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Sourcing practices are among the central research topics within the sociology of the media. Empirical studies have analysed what and who are the major journalistic sources, demonstrating that the selections journalists make not only depend on their subjective choices, but are connected to the norms and routines established in the profession. While invaluable, these studies are primarily media-centric and focused on small-scale investigations, meaning they regularly ignore the social totality in which sourcing is inevitably embedded. Such studies hence also pay too little attention to the external actors that provide 'information subsidies' to journalists. By employing the framework of the public sphere, we show that news sources should be viewed as a topic of central social relevance that touches on wider power relations within society. Sociological approaches should thus be complemented with other critical traditions, for instance the political economy of communication. The latter approach's value is revealed in brief sketches that point to the possibilities of achieving deeper understanding of the topic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers a perspective on the role of social media influencers as trusted messengers in tobacco control mass media campaigns. It describes campaigns by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to illustrate how mass media campaigns can leverage influencers to build and optimize campaign, including the Fresh Empire public education campaign, The Real Cost Smokeless Tobacco campaign and This Free Life tobacco prevention campaign.

There is a growing acknowledgment by segments of the global population that it is becoming extremely difficult to ignore the negative production externalities of industrial processes. In this regard, the related concept of ''sustainability'' has been gaining traction, with use of the word rising considerably since the 1990s. The term itself has been defined in many different ways, however, the core components are becoming common knowledge: economic, environmental, and social--informally referred to as profits, planet, and people. As Borden has aptly noted: ''Sustainability ideas are growing and maturing at many levels worldwide''. One way that people come to know about sustainable development and its importance is through media coverage of the movement via various projects and initiatives that have been proposed on a theoretical or conceptual basis, as well as those models which have already been concretely realized. One such project established in 2015 is Dubai's ''Sustainable City', the emirate's first net-zero energy working model, which received attention in the world press. This paper investigates and compares the coverage that the Sustainable City has received in the global and local media by utilizing a content analysis methodology guided by framing theory. The research joins the discussion on issues regarding how the media discuss aspects of ''sustainability'' and how it takes hold within a society, whether it be by grassroots or government policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the COVID-19 pandemic, nurses were placed in an unprecedented context in which they engaged with community members, family members, and friends while positioned between dire hospital situations and community disbelief about the seriousness of the pandemic, often along political lines. A secondary analysis of a qualitative study exploring experiences of 39 nurses in the United States and Brazil in engaging with the community and political discourse during the pandemic provided insights into the impact of these interactions on nurses, and implications for how nurses may emerge from this pandemic time stronger and more supported by those in administrative positions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The equalization-normalization debate concerns whether the Internet equalizes politics by empowering resource-poor organizations, or whether it further strengthens the position of resource-rich organizations. We address this debate by studying how interest groups' utilization of digital media is associated with their success in influencing news media. We suggest digital media is characterized by the coexistence of old and new media logics that benefit resource-rich and resource-poor groups in different ways. Analyzing a dataset of 1,127 Finnish interest groups, we found that groups' utilization of digital media is positively associated with their news media success, yet traditional ways of influencing the news media remain more effective. Among resource-rich groups with larger public relations staff, blog publishing is positively associated with both media access (media visibility) and agenda-building success (influencing news topics). In contrast, utilization of digital media among resource-poor groups only correlates with agenda-building success, and audiovisual content is more effective than other content. We suggest that while resource-poor groups benefit from network media logic in which the flow of information is initially based on popularity among social media users, resource-rich groups can exploit mass media logic where traditional journalistic gatekeeping is more important. The findings also imply that digital media has not decreased resource-related bias in interest groups' media access. