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This paper addresses an important era of women's activism in Kuwait. In the 1950s, when the government recognized women's rights for education, the wave to obtain other civil rights clashed with culture, tradition and religion which became serious obstacles facing women in their struggle for basic rights. This historical study focuses on the establishment of two women's organizations -- the Arab Women's Development Society in December 1962 and the Kuwait Women's Cultural and Social Society in February 1963. To sway the negative image of women in a patriarchal society, women used activism as a public relations tool to achieve their social, civil and political rights. The study uses cultural-economic model (CEM) to illustrate how activism and public relations were articulated as synonymous to foster women's rights in Kuwait. Archived documents and content analysis of media content published in the 1960s reveal that activism played a vital role as a public relations strategy and that social activism was more effective than political activism. The study highlights the implications of culture within the context of both public relations and activism. • Study adopts the cultural-economic model of public relations to analyze activism in the womens rights movement of Kuwait. • Content analysis of newspapers and magazines suggests public relations and activism were synonymous to the women's rights movement in Kuwait. • Women's activism for social rights was more emancipatory than for political rights in an Islamic society such as Kuwait. • Study provides insight into public relations, activism and the Middle East. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights: [•] Study adopts the cultural-economic model of public relations to analyze Islamic bank websites in Kuwait. [•] Analysis of websites extrapolates six Islamic value orientations. [•] Value orientations illuminate relationship between public relations and religion. [•] Study provides insight into public relations, the Middle East and Islamic values. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents information on books and articles related to media relations, published in various journals. The article "An Experimental Investigation of News Source and the Hostile Media Effect," by L. Arpan and A. Raney, published in the journal "Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly," examined the interaction among different news sources, individual levels of partisanship, and the hostile media effect in sports news. The article "International Agenda Building in Cyberspace: A Study of the Middle East Government English-Language Web Sites," by P.A. curtin and K.T. Gathier, published in the journal "Public Relations Review, examines 10 official English language Web sites of Middle Eastern nations to determine if and how they are agenda setting. The book "Dynamics of Public Relations and Journalism: A Practical Guide for Media Students," by L. Alcock, A. Clear and L. Weidmann, discusses the common qualities of public relations and journalism professionals. The book "Media Relations for Public Safety Professionals," by L. Brown, provides a primer for emergency responders who find themselves dealing with the media at the site of a tragedy.

This study of the 10 official English-language, Middle East government and presidential web sites determines if and how they are building a dialogue with, and agenda for, English-language media and targeted publics. The paper addresses the dialogic functionality of web sites; what features are supplied to journalists to help build the media agenda; and how well communication across cultural boundaries and expectations takes place. Many results were unexpected and suggest Middle Eastern practitioners are relying on a personal relations model that takes advantage of the lack of a media gatekeeper on the web but not of the web's media agenda-building capacities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Saudi Arabia and the U.S. are developing a mutual understanding toward many issues, especially those related to security and regional conflicts. • The two governments' agenda-building efforts were more effective at the local level. • The transfer of salience from Saudi public diplomacy activities to the U.S. media was evident at the second and third level of agenda-building. • Traditional information subsidies emerged as a powerful tool to influence the third level of agenda-building in Saudi media and public opinion. This study analyzed the agenda-building capacity of political public relations messages of the Saudi and the U.S. governments during Donald Trump's visit to the Middle East and scrutinized their influence on the media coverage and public opinion. The findings indicate that all three levels of agenda-building received solid empirical support from the data: governmental information subsidies significantly influenced media coverage and public opinion on the level of issues and stakeholders (1st level), their attributes (2nd level), and networked co-occurrences of issues/stakeholders (3rd level of agenda-building). Traditional information subsidies emerged as a powerful tool driving the agenda-building process. The study confirms the effective capacity of public relations communication to build the media and the public agendas in non-Western media culture and expands the applicability of the agenda-building network analysis research to the Middle Eastern media market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]