Social Media Activities of Political Communication Practitioners: The Impact of Strategic Orientation and In-Group Orientation

The question of why political communication practitioners use social media for strategic political communication activities has rarely been investigated. By using well-established theoretical approaches of communication research, such as the influence of presumed influence approach, this study sought to determine the extent to which the subjective perceptions of German political communication practitioners explain their professional social media activities. The results of a survey (N = 1,067) indicate that the more political communication practitioners perceived that other political communication practitioners used and were influenced by Facebook and Twitter, the more often they used social media themselves. In contrast, the presumed reach of Facebook and Twitter among politicians, journalists, and citizens, as well as the presumed influence of both media on these groups, were not related to the practitioners’ social media activities. These findings suggest that the practitioners’ social media activities are driven more by an in-group orientation toward their colleagues and less by a strategic orientation toward external stakeholders.     

Strategic Social Media Use in Public Relations: Professionals’ Perceived Social Media Impact,Leadership Behaviors,and Work-Life Conflict

Using the E-leadership theory as the conceptual framework, the study examined strategic communicators’ perceptions of the impact of social media use on their work, leadership behaviors, and work-life conflict. Through a national sample of communication professionals (N = 458), this study revealed the following key findings. The use of YouTube in professionals’ work, social media use in media relations, employee communications, and cause-related marketing/social marketing were significantly, positively associated with participants’ perceptions of the enhancing impact of social media use. Social media use in crisis management and employee communications significantly, positively predicted professionals’ perceptions of social media’s aggravating impact (e.g., extended work hours, increased workload) on their work. The use of Facebook and YouTube in strategic communication, the use of social media in environmental scanning, as well as the positive and negative impact of social media use all significantly and positively predicted communication professionals’ leadership behaviors. When the unintended negative effects of social media use happened, professionals perceived a low control over their work and thereby experienced a high level of time-based and strain-based work-life conflict. Finally, public affairs/governmental relations professionals who were frequent users of social media for their work reported a high level of strain-based work-life conflict.     

Exploring Big Data and Privacy in Strategic Communication Campaigns: A Cross-Cultural Study of Mobile Social Media Users’ Daily Experiences

Mobile communications have played an indispensable part in contemporary human experiences. The combination of social networking and mobile technologies presents an interesting phenomenon because the pervasive nature of mobile technologies significantly impacts on users’ privacy concerns about highly personal social media like Facebook. The massive amount of data collected from users’ mobile social media usage behaviors is beneficial to strategic communication professionals and practices. However, there are significant privacy concerns as a result of these big data applications. Because cultural context provides what is considered to be private and how individuals should respond to any infringement with their own privacy, Geert Hofstede’s 5-D cultural dimension framework was used as an interpretive framework to understand cross-cultural data collected from the Experience Sampling Method (ESM). The data were analyzed by examining country-specific differences in mobile social media users’ experiences, particularly, concerns over privacy among these cross-cultural mobile social media users. Individualism/Collectivism index was found to explain cross-cultural variations in our study. Theoretical and practical implications were discussed.     

Lessons for Crisis Communication on Social Media: A Systematic Review of What Research Tells the Practice

This study analyzes explicit pieces of advice for effective social media crisis communication given by researchers in various subdisciplines of strategic communication. The themes are identified by a systematic content analysis of peer-reviewed journal articles and conference papers (n = 104) published between 2004 and 2017. Five overall thematic “lessons” are identified and critically discussed. These are that effective social media crisis communication is about: (1) exploiting social media’s potential to create dialogue and to choose the right message, source and timing; (2) performing precrisis work and developing an understanding of the social media logic; (3) using social media monitoring; (4) continuing to prioritize traditional media in crisis situations; and finally, (5) just using social media in strategic crisis communication. These guidelines mainly emerged from quantitative research conducted in the context of the United Stated and on Twitter. There is need for more research focusing on other platforms and other empirical material. There is also a future need for an in-depth methodological discussion of how to further bridge the gap between research and practice on a global scale, and how to develop more evidence-based recommendations for strategic crisis communication practitioners.     

