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To understand the communication important to social capital development and community engagement in regional communities and its relevance to corporate social responsibility (CSR).

Qualitative approach including focus groups and semi-structured interviews. Case studies of three regional Australian and Canadian communities at different stages of community development.

Communication, both traditional and in new media forms such as social media, was important to social capital development provided that it was diverse, appropriate to community needs and extended its reach to community members to include those who were marginalised. Access and skill issues affected some community members’ engagement when they attempted to use social media, although the increasing use of social media as a connector was observed. These findings have implications for organisations’ CSR, as organisations can be responsive to their communities if they also communicate and engage with them for mutual benefit.

A pilot, exploratory study that highlighted the varied context of community social capital and the diversity of communication that engages and includes community members; ongoing research is in progress to gain understanding of regional communities’ connections and networks, and how to strengthen them and how stakeholders are identified and supported.

The study indicated that it is important to explore all communication avenues and extend the reach and participation of community communication through diverse channels including social media. The research provided some good examples where organisations support and encourage community social capital development – this underpins the success of other programmes such as CSR programmes.

To develop sound networks and relationships where organisations and their communities develop trust, deal with issues and collaboratively problem solve. Social capital develops and supports other forms of capital – without it organisations may be too focused on ‘doing good’ rather than ‘being good’.

This chapter provides insight into communication layering and the context of social capital development for effective communication in regional communities. Social responsiveness is possible when organisations understand their community; this chapter puts forward the notion that organisations are members of their communities so that their social capital is important to all they do, including their planning and delivery of CSR programmes.

The purpose of this paper is to combine disaster risk reduction (DRR) and communication management literature to investigate the challenges and opportunities encountered when stakeholders spontaneously self-organise communication efforts during a disaster. The 2017 Knysna Fire Disaster in South Africa is used as the context.

The qualitative, exploratory research was supported by data obtained through thematic analysis of qualitative in-depth interviews and the Facebook page created by the community. Information from the disaster debrief was also included.

The findings suggest that disaster information needs to be sent every 30 s to a minute to coordinate rescue and relief efforts. The challenges for disaster management teams to manage this mammoth task and the role that the self-organising community played in assisting the communication process was found not to be recognised in disaster management policies or systems. This adversely affected the work of the disaster management team and stakeholder relationship.

This study focussed on one disaster. Future studies could possibly compare various disaster examples to provide even greater insight into the self-organising communicative behaviour of those affected by disasters.

The research gives one of the first clear indications of the scope of disaster communication needed during a disaster. It also highlights the community’s ability to contribute to communication management during a disaster, and which is not catered for in the practice, guidelines or management systems used for disaster management.

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 chapter discusses the significance and effectiveness of communication strategies in empowering marginalized communities. With a specific focus on reproductive health, this chapter examines the diverse scope of these strategies and their transformative potential. It explores the use of mass media as a dynamic tool for information dissemination and the adoption of information, education, and communication (IEC) approaches to enhance knowledge and awareness. Furthermore, this chapter highlights the catalytic role of social and behavior change communication (SBCC) in driving substantial transformations in behaviors and attitudes. An integral part of the discussion is the customization of communication strategies to effectively reach and empower marginalized communities in Bangladesh. Through these strategies, this chapter illuminates the path toward empowering marginalized communities.

Psychological ownership has been a topic of intense debate for several decades, especially in the digital era. In addition, as part of the digital public domain, virtual communities shape our digital lives. Unfortunately, few studies have examined the communication process in virtual communities from the perspective of psychological ownership. Moreover, information and organization are key aspects of virtual communities. This research aimed to explore the impact of psychological ownership on communication satisfaction from these two perspectives.

I collected 471 responses using a questionnaire. In terms of empirical methods, I developed a structural equation model (SEM) to examine the relationship between psychological ownership and communication satisfaction as well as the mechanism underlying this relationship – namely, information behavior. Specifically, I first examined the relationship between psychological ownership and information behavior. I then developed a comprehensive framework for the double-edged impact of psychological ownership in virtual communities on communication satisfaction.

I found that psychological ownership has a double-edged effect on communication satisfaction based on two types of information behavior in virtual communities. Specifically, organization-based psychological ownership (OPO) positively influences communication satisfaction through information exchange. In contrast, information-based psychological ownership (IPO) negatively impacts communication satisfaction through information-hiding.

The findings of this research demonstrate that psychological ownership has a double-edged effect on communication satisfaction. First, the findings of this study reveal the downsides of psychological ownership, which are not consistent with its beneficial role. Second, the negative effect of psychological ownership with regard to communication in virtual communities also helps explain communication failure in virtual communities. Finally, despite the downsides of psychological ownership in the context of a virtual community revealed by this study, this factor has an overall beneficial effect.

Trust in disaster communication is significant because a lack of trust will prevent the transformation of information into usable knowledge for an effective disaster response. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to investigate how the culture and network ties of an affected community can encourage trust and participation in disaster communication.

A qualitative case study of Jalin Merapi (JM) was conducted by interviewing 33 research participants in the Mt Merapi surroundings.

The findings indicate that culture-embedded disaster communication plays important roles in increasing the effectiveness of disaster information and encouraging trust in the authenticity of locally based disaster information at the individual level. The findings also identify that strong ties and weak ties play different roles in disaster communication. The strong ties are more effective in facilitating information diffusion and encourage trust and community participation within the affected community. Furthermore, the weak ties are more effective in disseminating information to wider audiences, and have an indirect influence in encouraging trust by extending the offline social network owned by the affected community.

