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Personal influence is one of the most powerful strategies to influence publics’ behaviours. Yet, there is scant attention on how personal influence is leveraged for different public relations purposes in different cultural contexts. This study empirically investigates the presence and use of personal influence among Italian public relations professionals.

A survey was conducted through a self-administrated, web-based questionnaire and was developed from earlier studies investigating personal influence in public relations literature. Survey participants included public relations professionals across public, non-profit and private sectors.

The findings empirically show the presence and regular use of personal influence by professionals from all sectors to cultivate interpersonal relationships. Personal influence is considered a personal resource and used to leverage own influencing power. The findings also document four major manifestations of personal influence, which were named: relational closeness strategy, engagement strategy, expertise strategy and added value strategy.

This study enhances our understanding of personal influence in a specific cultural context and offers strategic insights for international professionals seeking to leverage influence in the socio-political environment of Italy. It also offers elements to improve public relations education and training.

The study offers some preliminary understandings of how Italian professionals leverage their personal influence in their daily public relations activities contributing with empirical evidence to the body of knowledge in public relations.

This qualitative study investigated the relationship between beauty standards and identity in the United States from the perspective of 20 self-identified millennial Black women. During semi-structured virtual interviews, participants defined Black, American, and millennial beauty standards distinctly. American beauty was associated with Eurocentrism and mainstream media representation. Interpretations of a millennial beauty standard were aligned with perceptions of the generation as tolerant and politically conscious. Black American beauty standards embraced the range of hair textures and skin tones present in the African diaspora. While participants were cognizant of the different beauty ideals present, their interaction with beauty standards was ambivalent. Interviewees found beauty knowledge accessible through social media. However, they remain confined to a restrictive beauty standard due to workplace expectations around professionalism. Participants negotiated where and when to express their intracultural beauty ideals but participated in the beauty industry through processes of learning how to care for their hair in its natural state. Even though they have autonomy and flexibility in expressing their cultural styles, personal and professional repercussions are still plausible. Future studies can expand on these findings by exploring perceptions of American beauty standards from a different generation, region, or identity.

Biology is broadly speaking a colonised subject and as such exemplification of the material to a non-white non-western centric narrative can elicit deep thought, debate, and analysis of the subject. Recent curriculum changes in England (post 2015) present little time for non-curricular content and staff can struggle to engage students in meaningful debate, analysis, and social-scientific thinking. Staff at City and Islington College took radical and long-term change to exemplify biology within a decolonisation narrative, using various methods to ensure that critical topics were covered while looking at the colonisation and colonialism of the subject. The staff ensured that decolonisation was a key agenda item in curriculum development to maintain an interwoven approach to the subject. Structured student interviews provided student feedback and student voice. Early discussion with students suggests the use of context has allowed students to be more confident in expressing their views and analysing unfamiliar contexts.

We introduce the notion of rainbow burning and develop the concept of rainbow washing, which draws on the concept of genderwashing, to explicate the instrumentalization of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Trans Plus (LGBT+) inclusion. Rainbow burning happens when LGBT+ rights and visibility are targeted through hate to divert attention from economic, social, and political decline. For example, LGBT+ rights are unjustly blamed for the decline of the social and economic fabric. Rainbow washing happens when an organization uses or instrumentalizes LGBT+ concerns for commercial and social ends. We draw on examples from unsupportive and supportive capitalist market systems and explore how rainbow burning and washing manifest in each. This chapter explores the antecedents, correlates and consequences of rainbow burning and washing in unsupportive and supportive contexts. We identify regulatory, cultural and governance measures that can be taken against rainbow burning and rainbow washing to foster LGBT+ inclusion.