A Call for Authenticity: Audience Responses to Social Media Influencer Endorsements in Strategic Communication

ABSTRACT

Utilizing social media celebrities as a communication channel has become a strategic practice for many organizations. By using the concepts of celebrity endorsement and authenticity, the effect of celebrity and content characteristics on followers’ attitudes towards the content and, in the case of sponsored content, purchase intentions are scrutinized. Instagram followers (N = 592) of 45 celebrities responded to a survey on nine photos of the celebrities. The results show that both the perceived authenticity and attractiveness of the celebrity are positively related with photo attitudes, but only authenticity has an effect on purchase intentions. Photos of social media influencers, people who have become famous through social media, increase purchase intentions more than photos of general celebrities. Congruence between the photo and the celebrity has the strongest positive effect on photo attitudes and purchase intentions. Sponsored photos are less favorably perceived than non-sponsored photos, but, among sponsored photos, sponsor disclosure has no effect on purchase intentions. The perceived authenticity of both the celebrity and her content is said to explain favorable audience perceptions. The findings imply that organizations should seek authentic matches between their message and the endorsing celebrity and that the content should align with the usual style of the celebrity.     

Das Medienbild in der islamistischen Online-Propaganda

Islamic terror attacks can be regarded as an endpoint of radicalization defined as a process that takes place on a cognitive and a behavioral level (Neumann 2013b). The analysis of Islamic online propaganda seems to be important when it comes to explaining radicalization processes, as it can be defined as the “deliberate, systematic attempt to shape perceptions, manipulate cognitions, and direct behavior to achieve a response that furthers the desired intent of the propagandist” (Jowett and O’Donnell 2012). The arguably most prominent Salafi propagandist in Germany is Pierre Vogel who has about 300,000 Facebook likes and who is said to be an extremely sucessfull missionary on the Internet (Wiedl and Becker 2014). Given Wiktorowicz’s (2006) differentiation of Salafi factions, Vogel belongs to the politicos who emphasize application of the Salafi creed to the political arena, but who do not call for violence. While previous research has analyzed several aspects of propaganda made by politicos and the violent jihadis (e.?g., Payne 2009), the media image Islamic propagandists hold has remained unexplored so far. This is an important deficit, as from the perspective of journalism ethics of responsibility, one can argue that journalists should know how their media coverage is perceived and instrumentalized by Islamists.Against this background, the present paper explores Vogel’s media image by analyzing Facebook posts that explicitly contain references to media. At first, the basic question of the Salafi’s understanding of the media arises, as a more technical view on the media can be distinguished from the perception of media as political actors bound by directives by the state (Neumann and Baugut 2017). Moreover, we were interested in the type of media and distinct media outlets Vogel refers to. Secondly, we wanted to find out in how far hostile media perceptions (Vallone et al. 1985), well-explored in other contexts, also occur among Islamists like Vogel that can be characterized by a considerable degree of cognitive and affective involvement that triggers hostile media perceptions (cf. Hansen and Kim 2011, S. 173–174; Matthes 2013, S. 375–376). Third, we were interested in the Salafi’s assumptions on media impact on third persons (Davison 1983), as previous research has pointed to cultural distance as one among several factors enforcing third person perceptions (Tsfati 2014). Fourth, as the perceptions mentioned above possibly foster radicalization, we were interested in whether Vogel consequently shows extremist tendencies in his statements on the media’s role. Methodologically, we conducted a qualitative content analysis (Mayring 2015) of all of Vogel’s media-related Facebook posts in the years 2014–2016 (N?=?137). In those years, Islamic terrorism became a major issue in consequence of terrorist attacks in Germany and other European countries.At first, our analysis shows that Vogel mostly refers indiscriminately to the media in general, not at least because he perceives journalistic cooorientation. In cases in which distinct media outlets are named, all types of journalistic media ranging from local newspapers to public and private broadcasting stations are concerned. The broad media repertoire suggests that the Salafist scene comes into contact with content of established journalistic media—albeit not always directly, but rather through the Salafist opinion leader Pierre Vogel in the sense of a “two-step flow” (Lazarsfeld et al. 1944).Second, we found strong hostile media perceptions indicating that the media are perceived as political actors “spending millions to fight Islam”. Vogel especially complains about media coverage portraying him in the context of terrorism. He traces this kind of media coverage back to both economic editorial imperatives and the media’s alleged political goal to divide the Muslim community. The public complaints about hostile media on Facebook can be interpreted as a contribution to the victim-narrative that is characteristic of Islamic propaganda (Payne 2009).Third, while Vogel criticizes media coverage in many respects, not at least in terms of credibility, he assumes that the media influence on third parties is relatively strong. For example, discrimination against Muslims in everyday life is ascribed to the media. Journalists are even made responsible for supporting terrorism by portraying non-radicalized individuals in the context of terrorism.Fourth, the occurrence of both hostile media and third person perceptions did not result in extremist statements on the role of the media. For example, we found no crimes such as an explicit verbal threat to journalists. Being aware that his critics might encourage supporters to attack the media which in turn could have legal consequences, Vogel emphasizes that complaints about ostensible lies should be raised in a reasonable way.All in all, this study shows journalists that their media coverage is intensively monitored by Germany’s most prominent Salafi and that hostile media and third person perceptions may at the same time also occur among extremists who use exemplars of media coverage for propaganda purposes. Especially an undifferentiated portrayal of Salafists as terrorists appears as grist to the mills of those who want to mobilize and recruit scene members by means of the victim-narrative. Clearly, this study has limitations. Given the heterogeneity of the Salafi scene (Wiktorowicz 2006), findings from a leading German Salafi cannot be simply transferred to the whole scene. Besides the problem of generalizability, an interview with Vogel is needed to understand the motives behind his analyzed postings and to find out whether his media image explored by a scholarly interview is congruent with his media image presented on Facebook.     