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Major disruptions to traditional academic learning have occurred since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, as most higher education institutions have shifted to online or hybrid course delivery. This virtual shift has significant implications for service-learning. In this study, we explored the impact of virtual service-learning on public relations instructors and community partners. Interview respondents described challenges to virtual service-learning related to the pandemic but also noted unanticipated benefits, such as creativity and resilience. In addition, community partners and public relations instructors recommended a heightened focus on communication, flexibility, and adaptability to ensure successful virtual service-learning experiences for students and organizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reports the findings of a comparative study of the financial news produced by companies, financial analysts, financial newspapers and news agencies about the same news events, including data before and after the financial crisis. We ground this study in second-level agenda-setting, according to which news producers select substantive and evaluative attributes for the issues they cover. Using computer-assisted text analysis, we conduct pairwise comparisons of the evaluative tone of corporate quarterly earnings press releases and the corresponding analyst reports and news stories. Our overall hypothesis is that these actors produce news about the same events with an evaluative tone that furthers their own goals as well as the goals of those actors they are dependent on, which we find partial support for. We find a positivity bias in corporate earnings press releases and analyst reports, while financial journalists eliminate the corporate positivity bias, but do not add more negativity. The results also indicate differences in the tone of financial news before and after the financial crisis. Although all actors produce news in the period after the financial crisis that is less positive and less negative than before the crisis, the balance of positive and negative tone as well as relative differences among the actors suggest that news writing by financial journalists at financial newspapers and news agencies is more negative in tone after the financial crisis, thus providing also empirical support of their independence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many institutions, including governments, universities and corporations are confronting their involvement in slavery and racial discrimination and grappling with the issue of reparations. But what about the responsibility of news media? Should news organizations apologize for racist coverage? What should such an apology look like? This study looks at three case studies of publications that apologized publicly for their contributions to slavery, racism and racially motivated violence. It reviews the elements of an effective apology and then evaluates each publication's statement on those parameters. It compares and contrasts these efforts and discusses potential best practices for publications considering apologies in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article announces periodical's Article of the Year Award for the best article published in 2022 given to article "Distilling the value of public service media: Towards a tenable conceptualisation in the European framework" by Azahara Cañedo, Marta Rodríguez-Castro and Ana María López-Cepeda.

Several studies have focused on the impact of the main communication tools on political performance. However, little academic attention has been given to examine the influence of each communication strategy on voters as "consumers." The researcher aims to test the relationship between each of the four main communication tools (i.e. public relations, media, advertising, and social media) and political performance, and the relationship of each of the aforementioned communication tools with the "offering" of political products that focus on voters. A survey of U.S. politicians indicates that public relations, media, and social media have a significant positive effect on political performance; public relations and social media also have a significant positive impact on the "offering" of products that focus on voters. In turn, the results show a significant positive relationship between political performance and the "offering" of political products that focus on voters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes the theoretical and applied principles of functioning for the structural units of public administration bodies responsible for forming the relations with the public and mass media. The problem of finding optimal organizational forms of public relations and media management for the judiciary is of extreme importance. The system needs to increase the level of citizens’ trust and provide more transparent coverage of its activities in the framework of state reforms. The article determines the main tasks of the press service working for public authorities and, in particular, in courts. The research of the theory and actual state of the functioning of press services in courts also includes the analysis of the organizational forms of management of public relations processes in public authorities. It describes the structural place of the press service in the management process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: This article analyzes the development of new genres of newsworkers that the local media are hiring in a digital ecosystem in which platforms like Google and Facebook have the control of distribution. Methodology: The object of study, within the framework of political journalism, is comprised of 12 Catalan local media selected according to criteria of media diversity and geographical distribution. Semi-structured in-depth interviews with 24 professionals were conducted, from editors to journalists to social media managers. Results: Companies incorporate new job roles in political journalism. Nine new professional profiles are listed, although only three of them are profiles that the newsrooms are currently hiring. Conclusions: The skills related to marketing job roles are being adopted by journalists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The repeating agendas in the published news stories about the organizations build the identity of these organizations. A particular agenda may emerge as a natural result of the activities of the organization, but also as the results of this organization's own public relations efforts. The other side that shapes this agenda is the media. The choice of topic by the media organization and the way the topics are evaluated are the most important factors determining how the agenda is to be perceived. In this case, the transformation from pure reality to the to news is the special process. form a special process. This process is of interest to the agenda-setting theory. This theory deals with the relations between media, society, and reality. In this study, the news about the Agriculture and Rural Development Support Agency (ARDSI) of Turkey. This institution is a payment agent for the European Union agricultural funds for Turkey. Within the scope of the study, 396 news scraped from 4 different news sources were analyzed by the method called text mining. As a result, it is seen that the agenda of the news are: new enterprises established with the grants distributed by the institution and the meetings and training realized by the institution. Moreover, it was found that the agenda of the news stories and the legal functions of the institution are similar. