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The purpose of this paper is to introduce a framework for understanding how millennial social media use preferences can help public administrators change their delivery ethos to foster meaningful micro-encounters in digital spaces to then create public value. Ideally, these micro-encounters encourage public values creation from both the user (government) and audience side. Traditional government social media use often is one-way push without much care for dialogue and discussion. This revised framework shifts that thinking from the social media creation phase, allowing public administrators to use the tools in a more creative way.

The approach to the paper is theoretical, meaning the theoretical framework brings together lines of scholarship that have previously run parallel: millennial social media use preferences, government social media, and public values creation.

The theoretical framework offers propositions for future inquiry. The framework shows how traditional public sector social media use fails when it comes to creating meaningful spaces for interaction, which ideally is the purpose of social media.

The framework offered herein can help practitioners change the way they set up and even currently use social media tools to engage with the public. Though the framework is based on millennial social media preferences, any generation can benefit from a more open, inclusive platform that strives to foster public values such as collaboration, dialogue and transparency.

The theoretical framework generated for this paper brings together usually separate literatures to create a more holistic picture of social media use for public administrators.

Place branding and marketing are becoming key governance strategies that can increase governance legitimacy by meaningfully involving local stakeholder groups within the brand identity creation process. There remains a gap in knowledge regarding how place branding managers seek to involve stakeholders in the brand development, communication, and evaluation process. This research, based in three U.S. Deep South states and using Kavaratzis and Hatchʼs (2013) brand identity framework, finds that practitioners are doing well when it comes to expressing local beliefs within the brand identity, but can improve when it comes to analyzing and incorporating that feedback meaningfully. Without this, critical local stakeholders can feel alienated from local governance practices, thus decreasing legitimacy in branding and marketing processes and policies alike.

The purpose of this viewpoint essay is to examine deathcare leadership during the COVID-19 pandemic and recommend innovations to employ a more human-centric approach.

This viewpoint essay uses scholarly and popular literature to explore deathcare practices during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and to identify limitations of existing mass fatality management policies.

Deathcare leadership in the USA lacks a human-centric approach. Rationalistic mass fatality management during COVID-19 left families struggling with grief and mourning because many burial rituals could not take place. This essay suggests a humanistic approach to death management through leadership innovations as a remedy to this problem. Such leadership innovations can improve responses to deathcare during this ongoing pandemic and future public health emergencies.

This essay offers practical improvements to make deathcare more human-centric.

State-sponsored lotteries are adopted to raise funds for state programs. As such, there is a public mission within these organizations; however, most operate like private companies, thus shifting the organizational ethos to profit maximization. Much research on social media focuses on federal and local government agencies. In this paper, we explore the role of social media in lottery program marketing. Through an analysis of random lotteries on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram, we find: 1) a focus on aspirational marketing to promote the lottery as a business entity through its products and 2) increased dialogue with followers (i.e. customers) compared to other public agencies. This is a shift in how public organizations traditionally use the social tools, showing there can be a balance between marketing and dialogue.

The purpose of this paper is to present a conceptual framework that serves as: a potential how‐to guide for place managers; an evolution of place branding strategy; a cautionary tale about place brands developed without stakeholder involvement; and a way to open up the theory space to arrive at a potentially ideal marketing mix. The framework reveals consequences of relying on imagery with little connection to the place's reality. Place brands developed without these characteristics could lead to auto‐communication, which could affect the organization‐public relationship by stunting genuine organization learning and simulating meaningful two‐way dialogue.

A conceptual framework was developed using Qualitative Media Analysis to explore several constructs – market‐based models of governance, public relations models, Baudrillard's phases of the image, and six promotional tactics cities are used to promote the place.

Based on the concepts employed, it is argued that cities need to be cognizant of after effects of place brands, as the organization‐public relationship might be fractured.

A limitation might come from theories selected, but implications for place branding academics and practitioners are potentially great. Further research questions are presented.

Practitioners could use the piece as a how‐to guide when developing a place marketing strategy, as well as become cognizant of when auto‐communication could take place based on the communications strategies employed.

The paper develops a workable tool for place marketers while bringing attention to an area not often explored, be it theoretically and empirically, which is the after effects of place marketing.

This paper aims to understand how place brand managers in the US Deep South understand the brand images associated with their states and cities. The US South has its own unique identity – and the Deep South has its own differences from the rest of the country. Typically, the Deep South is seen as backwards, uneducated and the “buckle of the Bible Belt”. Given potentially negative brand associations, this research explores how destination marketing organization (DMO) managers in three Deep South states (Mississippi, Louisiana and Alabama) think their places are perceived.