„Der Pranger der Schande““The Pillory of Shame”

We investigated whether the publication of names and profile pictures of several Facebook users posting hate comments against refugees in the German tabloid Bild on 20th October 2015 caused a change in content and style of comments posted on Bild’s Facebook page. We used the spiral of silence and the theory of reactance as a theoretical framework. A quantitative content analysis of all Facebook comments concerning refugees on several days before and after the publishing of the Bild intervention was conducted. The dependent variables were the comment’s valence and rhetorical style. Although the number of hate comments against refugees decreased slightly after the Bild intervention, analyses indicated that valence became more negative. The observed effects diminished over time.     

Die Kritik der Politischen Ökonomie der Medien/Kommunikation: ein hochaktueller Ansatz

This debate article discusses how topical the approach of the Critique of the Political Economy of Media/Communication is today. The paper analyses the status of this field. At the international level, there is a longer tradition in the Critical Political Economy of Media/Communication, especially in the United Kingdom and North America. Since the start of the new crisis of capitalism in 2008, the interest in Marx’s works has generally increased. At the same time communicative and ideological features of societal changes’ unpredictable turbulences have become evident. This contribution introduces some specific approaches. It also discusses 14 aspects of why the complex, multidimensional, open and dynamic research approach of the critique of capitalism and society that goes back Marx’s theory remains relevant today.After an introduction (sect. 1), the article’s second section provides a brief introduction to the critique of the political economy of media/communication by presenting the understandings of this field advanced by Peter Golding/Graham Murdock and Vincent Mosco. It also points out that there have been single representatives of the Critique of the Political Economy of Media/Communication in the German-speaking world, but that this approach is largely forgotten in German media and communication studies. The article provides a brief introduction to Horst Holzer’s version of the critique of the political economy of media/communication: Holzer combined critical social theory and empirical social research in order to critically theorise and understand communication(s). He was critical of both systems theories of communication (e.?g. Niklas Luhmann) and theories of communicative action (Jürgen Habermas) and worked out foundations of an alternative approach that are grounded in Marx’s theory.The third section argues that Karl Marx is not just a critic of capitalism, but that his approach can also help us to ground a critical theory of communication. It stresses that there are many elements in Marx’s works that can help us to critically understand communication: critical journalism, limits on the freedom of the press, the analysis of the commodity form, the analysis of labour, exploitation, class, surplus-value, globalisation, crisis, modern technology, the General Intellect, communication, the means of communication, the contradiction between the productive forces and the relations of production, dialectics, ideologies, social struggles, and democratic alternatives.Sect. 4 provides an example of how to use the approach of the Critique of Political Economy for analysing concrete communication phenomena. After the 2011 Arab Spring, there were many discussions about the role of digital and social media in protests. Some observers claimed that we had experienced Facebook and Twitter revolutions. Others argued that such claims are technologically deterministic and that protests would not be a matter of communications, but of crowds gathering in the streets and occupying squares. Using the critique of the Political Economy of Media/Communication as framework, the OccupyMedia!-study analysed how activists used social media and how capitalist power and state power limited protest communication. It also explored the potential of alternative digital media in protest and the challenges that political economy posed for the establishment and use of such communications.The article concludes that the Critique of the Political Economy of Media/Communication is a fruitful, praxis-oriented approach for the empirical and theoretical analysis of contemporary communication(s). In the German-speaking world and in German media and communication studies, there has been unjustified fear of Marx. In addition, examples from the 1970s until today show that representatives of the Critique of the Political Economy of Media/Communication in the German-speaking world have had justified fears over being considered as Marxists.The future will show if new developments and attempts to advance the Critique of the Political Economy of Media/Communication in the German-speaking world will make a difference that makes a difference or not.     