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Men's involvement makes a difference in maternal health. Well-informed and supportive men may encourage their wives to get more complete and regular antenatal care. In much of sub-Saharan Africa, however, men's involvement with their wives' health during pregnancy is minimal. This study investigated men's response to Obulamu: How's Your Pregnancy radio campaign messages about attending antenatal care with their wives, delivering at a health facility, being tested for HIV, maintaining maternal nutrition, and using malaria prevention. We conducted eight focus group discussions ranging from six to ten participants each: two groups of men from a rural area, two groups of men from a peri-urban area, and two groups each of expectant or recent mothers from the same rural and peri-urban areas. We also conducted six key informant interviews of midwives and other healthcare providers. Findings revealed that participants were highly exposed to the Obulamu campaign and knowledgeable about campaign messages. Most men expressed positive attitudes toward behaviors promoted by the campaign and voiced an intention to change their behaviors. Key informant interviews confirmed that since the start of the campaign an increase in male involvement with maternity visits had taken place. However, a sizeable minority of men, mostly rural residents, resisted involvement in their wives' antenatal visits because of poverty, gender and cultural stereotypes, fear of HIV testing, and incongruity between messages and the realities of antenatal clinical practice. An interaction between individual and institutional-level factors as posited by the social ecological model was clearly evident; there was an incongruity between encouraging Obulamu messages about men's involvement and the discouraging realities of antenatal clinical practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Life in society is a natural imperative as human beings are not supposed nor allowed to live in isolation from their pairs. Relations of power emerge once societies are constituted by constellations of interests. Public Relations arises, thus, in the necessity of conciliating and promoting different interests among publics. Specifically, by dealing with politics, the public relations provide the logics and tools needed for a complex and uncertain environment. It also helps to turn the public opinion favourable to the accomplishment of different agents' goals. Although public relations techniques and practices have existed for millennia, the theoretical field still needs debates to diagnose and comprehend its foundations. Scholars also urge for more researches in order to suggest directions to produce innovative knowledge that effectively contributes to the development of society. The authors believe that public relations is the field of knowledge that when better understood and operationalized can promote it for its ability to deal with distinct interests among publics. In this sense, not only the (in)congruencies between public relations and politics have impacted agents doing politics, but also required a better comprehension and understanding about the state of the knowledge. Given this, the paper aims to answer the following research question: how scientific production that deals with public relations and politics in conjunction is characterised? Methodologically, the article takes the premise that the publication of academic papers is the most used and valued instrument by researchers who want to publicize the results of their investigations. It is also understood that it is the way for a specific field to lay its foundations and become both recognised and established among a community of scholars. To assess the academic production that deals both with politics and public relations, a quantitative approach was carried out in 2,291 articles and reviews published between 1937 and 2019 in journals indexed in the Scopus database, extending the analysis made by previous scientific reviews. The bibliometrics analysis encompassed the evaluation of citations, co-authorship and co-occurrence of words. Four stages of research were identified in the paper (1937-1982; 1983-1996; 1997-2004; 2005-up-to-date) and the results indicate that the number of publications follows a growing trend presenting maturity in the study of both themes conjoint. Broadly, researches deal with multidisciplinary issues and are not limited to the field of Communication, encompassing streams of research in the following areas: Humans Sciences, Arts and Humanities, Health, Natural and Medical Sciences. The most referenced papers deal with confidence and risk in democracies, network analysis, public opinion and media, and relationship management. It was also found a humanistic approach to organisations' management and a more pragmatist approach regarding the profession. The results also bring differences in comparison to previous researches that had established two schools of thought; the American pragmatist and the French critical schools. This article points to two schools of thinking regarding public relations and politics, which may be established in the United States and the United Kingdom. However, the paper does not claim that the effort presented is closed to new insights but asks for qualitative researches to have a deeper understanding of the quantitative analysis employed here. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fashion has been analyzed from different knowledge areas by a huge amount of academic works and approached as a philosophical, psychological, sociological and historic phenomenon. However, other disciplines such as marketing, education, communication, economy have also dedicated part of their efforts to their analysis. In the field of politics, which this research approaches, texts around the study of fashion have focused mainly on the perspective of nonverbal communication, which refers to many other aspects, not only the ones related to the way of dressing. Especially, during election time, politicians attempt to prepare their speeches, but they are fully aware of that not only what they say and how they say is important, but also the image they show and, consequently, the way of dressing is decisive; even more after the arrival of the TV, since it is focused on visual attention. Fashion has its own language that is useful to know what people want to tell us when they wear a thing or another. Although, traditionally, this has been a phenomenon associated with women, nowadays the distinction between genders is less pronounced and both, women and men, are interested in choosing their suits in the same way. Apart from this assessment, regarding the gender, the worry about fashion is not trivial because "the image is full of message" (Morejón, 2010) and all political parties are equally concerned. Traditionally, aspects such as clothing color or the use of more serious or informal styles have let us know the candidates and the ideological formation they have. The actual investigation wants to answer the question, in the construction of the collective thinking about society, of whether the way of dressing of different politicians, who are representing us, express ideological values, with the intention of being able to set whether there are a trend or an inclination that link up clothes worn by public representatives with the ideology of the party to which they belong, either left or right. Through a quantitative-descriptive research and applying the methodology of content analysis, we analyzed the dressing used during the fifteen days of the electoral campaign by the four candidates to preside over the Junta de Andalucía in the elections of December 2, 2018: Susana Díaz, for the Partido Socialista, Teresa Rodríguez, for Adelante Andalucía, Juanma Moreno, for Partido Popular and Juan Marín, for Ciudadanos. The sample is made of a total of 59 kind of styles, where we have studied variables such as color and formal or informal character of clothing, type of footwear, accessories, etc. We have selected the styles of public events with more media projection, focusing on the acts of party or central rallies of the day, rather than the rest of citizen meetings that could have in their agendas. The analysis period took the entire electoral campaign, including from Friday November 16, to Friday 30 of the same month. The results achieved reflect how, apart from small nuances that tip the balance in favor of one or another ideological line, the speech about clothing is quite homogeneous. So, fashion has stopped working as a tool that allows the ideological identification. The traditional color association and the way of dressing in the different political parties is (in the electoral campaign analyzed) vague and hide the andalusian accent, trying to approach the traditional culture through the use of flounced dresses and polka dots in blouses and scarves, hoop earrings and the use of chromatic symbology to remind us typical elements of the autonomous community of Andalucía, such as blue for the sea; green and white for the flag; the white isolated that remembers southern sunlight or the brown which recalls the land, being key elements for two of the most productive sectors in the region: agriculture and livestock. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background There is a broad recognition that journalism is facing difficult times in Canada and internationally. Analysis This article reviews the literature on the state of journalism and then focuses on one element of the perceived crisis of journalism in the Canadian context: claims that the number of employed journalists has fallen sharply in recent years. Using data from Statistics Canada and the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics, the authors find that, unlike the United States, the number of journalists employed in Canada has risen slightly in absolute terms over the past two decades. Conclusions and implications These findings have important implications for how researchers, politicians and the public think about the state of journalism in Canada and what types of policy prescriptions might be more or less appropriate to deal with the real but not necessarily calamitous changes that are taking place. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Considers official attempts to manage the press in Britain in the Houses of Parliament in the 18th and 19th centuries. • Differs from previous work in that it focuses on parliament and not the civil service. • Argues for greater awareness of pre-history of PR in Britain, following similar work in Germany and the US. This paper considers a topic that has received scant attention in the historiography of public relations: official attempts to manage the press in Britain in the Houses of Parliament in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Existing accounts of the emergence of government public relations in the UK have tended to focus on the civil service in the first half of the twentieth century, but this article sheds light on a series of earlier developments, including the allocation of seats for reporters in the viewing gallery of the Commons in 1803, the construction of dedicated Reporters' Galleries in both parliamentary chambers in 1847–52 and the creation of a Westminster Lobby in 1884. Taken together, these reforms improved journalists' access to parliament in an era in which direct governmental control over newspapers lapsed. Yet, they also allowed politicians to influence media commentary by determining