surveys of 781 US government communicators, the study compares the communication practices and influences of government communicators working for elected officials versus non‐elected officials.

The study identifies four significant differences and five similarities in how the public sector environment affects non‐elected and elected officials’ communicators’ public relations practices.

While the study and underlying model focus on US government communication, this study provides valuable theoretical insights. It supports the model's underlying premise that the public sector is unique from the private sector while also further refining the significant differences within the US government sector.

This study helps US government communicators identify unique environmental attributes that affect communication activities in the public sector. It helps identify how these attributes affect communication practices within individual and collaborative contexts. Finally, it helps non‐governmental communicators and communicators outside of the US to understand how the attributes may affect communication practices when they collaborate with government communicators from the four levels of US government as well as with those who work for elected and non‐elected officials.

Despite the critical importance of communication in the public sector, very little research focuses specifically on government communication outside of political communication. The findings provide valuable insights for practitioners and contribute to public relations theory development for the under‐researched public sector.

This study seeks to illustrate shared obstacles and opportunities that US nonprofit communicators face, broadening the understanding of nonprofit communication management beyond fundraising, donor relations, and social media practices.

A total of 35 nonprofit communicators from across the USA were interviewed. The participants represented a variety of nonprofit sizes that address a variety of issues.

The interviews revealed six common challenges that the participants face: politics, laws and regulations, media attention, evaluation, brand recognition, and employee engagement. The interviews also revealed four common opportunities that the participants face: job satisfaction, collaboration, communication value, and professional development.

The findings illustrate how nonprofit communicators in the USA address some shared experiences. In doing so, the findings lead to nine valuable areas for future research. Given that the findings are limited to the USA, future research is needed to examine nonprofit communicators’ shared experiences in other countries.

The study builds on recent research examining how the environment in which communication management is practiced affects communication practices, thereby contributing to theory development that predicts effective communication practices via sector. In addition, the study serves as a call to action for researchers to address pressing management issues identified by nonprofit communicators.

The study builds on recent research examining how the environment in which communication management is practiced affects communication practices. In addition, the study serves as a call to action for researchers to address pressing management issues identified by nonprofit communicators.

The purpose of this paper is to present a development framework for government communicators.

This paper describes how a working group approached the project which involved examining extant training frameworks from communication professional bodies, academic literature and practitioner communities; undertaking extensive interviewing and data collection from departments and obtaining input from external organisations in order to devise an original, process‐driven model which embeds a strategic approach to communication. The paper also outlines the collaborative way in which the model was developed which included extensive input from government communicators at all levels of seniority, ongoing consultation and testing with potential users, private sector organisations and accrediting professional bodies.

Following a review of government communications in 2004, the new permanent secretary for government communication has begun to implement a range of initiatives. Work had already begun in the cabinet office on developing a more strategic approach to training and development and a working group was set‐up originate and launch a development framework (now called evolve) for the whole civil service communication community.

The paper describes the development of evolve – an open, transparent and iterative approach which has elicited commendation and support from all the parties involved.

The purpose of this paper is to determine Generation Y communicators' interest in government communications.

This paper outlines the results of a descriptive quantitative survey conducted with 39 students and recent public relations graduates at Calgary, Canada's Mount Royal University.

The results from the small, purposive sample confirm some assumptions employers have about Generation Y and challenge others. The results identify key themes requiring future research.

The research is limited in its sample size, but is not meant to be representative. It is a purposive, exploratory study that provides valuable insight into future research.

The paper sheds further light on this important topic and fills a gap in the research specific to Generation Y government communicators, offering valuable insight into the recruitment and retention of Generation Y staff in Canadian governments.

This paper brings together new and existing resource material to provide a detailed profile of the regulatory environments affecting the practice of public relations in the UK, Italy and South Africa. It is hoped that by contextualising the social, political and economic factors specific to each country, readers will be more acutely aware of similarities and differences between PR practices in each country. This approach aims to help drive PR policy development by providing a useful template for further national and continental PR regulatory environment mapping.

The purpose of this paper is to seek an understanding of the role of government communication in Australia by examining perspectives on the extent to which public servant communicators persuade or engage the Australian public.

Themes from the public relations literature into the role and function of public relations are used in a qualitative analysis of key government documents and in‐depth interviews conducted with public servants, political staffers, journalists and interest group representatives.

This research found a diversity of views regarding the role communication does and should play within government. Participants without formal experience or education in communication generally viewed the function as one of persuasion and dissemination of information whereas the more experienced argued for more of an engagement with the public. A lack of detailed knowledge and/or use of public relations principles appears to be limiting the understanding of the role and purpose of government communication in Australia.

The research is conducted in an Australian context only and uses a qualitative approach that should not be generalised without further research.

Continued cynicism about the role of public relations in government does little to improve the quality of communication between a government and its public. This paper provides an opportunity for reflection on the purpose of government communication and the role of the public servant.

Previous studies in this area have generally focused on political communication in the sense of partisan or party‐political messages of government. This paper explores the concept from a bureaucratic perspective.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze how media plays a role in the issue of counterfeit vaccines. Specifically, to describe how the government communicators manage issues of counterfeit vaccines in Indonesia. Even though a public health emergency situation is very hard to predict, monitoring issues in media is crucial before communicating with the public. This will help improve public trust on the importance of vaccines.

The study collected data from June until December 2016. The research method employed quantitative content analysis of data obtained from media monitoring and interviews.

The results show that the issue of fake vaccines received great attention from the media with a total of 1,724 news headlines on the topic. The government communicators were responsive in handling this issue by providing sources of information for key influencers when it arose. Since the majority of media sentiment was positive, the research also proposes a model for the future managing of issues on counterfeit vaccines.