Miles et al.’s (2014) guidelines for qualitative content analysis are used to understand responses to open-ended questions regarding place brand associations. Surveys were sent to 104 DMO managers in each state, and 53 questionnaires were returned with usable responses. Deductive and inductive analyses were used to understand place brand associations, as well as how managers in the three states are promoting positive associations or correcting negative ones.

Managers reported both positive and negative brand associations but also detailed problems when promoting either: financial and political constraints, information sharing, and asset capitalization. Managers, then, face issues when trying to promote their cities and states, thus negatively influencing the economic and social returns on tourism investment into the region.

Not many studies examine this region of the USA when it comes to tourism-related brand associations. Usually studies focus more broadly on a Southern identity rather than specific associations DMO managers understand the state to maintain. The study also fills a gap regarding asking DMO managers how and why they do what they do. Finally, the study puts into action Gertner and Kotler’s (2004) framework for assessing corrective measures for a negative brand image.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how US cities are communicating a sustainability narrative. Based on an analysis, cities are using a sustainability narrative focusing on environmental sustainability and consumption. Critical theory is introduced as a means to imagine alternative narratives.

Exploratory in nature, this study relied on qualitative media analysis to analyze documents and images gathered from 22 US city websites. Critical theory is then introduced to provide a conceptual way forward from the status quo narrative form.

Cities are utilizing environmental narratives largely, rather than including social and economic interests inherent within holistic sustainability practices. Moreover, cities are promoting sustainability as consumption, a practice that is inherently not sustainable. Critical theory explains that marketers are relying on the “status quo” when it comes to crafting a sustainability narrative.

Destination marketing managers can think outside of given narratives to create their own sustainability stories that might help the place achieve a competitive advantage.

Knowledge into sustainability marketing practices is extended by revealing a consumption narrative and utilizing critical theory to move beyond this status quo.

The purpose of this article is to integrate organizational capabilities into the place branding process to showcase how a lead destination marketing organization (DMO) can influence a customer-based brand equity outcome. Doing so highlights the strategic, relational nature of place branding. The authors focus specifically on first- and zero-order capabilities, integrating absorptive capacity (first-order) and an innovation capability (zero-order) into a place branding framework. We define an innovation capability within a place branding context and offer absorptive capacity as a mechanism through which DMO leaders can exploit external knowledge acquisition.

The paper presents a theoretical framework of the place branding process that integrates firm capabilities. A framework based on analyzing existing place branding models and integrating organizational capabilities, which find root in strategic management literature, was developed.

Findings indicate that existing frameworks address operational and customer capabilities in some manner yet largely ignore innovation capabilities. A definition of an innovation capability for place brand managers and scholars is offered, and offer absorptive capacity as means to integrate external knowledge into the DMO. Utilizing multiple levels of capabilities allows a firm to influence customer-based brand equity. Testable propositions based on the authors' framework are offered.

Managerial implications of integrating stakeholder capabilities into place branding include appreciating a culture of innovation within DMOs, learning from external stakeholders meaningfully and regularly and encouraging creative thinking that can produce new processes, policies or services.

By integrating organizational capabilities, attention is drawn to internal aspects of the place branding process the place can control directly. Capabilities dictate how an organization sees itself; learns from its stakeholders; and then integrates that knowledge into organizational, stakeholder and innovation capabilities. Therefore, capabilities are inherently internal mechanisms through which a DMO can influence place brand outcomes, which are understood here as brand equity elements.

The purpose of this paper is to use autoethnography to explore notions of self-identity formation and projection. The author uses the stages of grief as an analytical tool to explain athletic identity formation and personal effects when an injury removed that part of her self.

The paper uses autoethnography, a self-reflective, qualitative methodology meant to engage the researcher's personal experience, which then is potentially adapted and understood by others in similar situations. Autoethnography might pair personal research with existing analytical frameworks and theories, as this story does.

–The author realized that losing, even temporarily, self-identifying characteristics (here, athletic identity) affects self-esteem, social interactions, and future motion-based endeavors, for fear of starting the cycle of grief again.

The paper is valuable, as many people are “weekend warrior” athletes that identity as a runner, cyclist, triathlete, weight lifter, or general gymgoer. Someone might sustain an injury that leaves him or her feeling similar to the author – and can help them understand the importance of athletic identity. The paper also shows how a well-known framework, stages of grief, can be used not solely as an explanatory tool but an analytical one as well.