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Suggests that active learning can benefit students in public relations and integrated communication courses at the graduate level. Describes how three active learning approaches--research and field work, student accountabilities for learning, and student reflection and reflexive exercises--were used in a graduate class project to help a Fortune 50 consumer products company identify and address real-time merger communication issues. (SG)

The article discusses the study which examines the role of editor and newsletters content in building relationship in an activist setting in Sierra Club in the U.S. The study analyses the opinions of newsletter editors to better understand the roles of gatekeepers to build relationships within the activists settings. In addition, the goals of the study involve examination of the editorial decision making in the activist organization and the role of interpersonal interaction as part of an organizational-public relationship (OPR).

By qualitatively content analyzing the news coverage of SARS in Beijing Review, Time, and Newsweek, this study examined the Chinese government's interventions in crisis management during the 2003 SARS epidemic. Empirical findings show that the interaction of increasing external pressure and internal self-awareness forced the Chinese government to change its crisis management strategies. Different administrative levels (local, regional, national, and international) were cooperatively involved in taking actions and controlling the crisis. Implications for future research were also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Symmetrical public relations theory acknowledges primacy of the dominant coalition in making organizational decisions and influencing public relations practices but reveals little about this powerful inner circle. Drawing from interviews with 21 public relations executives, this article opens up the dominant coalition and reveals its complex power relationships and a matrix of constraints that undermine and limit the function, rendering it difficult for practitioners to do the"right"thing, even if they want to. If public relations is to better serve society, professionals and academics may need to embrace an activist role and combine advocacy of shared power with activism in the interest of shared power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Relationships between economic power and political influence have long been of interest to scholars in several disciplines. Despite an extensive literature and rich theorizing on the topic, however, we still know little about how economic producers attempt public policy influence and the extent to which they may be successful. In this chapter, the authors argue that a communication perspective on the public policy process sheds new light on relationships between business organizations and political influence. Drawing from the political science, agenda-setting, framing, and issues management literatures, three interrelated communication processes that bear heavily on public policy formation are elaborated--issue selection, issue framing, and issue management. The literatures are critically reviewed and then integrated in a series of 36 propositions regarding what we think we know about the communication strategies and tactics business actors employ in the policy process and the conditions in which such approaches may yield favorable outcomes. A framework for future communication research studies is presented in the form of a business model of political influence. The model highlights complex communicative aspects of policy making and a multifaceted concept of influence in public policy formation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]