who was permitted access to parliament and what type of content made its way into print. A case can thus be made that Westminster, not Whitehall, played host to the earliest official attempts to manage the media in Britain, and this has important repercussions for current understandings of public relations history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on aggregate internship data from an accredited Midwestern mass communications school to illustrate how feedback loops inform curricula and assessment according to standards of the Accrediting Council on Education in Journalism and Mass Communications (ACEJMC). A sample survey instrument is shared with data directly related to ACEJMC values and competencies. Final recommendations are made to help accredited programs earn compliance in assessment by using direct and indirect measures from internships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The activity of the Public Relations or of the communication in the organizations and its relation with the mass media has been an object of controversy and debate from the point of view of the ethics and deontology. The mass media are recipients of multiple activities of communication generated from the social organizations (companies, public institutions, private associations, etc). And in this relation there are voices that are questioning the role of the media and the strategies that the organizations realize across its offices of communication. This investigation tryes to analyze what the ethics codes of journalism say about the role of the sources in the editorial process; but also, it study the codes of ethics of the business associations and about professionals of the ambience of the public relations. To do that, we have been analyzed a total of ten documents of the journalistic ambience and seven documents of the ambience of the public relations. The results shows that from both ambiences the referential documents on ethics and deontology possess very similar characteristics and common trunks about the ethical guidelines that sustain and modulate the professional activity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The present meta-analysis study systematically reviews articles on media relations published from 1945 to 2021. It aims to explore media relations research in terms of progression, journals, theories, methods and data analytical tools, media genres and platforms, geospatial distribution of discussed issues and first author affiliations, organization types, most frequently used words, and major themes covered through a quantitative content analysis and a qualitative text mining approach. After applying the inclusion and exclusion criteria, 276 articles from 2006 to 2017 were collected as the final sample. Public Relations Review has published the most articles, while the most commonly used theories were agenda setting /building theory, rhetorical theory, and framing theory. Media relations articles utilize qualitative methodologies more than quantitative ones, while the commonly used data analytical tools were content analysis, interview, survey, and case study. Our analysis of the discussed regions and geospatial distribution of first-author show that the North American, European, and Asian continents and the US, the UK, China, and Australia have relatively more publications. The majority of media relations articles discussed governmental organizations. Five themes dominated media relations articles: public relations strategy, media relations practice, mass media and journalism, state–media relations, and organizational media relations. • The present meta-analysis study systematically reviews articles on media relations published from 1945 to 2021. • PPR has published the most articles of MR, while the most commonly used theories were agenda sitting/building theory, rhetorical theory, and framing theory. • MR articles utilize qualitative methodologies more than quantitative ones, while the commonly used data analytical tools were content analysis, interview, survey, and case study. • North American, European, and Asian continents and the US, the UK, China, and Australia have relatively more publications. • Five themes dominated MR articles: public relations strategy, media relations practice, mass media and journalism, state–media relations, and organizational media relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Founding editor Chris Sterling shared the story of CBQ'S founding in earlier issues, including images of what the first issue looked like. When Sterling retired from the journal's editorship, Weiwu Zhang stepped in, lending his considerable scholarly and leadership talents to CBQ. These mostly long-form "critical" reviews help set CBQ apart and form the nucleus of insightful conversation about books that was part of Sterling's original vision for CBQ. [Extracted from the article]

User comments have become an essential part of news websites. In this article, we examine this mode of public expression via the theory of the spiral of silence. This is done while adopting alternative measures, with regard to three major issues on the Israeli agenda, and in comparison to expression in public, as in the traditional theory. Based on an Internet survey (n = 712), the present study results support the relevancy of the spiral of silence to the online comment sphere. Perceived support for one’s opinion by the majority was found to have a positive and significant effect on the willingness to express opinion in the online sphere. The explanatory role of fear of isolation was more significant in the online sphere than in face-to-face context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the rise of non-traditional mass media techniques, the communication flow and the relationship between the message benefactor and the message receptor has evolved. In the first decade of the 21st century, industries marketing a product or a service used to address various segments of targeted audience trough customary advertising and public relations methods, such as public figures and celebrity endorsement, specialists 2 steps flow advertisement, and strategic promotional