Die Wirkung „guter“ Argumente

Starting from a discursive perspective on public communication, we ask whether the deliberative quality of journalistic articles on policy topics influences the amount of user participation on news websites. The theory of deliberative democracy often serves as a source of normatively desirable discursive requirements. Here, however, we present empirically verifiable assumptions that we combine with explanations about media content from the spiral of silence theory and explanations of user behavior from the civic voluntarism model and the construct of self-efficacy. The spiral of silence theory assumes that people do not express their opinions in public when they feel their opinions belong to the minority, because they fear to be socially isolated. The media play a crucial role in this process, as their depiction of public discourses influences the perception of public opinion. Furthermore, the theory assumes that mass media form a media tenor, presenting similar representations of opinion distributions. In online contexts, we argue, we can no longer expect to observe a single media tenor, but we must define more individually perceived, selection-based media tenors. Thus, users are only to be expected to fear isolation in cases where a majority opinion is presented in online contents they selected which stand against their opinions. Based on the civic voluntarism model and previous literature, we understand writing comments as a form of participation that is most likely to be carried out by persons who are interested in politics, have a high level of self-efficacy and feel stimulated to participate by the immediate environment, i.?e., the journalistic article and the comment section.We therefore assume that the more representatives of the opposition, civil society and ordinary citizens are presented in the media, the more users will participate in the comment section (H1). Furthermore, we also expect articles containing conflicting and counterarguing utterances to lead to more participants than articles without this kind of utterances (H2). Regarding the rationality of the discourse, we suppose that the presence of justifications of arguments also increases users’ participation (H3). Articles often report on current debates that aim to lead to a decision. Considering self-efficacy assumptions and the relatability of a debate for the users, we assume that participation rates will be higher when decisions are discussed that lie in the future (H4a), whereas decisions that have already been taken are expected to reduce participation rates (H4b). Furthermore, we also expect articles with a reference to German domestic politics to attract higher participation rates (H5).In order to test our hypotheses, we conducted a content analysis of 400 online newspaper articles. We selected two national (WELT Online and ZEIT Online) and two regional (Rheinische Post Online and Tagesspiegel Online) online newspaper outlets, one of each belonging to the left-wing liberal and one to the conservative journalism spectrum. From the politics news feeds of the four online newspaper outlets between January 1, and March 31, 2016, we selected a systematic random sample of articles with enabled comment sections. The deliberative criteria were measured either on the level of a value-based utterance made by a representative of the government, the opposition, civil society or an ordinary citizen or on the level of the news article. Utterance-based criteria were then aggregated to the news article level. Furthermore, we measured the number of users that participated in the discussion in the comment section. We then estimated a zero-inflated negative binomial regression model in order to predict the number of participating users.Results show that the majority of deliberative criteria serve to increase the amount of user participation. The more opposition politicians are cited in a news article, the more users participate in the comment section which hints to the conclusion that discursive equality triggers participation. Regarding the reciprocity of discourses, conflicting and counterarguing utterances also increase the number of users who participate in a discussion. Another explanation of a higher number of commentators is the presence of justified arguments, i.?e., when the discourse can be classified as rational. While future decisions did not show any effect on user participation, past decisions in fact reduced the amount of participation. Furthermore, if the topic was related to domestic German politics, participation rates also increased, which represents relatability for people’s lives.All in all, we conclude that discourse-related criteria should be integrated more often into the analysis of the conditions of user participation, as they can add to explaining when people feel motivated to write comments. They are connected to considerations about opinion climates both as depicted by the journalistic article and as present in the comment section itself as discussed in the spiral of silence theory. The more opinions journalists present in an article and the better the underlying discourse, the more we can expect users to participate in the discussion. We have also seen that articles on decisions that have already been taken are not as frequently commented on, and that a relation to domestic topics leads to a more active participation. Taken together, we argue that user comments can be a meaningful addition to deliberation research, because they can serve as a measure of the effects of deliberative content, e.?g., in the news.This study focused on the contents of the journalistic articles, while the contents of user comments were not integrated into the analysis. In future studies, this gap should be closed with content analyses of user comments. Furthermore, the assumptions we made about users’ motivations and behavior also need to be confirmed in experimental designs and surveys.     

