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Focuses on the perspective of managers when they receive and/or seek information in the oil and gas industry. Finds that managers (1) prefer to receive trade, product, and service information through multiple media; (2) perceive information received via multiple media to be comprehensible, credible, and relevant to their tasks; but (3) use rich media to seek additional information. (SC)

Explores, taking an issues management approach to new technologies, the dialogs that can occur on the World Wide Web. Examines the public issues debate between Shell Oil UK and Greenpeace which engaged in a town meeting regarding the best financial and environmental solution to the decommissioning of the Brent Spar. (PA)

Argues that for public relations to achieve professional status it should (1) be a communication discipline; (2) avoid artificial distinctions between information and persuasion; (3) encompass a wide array of auxiliary disciplines; (4) advance core research and theory by isolating and empirically testing a limited number of functions; and (5) train practitioners to add value to their organizations. (PRA)

Demonstrates how corporate culture stifled adaptive efforts of strategic planners, operations managers, industrial hygienists, and issue monitors in the asbestos industry thereby leading it to the brink of bankruptcy. (MG)

Argues that issues management is a robust contribution to the public relations discipline. Offers additional rationale for empowering public relations practitioners by involving them in strategic planning, making them responsible for issue scanning and monitoring, integrating their advice into standards of corporate social responsibility, and encouraging sustained issue communication with key publics. (KEH)

Crisis communication research rarely highlights the voices of marginalized publics or their advocates whose interests are affected by crisis situations. We take a different approach by using a response to a natural disaster to expand our theorizing about crisis situations beyond those that hurt the bottom line. Using official statements from Senators Lanclrieu and Obama about events surrounding Hurricane Katrina as texts for analysis, we demonstrate how they used transcendence, rhetorically, and appropriated the Bush administration's key term--security--to garner more support for their positions, Katrina sufferers, and relief efforts. Implications of this strategy serve to broaden crisis communication theorizing, and to provide insights into ways to strengthen the quality of crisis emergency response planning and response protocols. Keywords: Crisis Communication; Hurricane Katrina; Emergent Agents; Transcendence; Issues Management; Public Relations; Security