campaigns. The opinion leaders who influence the target audience decision making in those cases are either celebrities or specialists in their fields; influencers considered as idols and trusted by respective clients. For example, in 2 010 "Sensodyne" toothpaste's 30 seconds advertisement targeting Middle Eastern consumers is made of a 2 steps flow advertisement consisting of a short interview with a professional dentist recommending the product. In the second decade of the century, after the rise of digital media, the industry is witnessing a rapid change that is manifested in a growing switch from regular advertising and public relations practices to revamping innovations such as pop-ups, product placement, focused events, and blogs. According to Talcott Parsons' collective behavior theory, humans are shifting from individual choices to mass-choices, especially when influenced by an accelerating factor, the opinion leaders. After 2 010, people shifted the trust and choice dependence to bloggers with critical thinking (smart shoppers), especially that bloggers are at the same time consumers and contributors. Additionally, people also moved to digital advertisements going off the screens and to e-commerce marketing based on personal feeds and user searches interests. In 2 019, 53% of the total population is internet users, consumers are influenced by "brand-new" opinion leaders. The blogs, digital advertisement, and e-marketing effectiveness continue to rise. Even more, some consumers are shifting from consuming products they were loyal to, into consuming other products advertised and recommended by opinion leaders. This study focuses on the clientele growth of three Lebanese wellknown blogs, a food review blog "NoGarlicNoOnion", a tourism blog "Live Love Lebanon" and a beauty blog "Feel 22". Then again, would present-day opinion leaders remain dependable or would costumers be oriented to other marketing techniques? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Older employees face a severe employability problem, partly because of dominant stereotypes about them. This study investigates stereotypes of older employees in corporate and news media. Drawing on the Stereotype Content Model, we content analysed newspaper coverage and corporate media of 50 large-scale Dutch organisations, published between 2006 and 2013. The data revealed that stereotypical portrayals of older employees are more common in news media than in corporate media and mixed in terms of valence. Specifically, older employees were positively portrayed with regard to warmth stereotypes, such as trustworthiness, but negatively with regard to competence stereotypes, such as technological competence and adaptability. Additionally, stereotypical portrayals that do not clearly belong to warmth or competence dimensions are found, such as the mentoring role stereotype and the costly stereotype. Because competence stereotypes weigh more heavily in employers' productivity perceptions, these media portrayals might contribute to the employability problem of older employees. We suggest that older employees could benefit from a more realistic media debate about their skills and capacities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While much research has examined the composition of sport media and those charged with constructing it, namely sport journalists and editors, far less has explored an essential set of actors in the construction of news: sources. This study aimed to explore the construction of the sport media agenda from arguably the most important sport news sources: sport media relations managers. In particular, this paper asked: how do media staff in sports organisations influence the production of news? To answer this question, this paper is based on a qualitative, observational study of a professional Australian Rules football club in Australia, involving interviews, observations and document analysis. Research within a professional Australian Rules football club found that the club delivered high-quality information subsidies that met sports journalists’ newswork requirements. However, media access was almost solely limited to these information subsidies, which are highly subjective and negotiated, which in turn allowed the professional football club to significantly control the subsequent media agenda. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The global public's growing interest in China and the controversial debates around international media's coverage of the country make it vital to investigate how China is represented in such reports. The existing literature, however, only examines which topics international China coverage addresses. This article assesses how the country is covered focusing on the use of quotes. Besides showing who is quoted in articles from the leading weekly publications, The Economist (UK), Newsweek (US), Der Spiegel and Die Zeit (Germany) as well as Le Monde Diplomatique (France), it links local reporting conditions with the types of sources that are quoted. Methodologically, the article combines quantitative content analysis of newspaper articles and qualitative expert interviews with foreign correspondents based in Beijing. Key findings are that reflecting the Chinese government's controls and public relations (PR) efforts, the Chinese central government is by far the most frequently quoted state institution, while others, such as local government or the police, hardly appear at all. Because of Chinese scholars' growing reluctance to speak to them, foreign journalists rely heavily on experts working abroad. Lastly, Chinese news products are heavily drawn upon, both for direct quotes and story ideas, mainly because they are easily accessible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses how America media represented ideology of Pope Francis in their news feeds in relation to his appointment of seventeen new members of the College of Cardinals. The secular media reportedly showcased the appointments as strategic political appointments as part of a liberal-moderate-conservative continuum, with the Catholic press citing the appointments in terms of geographic diversity not foreseen.