Towards the final frontier: using strategic communication activities to engage the latent public as a key stakeholder in a corporate mission

Private corporations that do not normally interact with, nor regularly communicate with, the public often do not perceive the public as a relevant or active stakeholder. The public may not view themselves as a stakeholder, particularly when they are unaware of, have no direct dealings with, or do not have any problems associated with such a corporation. The current study, utilizing a national survey of the United States public (N = 424) found that through directed strategic communication activities of a private spaceflight corporation, utilizing social and new media tools, a latent public can perceive a corporation and its mission in a positive manner, and transition it towards a status of an aware public and possible active public. Positive perceptions were found regarding corporate credibility, brand awareness, public engagement, communicating a corporate mission, educating the public, and influencing public opinion.     

Legitimität in der Medienpolitik

This study develops a theoretical perspective on legitimacy in media policy that can be used to study debates taking place in the media. This perspective assumes that contentions about legitimacy are inscribed in media policy debates; in debates about which media content, business models and forms of media usage are legitimate. The aim of this perspective is to stimulate research questions and guide research. It contributes to understand why some regulation is successful and another is not. This article first discusses the state of research in communication studies. According to it, legitimacy can influence decisions in media policy. Legitimacy is a precondition for the effectiveness of regulation and regulatory procedures and for the stability of the media order. The media may operate as self-interested actors and deprive regulatory attempts of legitimacy. Most studies use a normative concept of legitimacy.Based on new institutionalism and the theory of structuration by Anthony Giddens, in the first step, an analytical (not normatively determined) and dynamic concept of legitimacy is developed. Legitimacy is with Suchman understood as a “generalized perception or assumption that the actions of an entity are desirable, proper, or appropriate within some socially constructed system of norms, values, beliefs, and definitions”. Drawing on both strategic and institutional approaches, legitimacy is conceptualized both as strategic reference to and as effect of normative structures. Media policy actors try to strategically employ legitimacy in order to assert or defy collectively binding rules. They cannot do this, however, without referring to expectation structures (normative structures) that at the same time constrain and enable them. Because legitimacy has these two sides, is part of action and structures, it can be defined as institution.New institutionalism differentiates between attributing, depriving of, repairing and maintaining legitimacy. The structuration theory is used to define these processes as a recursive interaction of actors and structures that takes place in public debates (structuration of legitimacy). The structuration theory provides a framework that integrates the strategic aspect of legitimacy related action and the institutional aspect of legitimacy. Furthermore, it includes the distribution of resources, political capabilities and authority in media policy and allows studying the influence of these factors on gaining, depriving of and repairing legitimacy. The following sections elaborate this framework and for this purpose, use the terms legitimacy episodes, structuration of legitimacy, grammar of legitimation, media communication.Due to legitimacy episodes, legitimacy becomes an issue in media policy. Arguing with Giddens, episodes are processes of social change that reorganize institutions. They occur with transgressions. Transgressions related to the media system can be expected when new media proliferate because new forms of media production, distribution and media usage develop, new actors enter media markets and public communication changes. Old issues of media regulations are raised from new perspectives, new regulatory problems emerge. Emerging debates and conflicts also concern legitimacy: the threats of certain new services, the acceptability of new business practices or the lawfulness of certain user behaviour.The structuration of legitimacy encompasses attributing, depriving of, repairing of and maintaining legitimacy and can be studied through the “grammar of legitimation”, resource distribution and the rules of the media. The abovementioned processes related to legitimacy take place in recursive interactions of actors and structures: within communication, sanction and power. These forms of interaction are closely related to each other. Language is a regulative force and reflects structures of domination. Three propositions can be derived from Giddens regarding the structuration of legitimacy: First, media policy conflicts can be understood through debates. Second, these debates are not only about exchanging arguments but about validity and influence. Third, public debates influence collectively binding decision-making processes because they construct legitimate definitions of an actor, a procedure, of existing rules or of other problems and discursively restrict available options. The structuration of legitimacy can be analysed by studying the grammar of legitimation, the resource distribution among actors and media related rules. The grammar of legitimation, resource distribution and media related rules are both enabling and constraining actors. The grammar of legitimation demands actors to include an interpretation of the legitimation object, a norm, an evaluation and arguments in their statements. It furthermore, demands actors to consider the structure of expectation and signification: prevailing norms, values, and patterns of interpretation. Resource distribution, more specifically the extent to which actors can invest allocative and authoritative resources structures debates about legitimacy. Legitimacy claims can be raised most effectively via mass media. The mass media are self-interested actors in media policy debates. They provide therefore not only a forum for but are actors in legitimacy debates. The rules of the media that affect legitimacy debates and their outcome are threefold: selection, interpretation and depiction of a media policy debate, the media’s own interests, and to what extent leading media cover a media policy issue. The present perspective allows identifying episodes of legitimacy, studying the structure of legitimacy statements, investigating the reasons of successful legitimacy strategies and media organizations’ self-interests.     

