Search results

This study explores the effect of gender stereotyping and issue advocacy on consumer sentiment toward advertising and brands.

Drawing from the literature, the study hypothesizes about the impact of gender stereotyping and consumer advocacy on consumer sentiment. A behavioral experiment tests the hypotheses and provides support for the main conclusions.

Results indicate that issue advocacy can cancel the negative effect of traditional female stereotyping. The results also show that demographics are not necessarily the reason why a person favors or condemns stereotyping and advertising; on the contrary, any reaction is far more linked to personal disposition.

The findings of this research have implications for marketing and advertising practice. While the use of issue advocacy is currently trending up, there is still a lack of understanding about its effect on consumers. Gender stereotyping is also being frequently used, but has caused huge backlashes in recent ad campaigns. Marketing and advertising managers can use insights from this research to shape advertising messages that use these two stimuli in order to enable a brand to better connect with its audience and achieve a more desirable outcome.

The paper contributes to the academic discussion about the effectiveness of using gender stereotyping and issue advocacy to drive advertising outcomes. It challenges the idea that the combination of these two advertising approaches is either detrimental or beneficial to the brand.

Based on Lasswell’s communication model, this study investigates how four categories of factors (i.e. the source, content, medium and receiver) conjointly affect the relational, financial and social outcomes (i.e. what effect) of CSA communication.

With a survey (N = 366), this study found configurations of core CSA communication factors leading to three different CSA communication outcomes.

While this study found multiways to yield three different CSA outcomes, combinational logic indicated the combined effects from source, content, medium and receiver. With content and medium, individuals’ connectedness (receiver) to a CSA issue is a core factor leading to a high level of purchase intention and issue advocacy. This study also found that message strategies (i.e. informativeness, factual tone, no promotional tone) are core factors leading to a high level of trust and issue advocacy.

With the theoretical guidance, this research contributes to strategic communication practice for various entities involved in advocacy communication by enabling an improved understanding of advocacy communication factors and triggering different communication outcomes.

As CSA communication involves multiple strategies, conventional research agenda focusing on correlational and path analysis approaches provide limited understanding of communication practice. To fill this void, this study adopts a configurational approach to understand current CSA communication practices holistically.

Advocacy has long been identified as a valuable mechanism for providing support to individuals who experience difficulties in accessing services and whose voices often remain unheard in decisions relating to meeting their individual needs. However, the advocacy needs of older people age 65 and over with mental health problems remains a relatively under‐researched area.This paper presents findings from a small study undertaken in partnership with Sandwell Advocacy, a voluntary sector organisation, and researchers from Coventry University in one local authority area in the West Midlands. The aims of the study were to explore the advocacy needs of people aged 65 years and over with mental health problems and to determine the current level of demand or need for advocacy among this user group. A key motivation for this study was to explore the ways in which advocacy could provide a ‘voice’ to those whose needs are often marginalised in both social care service provision and wider society.

This paper aims to examine the relationship between advocacy on behalf of libraries and impact evaluation in a national public library development context in which the boundaries between these two roles are likely to be blurred, creating ethical issues for all concerned.

The authors draw upon their broad experience of helping various international organisations to develop strategic approaches to impact planning and evaluation for public libraries, as well as their work in helping to develop library practice at national level, in order to focus on and examine the creative tensions between impact evaluation and advocacy.

There are particular issues for all key participants (international programme funders, policy shapers, service managers, evaluators and advocates) in planning, supporting and delivering impact evaluation programmes. Most of these can be addressed directly but some (such as balancing programme requirements against local priorities, or achieving a balance between collecting evidence based on predetermined impact indicators and progressive focusing) entail management of the tensions between conflicting pressures.

Specific ways forward are offered to encourage ethical advocacy and impact evaluation at national library development level. These principles are equally applicable to education and health library development and to public library development at regional or local levels.

The particular issues of advocacy and impact evaluation in the national public library development context have not previously been recognized in the international development literature addressing advocacy and evaluation or in the library and information services research literature.

This paper aims to report on an exploratory study exploring the provision of dementia advocacy.

The study adopted a qualitative approach. Data is based on 17 semi‐structured interviews with a range of key stakeholders, and observations of the practice of advocates working in third sector organisations. The study was conducted in five localities across the UK.