This generational study investigates how upper- and middle-class Americans first rejected and then somewhat reluctantly accepted the use of public relations-like strategies to govern the masses during the Gilded Age. While the first generation of politically minded elites after the Civil War had used proto-public relations in their benevolent and reform work and had advanced their position in high society by getting their names on the newspaper society page, they were reluctant to advertise themselves to lower-class voters through the popular press. By the 1880s, however, their children began to recognize the growing power of mass media to sell candidates to the lower classes. Theodore Roosevelt, John Jay Chapman, William Travers Jerome, and other young, politically minded members of the governing elite adopted practices that mirrored the recommendations of late nineteenth-century crowd psychologists who advocated managing the masses through self-promotions and heroic imagery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article studies how traditional media functions have changed due the new media growth in terms of consumption and influence and how this has affected the public relations (PR) campaigns in terms of storytelling and managing content. The starting point of this article is the media coverage of the Paris attacks on the 13th November, as well as the institutional ceremonies that the French government organized as a tribute to 120 victims. The methodology of this article is based in a sample of the mainstream media in French and English language published in Europe. The analysis indicators are the following: (a) the “message,” as the story based on organizational essentials, values and identity; (b) the publics in a media relations campaign: opinion leaders and opinion makers; (c) the social dimension and the agenda setting; (d) effectiveness versus excellence and vice versa; (e) role of the media: traditional media (or mainstream media) and new media; (f) trends and challenges for professionals. As we will see, new trends of communication are redirecting the media strategy in PR campaigns in terms of influencing other key publics that generates major engagement in institutional reputation. Hence, traditional media functions (setting agenda, transmitting values, and creating opinion) operate in a new digital context of mashup journalism where cross-cultural PR seeks to better align media agenda’s with public and political agenda’s in order to set frames of sociability and community engagement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Undocumented Student Movement (USM) consists of members of a historically misrepresented and excluded population in the United States. Taking matters into their own hands, they have gained a voice in mainstream media and society today. In this article, I seek to document the communicative acts of resistance employed by undocumented students in the United States. Specifically, I argue that the communicative acts currently employed by the USM answer the call for a more critical and engaged theory of public relations. The USM offers alternative ways to communicate with publics through the use of undocumented identity storytelling. By employing the culture-centred approach to communication, I examine undocumented identity storytelling through participant observation and in-depth interviews with members of the movement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are many research findings and some theoretical models regarding the interaction between journalism and public relations (PR). But only scarce research has been done so far on the historical perspective of this relationship, which is also called co-evolution of PR and journalism. The aim of this article is to make a first step into the analysis of this co-evolution with a focus on the emergence of PR in the German-language area and based mainly on German literature about the history of PR. The analysis shows that the rise of PR in the second half of the 19th century was, amongst others, a reaction to the development of journalism that had become increasingly biased. Thus, for many societal actors and organisations, the barriers to entering the public arena were increasing. At the same time the importance of the mass media, and pressures on social protagonists and organisations to legitimise their interests in a changing society, were growing. These results support a theoretical concept that describes the development of mass communication as a process of rationalisation of societal communication, which in addition can be linked with system theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

International non-governmental organizations (INGOs) are known to employ freelancers to produce multimedia and to pitch it for them to mainstream news outlets. So it seems odd that research about the blurring of news organizations and INGOs has been largely focused upon the practices of full-time staff at these kinds of organizations. To help fill this lacuna, this article constructs a model capable of interrogating the multiple forms of structure and agency at the heart of such forms of freelancing by blending Critical Realist theory with work by Bourdieu. It then uses this model to analyse semi-structured interviews with six freelancers who were involved in the production of media items about sub-Saharan countries. All of them were found to erode the distinction between INGOs and news organizations through different kinds of commissioning and syndication practices. But this article's main critical contribution lies in its efforts to illuminate why freelancers chose to engage in such liminal work; for the legitimating rationales they employed enabled them to avoid the “inter-role conflicts” experienced by freelancers who work for news outlets and commercial public relations organizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines from an information subsidies and framing theory perspective the media coverage of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. Through a content analysis of Malaysian