Most literature on disaster communication focusses on the construction of disaster messages to encourage effective disaster response. Less attention has been paid to the information receivers regarding how disaster information is considered to be trustworthy by the affected community and how it can increase collective participation in community-based disaster communication.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a case study of Participatory Action Research (PAR), reporting on a collaboration, communication and disaster resilience workshop in Sydney, Australia. The goal of the workshop was to explore the challenges that organisations perceive as blockages to building community disaster resilience; and, through collaborative practitioner-led activities, identify which of those challenges could be best addressed through a deeper engagement with communication research.

The authors link communication, collaboration and disaster resilience through the lens of PAR, detailing how communication and resilience experts can collaborate to improve disaster prevention, management and mitigation practice.

The authors identify a number of theoretical considerations in understanding horizontal and vertical interfaces for improved communication. The authors also highlight how practical collaborative workshops can draw on communication researchers to facilitate collaborative resilience activities. PAR is shown to help move participant focus from resolving inter/intra-organisational tensions to facilitating public good, offering evidence-based recommendations which will foster a more reflexive and communicative approach to building disaster resilient communities.

This paper does not seek to apply community resilience to the general public, no community representatives were present at the workshop. This does not mean that the focus is on organisational resilience. Rather the authors apply PAR as a way to help organisations become more engaged with PAR, communication research and collaborative practice. PAR is a tool for organisations to use in building community resilience, but also a means to reflect on their practice. Whilst this should help organisations in building more resilient communities the take up of practice by participants outside of the workshop is a matter for future research.

This method of collaborative resilience building could significantly improve the shared responsibility amongst key organisations, mobilising skills and building awareness of integrated resilience thinking in practice for stakeholders in disaster management activities.

This paper provides original evidence-based research, showing the linkages between communication theory, collaboration practice and the tools used by organisations tasked with building community resilience. This innovative synthesis of skills can aid in building PAR led disaster resilience across prevention, preparation and mitigation activities for all potential hazards, threats and/or risks, however, it will be particularly of interest to organisations engaged in community resilience building activities.

The paper identifies a role for public relations in disaster management by analysing disaster and communication managers' understanding of community resilience and their use of communication in the context of two different cultural environments.

The research study comprised 51 in-depth qualitative interviews with disaster managers in Sri Lanka and New Zealand, which were thematically analysed using the software programme NVivo 10.

The study identified cultural differences in Sri Lanka and New Zealand that impact on how managers' communicate in natural disaster situations. The findings indicated that public relations’ understanding of communities’ cultures, their communication, networking and lobbying skills could further enhance the effectiveness of efforts to build community resilience to disasters.

Nations are complex multicultural realities; the findings cannot be generalized to make claims about how natural disasters are managed in different national contexts.

The paper identifies the unrealized potential of public relations’ expertise in communication, community relations, networking and lobbying to contribute to building community resilience to natural disasters.

By supporting efforts to build community resilience to disasters, public relations practitioners can contribute to social well-being in times of catastrophic natural disasters.

The paper adds an innovative perspective to public relations crisis literature by identifying the potential contribution of public relations’ concepts and practices to build community resilience to natural disasters. It demonstrates how sociocultural differences may affect disaster communication strategies.

Social live-streaming services are an emerging form of social media that is gaining in popularity among researchers and practitioners. By facilitating real-time interactions between video content creators (i.e. streamers) and viewers, live-streaming platforms provide an environment for novel engagement behaviors and monetization structures. This research aims to examine communication foci and styles as levers of streaming success. In doing so, the authors analyze their impact on viewers' engagement with the stream.

This research draws on a unique dataset collected via a multi-wave questionnaire comprising viewers' perceptions of a specific streamer's communications and their actual behavior toward them. The authors analyze the proposed impact of communication foci on viewing and donating behavior while considering the moderating role of communication style using seemingly unrelated regressions.

The results show that communication foci represent a double-edged sword: community-focused communication drives viewership while reducing donations made to the streamer. By contrast, content-focused communication curbs viewing but drives donating.

Of specific interest for practitioners, the study demonstrates how streaming content providers (e.g. influencers) should adjust their communications to drive engagement in the context of synchronous social media such as social live-streaming services. Beyond that, this research identifies unique characteristics of engagement that can help managers to improve their digital service offerings.

Social live-streaming services provide an environment that offers unique opportunities for self-development and co-creation among social media users. By allowing for real-time interactions, these emerging social media services build on ephemeral content to provide altered experiences for users.

The authors highlight the need to distinguish between engagement behaviors in asynchronous and synchronous social media. The proposed conceptualization sheds new light on success factors of social media in general and social live-streaming services specifically. To maximize user engagement, content creators in synchronous social media must consider their communications' focus (content or community) and style (utilitarian or hedonic).

The main objective of this chapter is to examine the country's internal communication environment that helps create community awareness and improve public–private tourism partnerships to achieve Oman Vision 2040. This chapter also attempts to understand the efforts of the National Tourism Organization (NTO) in building community relationships and empowering them by capitalizing on available resources within the community.

The study is based on qualitative and quantitative methods. A purposive sampling technique has been applied, and the data collection has been done through surveys and interviews from the Ministry of Heritage and Tourism, Salalah, Oman, to reach out to the findings.