Limited to managing issues on media about counterfeit vaccines and how government communicators and stakeholders communicated during the crisis. It is suggested that future research should focus on the emotional perspective of parents whose children were affected by counterfeit vaccines.

This research is worthwhile for Public Relations Practitioners in government health institutions, such as the Ministry of Health, the National Agency for Food and Drugs Control and PR practitioners in Hospitals and Pharmacies to overcome another communication crisis in a public health emergency.

To increase awareness in Indonesia about the importance of vaccines and to educate the public about using government vaccines without fear.

This research is new as the topic about counterfeit vaccines has not been brought up before. This has the potential to have a considerable impact to local communities, as well as a wider impact on global health systems.

Email communication is indispensable for US state agencies to respond to citizen requests and engage with constituents, contributing to building trust in local governments. While prior studies examine the responsiveness of elected officials, the quality of virtual interactions between government organizations and citizens is often overlooked. This study aims to investigate how US government agencies capitalize on the potential of online interactions with constituents to manage generic queries and introduce the response engagement index (REI) consisting of response time, reactive transparency and message interactivity to evaluate levels of communicative engagement.

The authors conducted a field experiment encompassing emailing a request to 547 state agencies based in the five largest states and one small state. A total of 377 organizational responses were manually analyzed to reveal the usages of six communicative engagement strategies.

The results show the potential of online communication is underutilized as the average score of response engagement remains low. Human responses are less engaging than auto-reply messages and require a one-day waiting period, if not longer. Response types and gender of government communicators significantly differ in response time and engagement strategies. The findings identify divergent patterns of response engagement and provide practical implications for facilitating citizen engagement.

This research fills a critical gap by investigating the quality of online interactions between US government agencies and citizens. The authors develop a theory-grounded tool of response engagement to identify three features: response speed, reactive transparency and interactivity. The findings can improve the quality of email communication in state agencies, enhancing governance quality. The REI proposed here addresses what Pfau (2008) deemed problematic for communication scholarship: research is sparse on “functional issues” that examine the communication process. Pfau argued for research that provides knowledge of interest across disciplines so as to “cross-fertilize” ideas between political communication and public relations; this study sought to bridge that gap with a theoretical and practical tool for building public trust in governments.

To support the evaluation of transparent and responsive governments, reliable and valid measurements are needed. The proposed REI provides practitioners with a theory-grounded tool to identify areas of engagement quality in government responses. The findings can be used to improve the quality of email communication in state agencies, enhancing governance quality.

Citizens seek reciprocal dialogue through prompt, open and interactive communication. US state agencies should leverage the engagement features for increasing citizen trust – response time, reactive transparency and interactivity – when responding to public inquiries. Ultimately, trust in government agencies' interests in serving stakeholders cannot be strengthened without prompt and engaging responses to meet the public's needs.

This field experiment was one of the first to focus on US state agencies' responses to information requests. It introduces a new REI to assess communicative engagement in a government/citizen exchange.

The aim of the study was to identify the extent to which social media are perceived by local government communicators as an opportunity to facilitate dialogue with communities, and the barriers that prevent dialogue occurring.

In-depth qualitative interviews were held with 11 communication practitioners and managers from 8 metropolitan and one regional council in South Australia who actively used social media.

Social media are used and valued more for transmission of information and promotion than engaging in dialogue. Limited understanding of social media by risk averse councillors and management, practitioner competencies in interactive technologies, and lack of guidance for meeting mandatory record-keeping through social media were key factors inhibiting its use for dialogue.

The South Australian sample limits generalisability to other locations. However, the findings generally accord with previous, mostly quantitative, studies, and enrich understanding of beliefs and perceptions that limit dialogic use of Web 2.0 technology.

Work needs to be done to align the law, community expectations, and policy guidance for local government in their use of social media communication and data storage. Achievement of the dialogic potential for social media requires an investment in people and training and updating of communication record policies.

This paper broadens discussions about social media and dialogue in organisational communication by focusing on local government and articulating communicator, organisational culture, policy, and legal considerations.

This study aims to identify the critical factors affecting the perception of adolescent students toward interactive online mental health information available on health-related websites.

The primary data was collected with the help of an online self–structured questionnaire. The questionnaire includes the identified variables extracted from previous literature related to the mental health information websites using the Likert scale. The respondents include the adolescent school students belonging to the northern region of India: semi-urban/rural locations of Uttar Pradesh (Agra and Mathura) and urban cities (Faridabad, Gaziabad, Delhi and NCR). The criteria for selecting respondents were that students must have visited any online health information-related websites at least once. Exploratory factor analysis was used to explore the factors with the help of SPSS.20.

The identified factors that include information delivery medium/mode, websites’ navigation structure, customized information or content, ability to form a virtual relationship and supplementary features of the websites may benefit the health communication system of any country and the health-care industry.

There are some limitations such as a limited number of respondents and even on that sample was taken for teenagers; thereby creating fewer generalizations related to the present context. Further, only exploratory factor analysis is applied in the study to identify the factors but future researchers may proceed to develop the conceptual model of perception toward online information with the help of confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling techniques.

The results of this study are useful for government officials especially those related to the ministry of health care and public health organizations of various countries, who usually invest in co-designing authentic, reliable and high interactive online information-sharing websites.

The results of the study will facilitate the various social child welfare associations and non-governmental organizations that are usually involved in the holistic development of adolescents. The identified factors can be seriously taken into considerations by these associations while they are formulating any on line websites for sharing health-related information to adolescents.

The study is unique as it provides insight into the opinion of the adolescent students, primarily upon encountering the online mental health information concerning the Indian perspective. Future researchers, health-care policymakers and health-care professionals may use the study to capture a complete picture of a relevant phenomenon in their work.