government information subsidies ( N = 78), and Malaysian ( N = 155) and Chinese ( N = 93) newspaper articles, findings include differences of crisis frames and risk roles, the absence of crisis cause did not detract from attribution of responsibility in regard to risk arbiters’ potential solutions to managing the crisis, among other key findings. Implications include the need for the inclusion of an unknown crisis type to the crisis communication typologies and models and theories, as well as supporting the argument of previous studies in regard to media coverage partially determined by the country’s media system and Palmlund’s (1992, 2010) generic roles of societal evaluations of risk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Islamic State (IS) has been vilified for its brutality and admired for the sophistication of its media productions. This conceptual paper argues that IS media is not propaganda in the western sense but rather propagation of a minoritarian ‘take’ on Islam. IS media are not simply fora for the gratuitous display of violence but rather venues for rational, strategic communication designed mainly for regional consumption. Global audiences are targeted, too, but media produced for them is less voluminous than that presented to populations in IS-controlled areas and surrounding regions. While Islamic State’s diverse media output is not western-style public relations, the artifice and artefacts employed in the group’s “media war” are not only relevant but also noteworthy for public relations professionals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper rests on an assumption that media is much more than a communication channel or type of organization and that we have to take media under consideration if we want to understand the conditions for public agencies and their public relations activities. This is very much due to the processes of mediatization ; that is to say, the double-sided process through which media (a) emerge as an autonomous institution with its own set of rationalities that other institutions adapt to; and (b) become an integrated part of other institutions’. A second assumption is that the extent to which public agencies adapt to media varies between different types of organizations, mostly as a consequence of an organization’s management structure. Public agencies governed by career managers are more eager to get media attention and control the media image of their organizations compared to agencies governed by field professionals. Circumstances that position public relations at the centre within agencies governed by career managers, but with limited freedom of action. This raises a number of questions concerning circumstances, motives and consequences for public relations and in this paper we suggest three propositions for how we can understand the interplay between media in its institutional form, public agencies and public relations (1) public relations professionals have limited control to what degree public agencies adapt to the media logic (2) public relations professionals have limited control over public agencies media activities due to their high level of formalization and standardization (3) public relations in public agencies is to an extensive degree limited to media activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Utilizing US, German and Chinese data from the 2015 Edelman Trust Barometer ® , the purposes of this study were: (1) to explore the impact of media preference on the perception of CSR, (2) to examine the role of CSR in building trust, and the effect of perceived trust in a business entity on public engagement with that entity, and (3) to test whether the above relationship between CSR and trust in business is moderated by media preference. The results show that China had the highest trust in business while Germany had the lowest. There were no consistent media usage patterns of the informed public that would link to positive CSR evaluation across the three countries. CSR dimensions (social, economic, and environmental) had various effects on predicting trust in business in these three markets, and there was a positive correlation between trust in business and behavioral engagement with trusted companies in informed publics in the US and Germany. Theoretical implications and future research directions are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using global survey data based on the 2013 Edelman Trust Barometer annual survey, this paper looks at predictors of business trust in the top five countries based on GDP ranking – the United States, China, Japan, Germany, and France. Demographics emerged as significant predictors of trust across countries, while political ideology was a key driver of trust in the U.S. Political ideology also interacted with preferred media choice in predicting trust. Theoretical and practical implications for effective public relations practice are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study focuses on explaining agenda building power of corporate press releases. The purpose of the study is to investigate to what extent news factor theory can be applied to predict whether a press release generates media attention or not. A content analysis of 823 press releases from 30 of the largest Dutch corporations reveals that the news factors surprise, controversy, impact-negative consequences and elite organization have increase a press release's chance for succession. Furthermore, press releases on the topics financial performance, employees & management and organizational issues have a similar effect. The study shows that news factor theory can be applied successfully in the field of public relations and media relations and suggests that the variety of effective news factors depends on the news genre. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A correction to the article "Getting Pathologists Out From Behind the Paraffin Curtain: How the College of American Pathologists Began Its Community Outreach and Membership Media Training" that was published in the October 2022 issue is presented.