Search results

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the social debate on women, health and smoking in the New York Times from 1870 until 1929. The paper aimed to establish whether smoking for women was a form of oppression and whether it was publicly known that smoking is harmful in decades preceding the “Torches of Freedom” campaign run by Edward L. Bernays. This criticism for engineering women’s smoking, and thus harming women’s health up to today causes harm to the reputation of the public relations (PR) industry.

Articles were analysed per decade and a total of 294 articles from the New York Times was analysed. The coverage was analysed using two themes, smoking and health and women and smoking and discourse analysis have been carried out on articles in these themes to explore what was known of smoking and whether the social perception of women smoking was oppressive and could be seen as a woman’s issue that “Torches of Freedom” addressed.

Findings show that it was not known that cigarettes were harmful to health and that smoking can be seen as constituting part of women’s oppression in the US before the “Torches of Freedom” campaign. The oppression of women who smoked intensified during the 1920s and Bernays’ Torches of Freedom campaign directly addressed an existing social issue rather than engineering a campaign and manipulating women to start smoking.

The paper highlights the revolutionary potential in Bernays’ campaign. This could inspire researchers and consumers to keep on critically reflecting on PR campaigns while still appreciating any progressive agenda they might contribute to. Simultaneously, PR practitioners may take away from the article that a message of social relevance may just be more memorable than the advertised brand itself.

This paper engages with the coverage of the New York Times, a newspaper that is often mentioned in the context of the “Torches of Freedom” campaign success and explores in detail what the debate on smoking, health and women were in nearly 60 years preceding the much-criticised campaign.

This work demonstrates the development of a robot, which was designed for the orbital welding of pipes.

The robot consists of a small car pressed against the pipe by means of chains, which are used by the robot to move around it. To provide all necessary torch movements, the robot must have four degrees of freedom: torch travel speed, stick‐out, torch angle and lateral motion. Thus, using a look‐up table‐which was specially designed to this application‐it is possible to follow the optimal parameters (voltage, current, welding speed, torch angle and stick‐out) for each welding position (flat, vertical and overhead).

The robotization of the orbital welding process brings enhancement in the final product quality, considerable increase of repeatability, reduction of rework and reduction of the weld execution time. At the very least, the robot is capable to reproduce the weld bead of the best human welder, through the use of the same paramenters contained in a table.

The use of this robot in welding with GMAW proved to be extremely viable. It was shown that the bead shape did not suffer great variations from one welding postion to another, thanks to the use of a gradual change of parameters.

Although, by RIA definition the devices for the orbital welding shown in literature up to now are not robots, the developed device can be called a robot due to its capability of being completely programmable and automatically carrying through all welding activities.

The aim of this work is to explore Edward L. Bernays' early evolution in thought concerning the rationale for public relations and to briefly discuss how these emergent ideological concepts have proven foundational for contemporary public relations.

Bernays' ideological development in the decade after the First World War is traced through: his very early tactical work; his exposure to significant writings concerning the use of persuasion to manage the masses; and his own writings.

Bernays, widely considered a pioneer in the field of public relations, exhibited a somewhat halting evolution in thought concerning the role of the new public relations professional. From 1920 through 1927, he normally described the public relations counsel as using propaganda to move masses toward the acceptance of good causes. However, by the end of the decade, his concept of the public relations person shifted toward emphasizing using propaganda as a pro‐social mechanism to convey the ideas of minority voices to targeted audiences. The latter view is a precursor to modern‐day understandings of public relations as an endeavor that attempts to build mutually beneficial relationships between a client and its relevant audiences.

This paper offers a distinctive look at how, during a crucial decade, a pathfinder in US public relations developed rationales for the emergent field. The exploration of his evolving ideology provides a deeper view of how Bernays contributed to enduring concepts of a socially constructive practice of public relations.

This research aims to understand the determinants of consumers' behaviour and motivations to buy taboo items online. Two theoretical lenses, theories of psychological reactance and system justification, are invoked to frame the role of online shopping in shaping consumer behaviour in taboo markets.

A naturalistic inquiry paradigm was used to test a sample of 34 Saudi women who were buying taboo products online.

The determinant of such behaviour is based on differences in understanding the ritual restrictions between people, their society and their country. The four principal attitudes towards restrictions are justifying, accepting, rejecting and reacting. These attitudes frame five motivations: satisfying the restriction, to be unique, but aligned with social norms; breaking social norms; aligning one's self-image to liberal societies; and joy in challenging legal restrictions. The motives for online shopping are justification/utilitarian, to accommodate other restrictions in going to local markets; and reactance hedonic, to break restrictions. These motivations create seven different patterns of online shopping behaviour.

This research contributes to the literature by presenting an alternative perspective on online shopping motivations for taboo products. Furthermore, this research calls for a new socio-psychological theory for understanding the role of technology in influencing consumer behaviour in restrictive societies.

This article aims to give a short overview of the relationship between marketing and feminism.

The analysis is based on a literature review of key studies contributing to the debates on whether marketing activities exploit or empower women.

The findings illustrate the changing nature of feminist attitudes to the role of the market in women's lives.

As a short overview, this analysis necessarily shortens topics that merit more in‐depth investigation.

Three waves of feminism are overviewed in relation to feminist attitudes in the marketplace.

The purpose of this paper is to highlight the Islamic character of entrepreneurial activity along with its systemic, ideological and ethical particularities in contrast to the tech-based entrepreneurial model of Silicon Valley.

Hollingsworth’s framework of institutional analysis is used to analyze and compare the institutional design of tech-based entrepreneurship originated in Silicon Valley with the Islamic alternative.

An ideal Muslim entrepreneur will have a service-oriented-collectivist mindset, as opposed to an individualistic-self-centric mindset, where solving problems for all stakeholders is a priority instead of profit maximization at the expense of other stakeholders. A Muslim entrepreneur while ensuring the financial sustainability of the firm would avoid complexity on a systemic level, thus would adopt a personalized-family-like atmosphere. A Muslim entrepreneur will also constructively engage local stakeholders and will not possess a disintegrating tendency toward the local social structures.

The paper can help Muslim entrepreneurs to critically evaluate their entrepreneurial activities and firm design in contrast to the contemporary tech-based model.

A number of papers already have discussed the features of an Islamic model of entrepreneurship, however, none has done so while sequentially comparing the Islamic alternative with the contemporary model using Hollingsworth’s framework of institutional analysis. In this paper, the resulting model of Islamic entrepreneurship can be clearly evaluated and contrasted, feature by feature, with its tech-based counterpart.