Strategy and Tactics in Strategic Communication: Examining their Intersection with Social Media Use

While public relations industry leaders have proposed a strategic approach to social media, industry research has found that social media practices may be more tactical than strategic. Likewise, scholarly research has focused more on specific parts of strategic planning, such as message—and channel-level communication in social media, but little research has been done to understand program-level communication planning. The purpose of this study was to examine the confluence of current trends in social media use with strategic communication processes through in-depth interviews and a national survey of public relations practitioners. The in-depth interviews revealed two overarching themes: (1) social media use should be guided by strategic planning and (2) social media tactics should revolve around conversations. The survey results showed that practitioners are involved in social media strategy development and tactical implementation, yet see their involvement as linked mostly to their organizations’ strategic rather than tactical social media activities. In addition, practitioners delineate social media strategies and tactics differently than theoretical conceptualizations.     

Empowering Engagement: Understanding Social Media User Sense of Influence

For all the hope and hype hailing the democratizing effect of social media, few studies have explained public influence as an element of social media engagement. Insight into how and why individuals attempt to exert influence over organizations online is particularly underdeveloped. This study takes the first step in understanding sense of influence online through in-depth interviews with social media users. Findings call into question assumptions in research about the motives and meanings underlying individual efforts to exert influence via social media. The data from 19 in-depth interviews with active social media users suggest that sense of influence is enacted for social relationships rather than to influence organizations or society, and information is the driving force of that effort. Findings also place the imperative on strategic communication to emphasize the value of the organization’s role on social interaction toward a fully functioning society.     

Aufstieg der Semiöffentlichkeit: Eine relationale Perspektive

In this theoretical contribution we reflect previous attempts to re-conceptualize the public sphere in a digital era and suggest an alternative perspective: to combine public sphere theory with relational sociology. By doing so, we are better able to understand the transformation of public spheres as a transformation of communicative relations within public spheres.In the past decades, scholars have addressed these transformations by mainly two strategies: a fragmentation and/or a conceptual extension of the public sphere. The first approach, fragmenting the public sphere concept, deals with the question if and how new publics emerge as a result of digital communication tools. It sees the “remnants” of the mass-mediated public sphere as only one of many new public spheres—and not necessarily as a central one in network societies, resulting in a differentiation of new types of public spheres. The second approach, extending the public sphere, focuses mainly on how digital communication technologies change traditional, mass-mediated publics. In this view, the multiple forms of digital communication add to the mass-mediated public sphere: The public sphere now contains the diversity of mass media, the Internet and mobile media. Thus, the public sphere now encompasses all forms of mediated communication, resulting in more complex structures.This contribution argues that the current “relational turn” promises new avenues to understand what changes within public spheres in a digital era. Relational sociology shares its roots with network theories, but it focuses on the edges, the links between nodes, thereby overcoming the nodocentrism of network approaches. Relations are seen as the constitutive elements, molecules of society and public spheres. In a relational paradigm, all analysis of public spheres begins with social relations. This means that it is no longer necessary to define a new “space” for new forms of interaction, such as virtual public spheres, digital public spheres or networked public spheres. Instead, we add new forms of interactions and social relations that constitute public spheres. In this view, social relations within public spheres are diversified, not public spheres as such. The argument continues with a discussion of different types of social relations: chains, triads and categorical pairs.In connection with public sphere theories, social relations can be differentiated as public, semi-public and private. Based on the notion that public communication, whether personal or impersonal, always requires an addressee beyond the closest circle of friends, family and acquaintances, public social relations are defined as relations containing strangers. In this perspective, private social relations take place between social entities that know each other and are shielded from strangers. Public social relations, on the contrary, take place between social entities that are (still) strangers to each other and, in principle, open for participation. If private social relations must not encompass strangers, and public social relations must encompass strangers, then semi-public social relations can encompass strangers: either as addressees or only as observers and otherwise passively involved social entities. Thus, semi-public social relations are delimited, as are private social relations (not open for everyone), but the demarcation is permeable for strangers. The public sphere contains only specific social relations based on communication: those that can encompass strangers and those that must encompass strangers. Thus, we can define the public sphere as a dynamic configuration of social relations of various types that encompass strangers.It is argued that with the waning dichotomy of public and private, semi-public social relations are a major consequence of the current transformations within public spheres. In connection with the different kinds of relations introduced above, we then discuss private, semi-public and public chains, triads and categorical pairs, illustrating them with examples.A focus on communicative relations that constitute public spheres allows to understand—across micro, meso and macro perspectives—how different platforms and their affordances impact the formation of social phenomena, e.?g., how protest publics emerge from low-threshold interactions and below the radar of mass media. Semi-public relations are key: Public spheres are no longer built only on addressing as many strangers as possible (in the form of an audience), as was and is the modus operandi of mass media. Social media enable individuals to communicate beyond their private networks: friends of friends, weak ties bringing visibility, relevance, reach for information from non-redundant, socially distant sources. Semi-public communicative relations enable the formation of protest groups from Facebook groups of friendship circles (e.?g., the German right-wing nationalist movement Pegida), proliferate “fake news” and stimulate public discourse through hashtags (e.?g., #metoo). A relational perspective of semi-public communication allows for a better understanding of viral phenomena. Due to the current transformations of the public sphere, we do not only experience more semi-public communication, but a diversification of semi-public communicative relations.     

Social Media Influencers in Strategic Communication: A Conceptual Framework for Strategic Social Media Influencer Communication

ABSTRACT

Strategic social media influencer communication has become a major topic in strategic communication. However, despite the growing relevance of this new strategic communication instrument, research has paid only limited attention to elaborating its basic concepts. In this article, we adopt a strategic communication perspective to develop a conceptual framework for strategic social media influencer communication. Particularly, we draw on research findings that identify the external resources social media influencers contribute to organization-influencer cooperation. We use these findings to systematically develop functional definitions of social media influencers and of strategic social media influencer communication. We define social media influencers as third-party actors who have established a significant number of relevant relationships with a specific quality to and influence on organizational stakeholders through content production, content distribution, interaction, and personal appearance on the social web. Subsequently, we define strategic social media communication as the purposeful use of communication by organizations or social media influencers in which social media influencers are addressed or perform activities with strategic significance to organizational goals. We then situate these definitions within the broader framework of strategic communication by discussing related concepts and by describing the strategic action field that has emerged around strategic social media influencer communication.     

Journalistik praxistheoretisch betreiben

This paper proposes a practice-theoretical journalism research approach that promises to present an alternative and innovative perspective to the current empirical challenges of journalism which are mainly driven by digitization. It combines the general theme of this special issue to previous contributions within the “Publizistik” debate. By examining the problems of demarcation, technological changes, finance gaps and the loss of legitimacy in journalism; this article exemplifies the practice-theoretical approach and explains its respective advantages in coping with these challenges.After an introduction, the second section describes four intertwined problem areas that challenge journalism extensively today: The first problem area is the increasing problem of definition and demarcation through digital media that has led to a growing uncertainty about which phenomena can still be regarded as ‘journalistic’. Second is the strong pressure placed on journalism to change due to even faster developing new technologies that influence its work methods, its genres and the organization of labor. The third area is the economic difficulty arising under the new competitive conditions of digitization (‘attention economy’) that fundamentally disrupt the traditional business model of publishers. The fourth problem area is the prominently debated crisis of legitimacy and authority of established products and organizations in journalism. As this section highlights, these empirical challenges are primarily triggered and accelerated by the digitization of today’s media environment.The third section begins by proposing a practice-theoretical approach as a ‘toolkit’ for productive examination of these structural disruptions and rapid developments. The proposed approach does not present a pre-defined system of hypotheses, but primarily introduces a fundamental starting point for new research questions and empirical investigations from an alternative perspective. The particular relevance of the theoretical perspective thereby arises from (1) its central decision to observe journalistic practices, (2) the transgression of conventional boundaries of journalism, (3) the denaturalization of journalistic norms and laws, (4) the explicit consideration of a material, sociotechnical dimension of journalism, (5) the focus on the tension between journalistic practices and media management, and (6) from prioritizing order generation over stability.The second part of the third section applies the theoretical lens to reconceptualize the empirical challenges of digitization described in the second section and to provide examples of the usefulness of this perspective. In this section, the following advantages are emphasized, among others: First, from a practice theoretical viewpoint, established practices, traditional actors and reified norms do not mark the boundaries of the phenomenon; the crisis of journalism’s demarcation can be reinterpreted as a promising opportunity to diversify the concept of journalism. Second, by examining the processes of technology and its role within social practices, the practice-theoretical approach advances the current perspective on technology in journalism research thus contributing to its development towards a socio-technological and data-orientated field of investigation. Third, the financial upheavals of journalism are viewed in the context of the tense relationship between journalistic practices and media management practices without however, assuming a fundamental primacy of economic constraints. Fourth, practice theories shift our perspective on the legitimacy and authority crises of journalism; from this viewpoint, it is clear that journalism does not form a fixed, reified entity, but is constantly in a process of emergence.The fourth section sums up the conceptual advantages of the theoretical perspective with regard to current problem areas. Nevertheless, the proposed conceptualization of journalism will not solve all of its contemporary challenges. Against this background, the section also presents criticism of the practice-theoretical approach. The limits elaborated here point to the fact that a fruitful pluralism of theory is indeed needed to advance journalism research. The paper concludes with methodological insights on where research can start empirically: e.?g., by examining individual practices that are studied in depth, by focusing on specific ‘sites of the social’ or by focusing on larger constellations of practice (e.?g., journalistic networks). Qualitative observational studies are proposed as the most suitable methods for these investigations.     

The Role of Leadership Development in Issues Management: An Online Survey of Communication Practitioners in the Greater China Area

By using an online survey, the study investigated how communication practitioners (N = 132) in the Greater China area can acquire effective leadership capabilities through appropriate leadership developmental approaches when managing critical professional issues and challenges. Results indicate that three critical professional issues (i.e., developing and retaining talented professionals, managing the rise of social media, and dealing with high volume of information flow) as the most urgent ones to deal with for communication practitioners in the Greater China area. Results of this study also provide leadership development solutions to improve effective issues management in a region of rapid growth.     

Understanding Green Content Strategies: An Analysis of Environmental Advertising Frames From 1990 to 2010

This content analysis examined the characteristics of environmental advertisements (N = 449) published in Newsweek, Time, and U.S. News and World Report in 1990, 2000, and 2010. Findings revealed that responsibility frames were dominant as the strategy used in environmental advertisements over time. The species/habitat protection issue was the dominant issue in 1990, and energy efficiency was the prevalent issue in 2000 and 2010. Advertisements primarily were sponsored by for-profit organizations and had a positive valence over time. