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This study aims to propose a model of publics' ethical activism, testing the role of emotional outrage in an extended framework of the previously established STOPS model. Thus, this study aims to investigate (1) how ethical perception of a social issue affects situational motivation that leads to participation in public activism, and (2) how emotional outrage plays a role in mediating between situational motivation and activism behaviors.

The study aims at investigating the mediating role of emotional outrage between situational motivation and activism behaviors, which have not been investigated thoroughly in public relations research. By conducting a national survey with 386 people (N = 386) living in Australia, the study's suggestive model was tested in the context of two ethical issues (e.g. climate change and anti-racism). This study found that people who perceive an ethical issue are likely to be motivated to participate in activism behaviors. Specifically, three situational perceptions (i.e. problem recognition, constraint recognition and involvement recognition) were found to be significant factors affecting situational motivation (SM) in problem solving. A high level of emotional outrage was found to play a mediating role between SM and consequential ethical activism behaviors. The more people feel outraged about an ethical issue, the more likely they will engage in punitive behavior. This study contributes to the theoretical development of public relations by illuminating how situational perceptions lead to emotional outrage that promotes behavioral intentions in an ethical context. This study also suggests that a practitioner should be sought to manage the levels of perceptual factors when setting up a communication plan in response to an ethical public crisis.

This study found that people who perceive an ethical issue are likely to be motivated to participate in activism behaviors. Specifically, three situational perceptions (i.e. problem recognition, constraint recognition and involvement recognition) were found to be significant factors affecting situational motivation (SM) in problem solving. A high level of emotional outrage was found to play a mediating role between SM and consequential ethical activism behaviors. The more people feel outraged about an ethical issue, the more likely they will engage in punitive behavior.

This study substantiates how three perceptual antecedents may conjointly affect situational motivation. Also, the findings in this study also contribute to theoretical development in predicting ethical activism intentions. Another contribution of this study is to demonstrate the mediating role of emotional outrage between situational motivation and ethical activism. The authors strived to explore individuals' perceptions and its impact on intention to boycott against ethical problematic social issues. It should be considered that this study used a hypothetical and manipulated situation where respondents are exposed to the visual stimuli that focus on the moral problems that those specific issues have raised.

First, as problem recognition plays a prime mover role in the overall problem-solving process in an ethical context, organizations should reduce individual's ethical problem recognition. When setting up a communication plan, an organization should showcase their positive role in addressing the ethical problems (e.g. to show Adani's commitment to indigenous people and efforts to protect the environment). The response strategy should be effective enough to create an “ethical dilemma,” which refers to a situation in which one has a difficult choice to make between two ethical options.

This study contributes to theoretical development of public relations by illuminating how situational perceptions lead to emotional outrage that promotes behavioral intentions in an ethical context. This study also suggests that a practitioner should be sought to manage the levels of perceptual factors when setting up a communication plan in response to an ethical public crisis.

The purpose of this paper is to apply communication theory to explore and help explain public support for causes and organizations in the form of prosocial behaviors, including donating, volunteering and participating in advocacy efforts.

Through a survey of people (n=1,275) living in the USA who indicated supporting issues they cared about in 2017, this research gathered information about motivations for providing public support for various causes and non-profit organizations.

The situational theory of problem solving (STOPS) was applied, and support was found for the STOPS model in terms of predicting communicative action. This study also found support for situational activeness influencing other behaviors, including active forms of communication, financial support, volunteer support and other forms of advocacy. Implications for practitioners managing communications or organizations involved in such efforts are discussed.

This research applied STOPS to study behaviors, including communication, volunteering, donating and participating in advocacy efforts as forms of prosocial behavior supporting different organizations related to many important issues. The paper provides theoretical value in terms of adding to the generalizability of the STOPS model for communications scholars and discusses practical implications for non-profit and other types of organizations.

The purpose of this paper is to apply the situational theory of publics and framing theory in the context of environmental corporate social responsibility (CSR) communication research to determine how message frames impact information seeking and processing.

Using a 3 (message frame: diagnostic, prognostic, or motivational) × 2 (environmental issue: general vs specific) plus control between subjects experimental design, the study examines the attitudes, cognitions, and behavioral intentions different publics may form about two different environmental responsibility issues presented in this study. Furthermore, the study aims to examine how different types of message frames (diagnostic, prognostic, or motivational) and topics may impact how a company can move a public toward information seeking behaviors.

Based on theoretical considerations, structural equation modeling was used to examine significant paths between variables, thus creating a proposed new theoretical model that can be applied to CSR, public relations, and strategic communication literature.

