Search results

The purpose of this paper is to explore how the dialogic theory of public relations can help strategic communication practitioners support and enhance the relationship between individuals and organizations.

This inquiry applied the dialogic theory of public relations by investigating leading media companies’ context-based strategic use of Twitter. Researchers conducted a qualitative content analysis of 1,800 tweets from 18 top-performing media organizations.

This study identified strategies, rooted in dialogic theoretical principles that media organizations used to engage stakeholders. Media companies employed strategies based on dialogic principles, including promoting organizations as industry and thought leaders, integrating social media, and using an interactive, synergistic organizational voice.

These strategies support the need to expand theoretical conceptualizations and use of dialogic principles to study online communication.

Findings offer practical strategies for practitioners managing organizations’ Twitter communication to foster engagement. In particular, practitioners should consider organizational context and subsequent content advantages.

Findings offer practical and theoretical contributions to the debate of interactivity.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the comprehensive, ongoing role of communication in an enterprise crowdfunding context, which has been largely overlooked.

A large public higher education institution in the Southeastern USA was chosen as the case study unit to illuminate an enterprise-wide crowdfunding program using a proprietary, in-house platform, compared to commercial sites like Kickstarter that do not let organizational leaders strategically plan and manage the platform and its communication functions. Such autonomy provides a richer landscape for studying organizational members’ communication and communication management related to an enterprise crowdfunding program.

The case study identified communication-related challenges to the fundraising program’s success such as limited project leader and funding recipients’ commitment to communicate with their social networks about the projects. Internal communication and conflicting expectations, largely ignored in current crowdfunding research, were seen as critical to program effectiveness.

This study adds scholarly and practical depth to knowledge of enterprise crowdfunding, a relatively new phenomenon in nonprofit and higher education fundraising. While not generalizable to all settings, findings can offer transferable guidance for organizations seeking to engage internal stakeholders related to new and innovative fundraising programs that require their active buy-in and participation.

The purpose of this study is to refine and expand an emerging US government communication model, the government communication decision wheel, by testing the differences between the communication practices of US public sector communicators working for non‐elected officials versus those employed by elected officials.

Drawing from surveys of 781 US government communicators, the study compares the communication practices and influences of government communicators working for elected officials versus non‐elected officials.

The study identifies four significant differences and five similarities in how the public sector environment affects non‐elected and elected officials’ communicators’ public relations practices.

While the study and underlying model focus on US government communication, this study provides valuable theoretical insights. It supports the model's underlying premise that the public sector is unique from the private sector while also further refining the significant differences within the US government sector.

This study helps US government communicators identify unique environmental attributes that affect communication activities in the public sector. It helps identify how these attributes affect communication practices within individual and collaborative contexts. Finally, it helps non‐governmental communicators and communicators outside of the US to understand how the attributes may affect communication practices when they collaborate with government communicators from the four levels of US government as well as with those who work for elected and non‐elected officials.

Despite the critical importance of communication in the public sector, very little research focuses specifically on government communication outside of political communication. The findings provide valuable insights for practitioners and contribute to public relations theory development for the under‐researched public sector.