The study draws attention to the benefits of advocacy as a means of supporting older people with dementia and illuminates internal and external challenges encountered by third sector organisations providing this type of support.

The study captures the additional dimension that austerity brings to third sector organisations working in this field and the ways in which financial constraints are shaping the field of dementia advocacy.

This paper contributes to ongoing debates in relation to a contradiction between the current coalition government's Big Society ideas and the reality as it unfolds in a specific part of the third sector.

The focus on local-level policy initiatives in US anti-fracking movements presents unique opportunities to explore interactions between professional advocacy organizations with regional/national constituencies and grassroots organizations with constituencies who will directly experience changes in local landscapes resulting from unconventional oil and gas development (UOGD). However, research on anti-fracking movements in the US has considered dynamics of interorganizational cooperation only peripherally. This chapter examines factors that motivate coalition building, sources of coalition fragmentation, and the progressive polarization of grassroots anti-fracking and countermovement activists using qualitative research on an anti-fracking movement in Illinois. While grassroots groups may experience some strategic advantages by collaborating with extra-local, professionalized advocacy organizations, these relationships involve navigating considerable inequalities. In the case presented here, I find that coalition building was important for putting UOGD on the policy agenda. However, when anti-fracking activists began experiencing success, institutionalization rapidly produced fragmentation in the coalition, and a countermovement of UOGD supporters was formed. I highlight how ordinary movement dynamics are particularly susceptible to polarization in the context of local land use disputes that “scale-up” to involve broader movement constituencies as perceptions of distributive injustice collide with perceptions of procedural injustice.

The purpose of this paper is to review some of the current literature and discuss some ways to advocate for open access (OA) programs adopted by libraries in various institutions. It points out that the library and information science/system community's enthusiasm for innovations in OA may have unintended negative financial consequences. This overview provides a list of relevant literature/resources in the area of library advocacy, with regard to the ongoing needs of OA repositories. There is a focus on OA in India.

The literature review is not comprehensive but selective and fairly recent; it includes published resources from the last ten years and lists organizations advocating for a sustainable OA model.

The advocacy roles for librarians in promoting the OA movement, and the challenges they are facing in this era are discussed. The author stresses that a proactive approach in information handling and collaboration with information technology staff and academics are essential for OA to be sustainable.

Owing to poor or reduced government funding for libraries, librarians are forced to advocate for OA in new and different ways. Library officers/information managers serving in universities and academic institutions can launch a program to help faculty pay for publishing in OA journals, introducing the concept and securing funding through various means.

The purpose of this paper is to describe the need to theorize firms’ involvement in social issues and propose the social issues management model as a framework for analyzing the communication processes underlying social issues management. An application of the new approach is illustrated through a brief case analysis.

The paper is conceptual and emphasizes theory building for firm’s involvement in social issues management.

The paper describes modifications to the general issues management model that can be adopted to reflect the social issues management process and contemporary digital media environments.

The paper can benefit theory and practice of social issues management by describing how specific communication strategies and digital media use may affect social issues management.

Because firms increasingly are motivated or urged by stakeholders to take stands on social issues, understanding how they can perform the role of social issue manager can enhance their potential for contributing to positive social change.

The paper provides a much needed update to the models of issues management used in strategic communication. The new model accounts for the increasing pressure on firms to address social issues and the role of digital communication channels in that process.

A handful of models and measures currently exist for the purpose of assessing student capacity for leading social change. Ample research suggests that students of different racial and gender identity groups exhibit various understandings, motivations, and behaviors related to social engagement and transformation, yet few studies take into consideration the potential for diverse students to interpret social-change-related survey scale items differently. Using a critical quantitative approach, this study compares factor loading patterns of the Social Issues Advocacy Scale (SIAS; Nilsson, et al., 2011) across eight race/gender subgroups to test the extent to which the factor structure remains invariant. Findings suggest that intersections of race and gender do influence how scale items cluster together. This study lends support for critical quantitative research designs that examine social phenomena using a specific-group approach, and calls for scholars to consider the cultural validity of scales used to measure capacity for social justice leadership.