The study offers a proposed new integrated theoretical model that can be applied to strategic communication literature and used to assist companies with enhancing their CSR communication and strategic communication planning efforts to determine how to move a public toward information seeking behaviors.

This paper investigates whether building a nuclear power plant in a community would inherently bring local conflict phenomena such as “not in my back yard (NIMBY)”, focusing especially on the interactive effect between different types of local publics and their exposure to either a supportive or opposing message about a hypothetical local governmental plan to build a nuclear power plant on community participation intentions.

Applying the two theoretical frameworks (situational theory of publics and social exchange theory) to NIMBY, this study used a quantitative approach by using 471 participants in a 4 (publics: active, aware, aroused or inactive) × 2 (advocacy message type: supportive or opposing message) experimental design.

The results showed that regardless of message types, active publics were more likely to participate in community activities than any other public, but this group strongly opposed the harmful facility, while inactive publics continued to be inactive. However, aware and aroused publics were significantly influenced by messages.

The rationale and findings of this research are original, as they have not been published previously, and are not being simultaneously submitted elsewhere. This research should contribute to the broad body of knowledge and practices in community-based conflict issues in terms of risk management. It is believed that the discussion and implications of the findings should raise interesting areas for further research.

This purpose of this paper is to examine how two, American‐based, international public relations agencies came to participate in the United Nations Global Compact. The global compact is an initiative which brings together more than 4,000 member organizations in over 100 countries to address some of the world's most pressing issues. Specifically, this paper seeks to identify: the events that prompt these senior‐level executives, as members of their agency's dominant coalition, to initiate participation in the global compact; what obstacles within the agency present challenges to joining the global compact; and how each agency integrates the compact principles into its work.

Grunig's situational theory of publics is used as a framework to create a single, embedded case study which integrates three subunits of analysis: in‐depth interviews, and primary and secondary document analysis. In‐depth interviews are conducted with one senior‐level executive/counselor from each of the two agencies that are examined. Primary document analysis focuses solely on the Communication on Progress reports which must be submitted on a bi‐annual basis by every global compact participant. Secondary document analysis includes any agency‐produced materials, such as speeches/presentations, as well as articles written for business publications.

Overall, results indicate that both agencies have yet to fully integrate the compact principles into their own internal functions, and primarily use the global compact as a tool for counseling clients. However, both agency executives reveal that it is going to become necessary for their agency to involve themselves in the global compact, within and across the entire agency – particularly in terms of confronting issues such as ethics and diversity.

This paper adds to the existing scholarship in a few, important ways. First, it incorporates and encourages the continued use of qualitative methods to examine contemporary issues that face the practice of public relations. Second, this research establishes an argument for furthering the idea that public relations professionals can be advocated for social change and can be influenced through the work they do. Finally, this paper stresses the continued importance of public relations work in facilitating global citizenship initiatives.

This study situates in the context of Chipotle's food safety issue and seeks to understand how their primary customers perceive their crisis response messages after learning of the outbreaks. The current study incorporates the framework of situational crisis communication theory (SCCT; Coombs, 2007) and public segmentation model (Rawlins, 2006) to understand the effectiveness of crisis response messages. It aims to examine the role of public segmentation in situational crisis communication and investigate the effects of three crisis response strategies according to SCCT on different public segments.

The SCCT provides guidelines for understanding the effectiveness of different crisis response strategies. The current study showcases the importance of public segmentation in the SCCT model through the lens of stakeholder theory. A 3 (crisis response strategy: deny, diminish, rebuild) × 4 (public segment: advocate, dormant, adversarial, apathetic) factorial experiment was conducted.

The findings suggest that advocate public expressed more positive evaluation about the company when exposed to rebuild and deny strategies. Both dormant and adversarial stakeholders reported positive responses on rebuild and diminish strategies. However, no difference was found among apathetic public.

The researchers attempt to make a modest contribution in this direction by reporting results from an empirical experiment that examined the effects of crisis response strategies on different public segments. The findings suggest an effective message tailoring approach to target different public segments. Thus, the results of this study are expected to benefit relevant corporations and public relations practitioners.

This study explores the interaction effects of organizational conflict history and employees' situational perceptions of COVID-19 on negative megaphoning and turnover intention.

Survey data (N = 476) were collected from US citizens, who self-identified as full-time employees, through Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) in August 2020.

Organizational conflict history (i.e. highly conflict-prone vs less conflict-prone workplaces) interacts with employees' situational perceptions of COVID-19 (i.e. inactive vs active publics) in affecting employees' negative megaphoning and turnover intention toward their organizations. Employees who are active publics on COVID-19 in highly conflict-prone workplaces reported the highest negative megaphoning and turnover intention. On the contrary, employees who are inactive publics on COVID-19 in less conflict-prone workplaces reported the lowest negative megaphoning and turnover intention.

COVID-19 is an uncontrollable, exogenous crisis for organizations. While it is expected that employees in highly conflict-prone workplaces would report higher negative megaphoning and turnover intention, this study found that employees' situational perceptions of COVID-19 would further exacerbate the effects. This finding reflects the importance of managing organizational conflicts continuously and preemptively while also segmenting and cultivating relationships with employees based on their situational perceptions of issues and crises.

This study identified the significance of the interaction of cross-situational factors (e.g. employees' recollection of organizational conflict history) and situational factors (e.g. employees' situational perceptions of issues) in affecting employees' negative behavioral intentions in crisis situations, even if the crises are exogenous and uncontrollable.

This paper aims to examine what type of messaging on Twitter is most effective for helping move social marketing beyond focusing on personal changes to find out what messages help turn members of the public into vocal advocates for these organizations’ social changes. Social marketing scholarship has regularly focused on how organizations can effectively influence changes in awareness and behaviors among their targeted audience. Communication scholarship, however, has repeatedly shown that the most influential form of persuasion happens interpersonally. As such, it is imperative that organizations learn how to engage audiences and facilitate the discussion about organizational messages between individuals. Social media provide platforms for such conversations, as organizational messaging can be shared and discussed by individuals with others in their networks.

Through a content analysis of 3,415 Twitter updates from 50 nonprofit organizations, this study identifies specific types of messages that are more likely to get stakeholders retweeting, archiving and discussing the organizations’ messaging through regression analysis.

Messages focusing on calls-to-action and community building generated the most retweets and Twitter conversation; however, they were also the least used strategies by nonprofit organizations.

Research has regularly examined the types of messages sent out by nonprofit organizations on Twitter, but they have not tested those messages against measures of engagement. This study pushes the understanding of social media communication to the next level by analyzing those message categories against metrics provided by Twitter for each tweet in the sample.

The purpose of this paper is to describe three foundational concepts that contribute to conceptual heritage of the field of public relations (publics, organizations and relationships). Conceptual heritage is positioned as a type of shared public memory, a dominant narrative, that encourages adherence to the past whilst recognizing that counter-narratives can pose useful alternatives to foundational concepts.

The approach is a selective literature review that describes three dominant concept categories and presents more recently developed alternative concepts and approaches to illustrate how public memory is subjective and evolving.

The concepts of publics, organizations and relationships have grounded the dominant narrative and development of the field of public relations. Though these concepts continue to be influential as researchers rely upon and expand upon their legacies, counter-narratives can spur the innovation of ideas, measurement and practice.

The paper focuses on only three major foundational concepts selected by the authors. The importance of these concepts as well as additional examples of the field’s conceptual heritage and evolution could be identified by different authors.

The analysis demonstrates how the public memory contributes to the development and evolution of the field of public relations. Counter-narratives can offer appealing, subjectively constructed challenges to dominant narratives.

This paper describes and critiques public relations’ conceptual heritage and argues that conceptually and methodologically-based counter-narratives have contributed to its evolution.

This paper seeks to explore the meaning of the stakeholder concept in politics, using theories drawn from the fields of management, political science and public relations. In particular, the theory of stakeholder identification and salience is to be used as a framework.

This qualitative study involved in‐depth interviews with 23 politicians and political advisers in Western Australia and was conducted in the style of a grounded theory investigation.

The results indicate that in politics, as in business, controversy and confusion continue to surround the stakeholder concept. Participants thought “stakeholder” should imply possession of a legitimate interest in an issue, but did not believe this was always the case. There is a gulf between how politicians think stakeholder status should be accorded in principle and what happens in reality. In practice, power seems to play a far greater role than legitimacy in determining stakeholder salience among political decision‐makers.

Although the study focuses on a single jurisdiction (Western Australia), there are implications for policy development in other contemporary democracies. Excluding or marginalising stakeholders with a legitimate right to be heard contributes to the phenomenon known as “democratic deficit”, whereby citizens feel alienated from the political process.

This is one of the few empirical studies to investigate the application of stakeholder theory – as developed in the management literature – to politics. It integrates theories from different disciplines of direct relevance to what should be the primary focus of public relations – the management of stakeholder relationships.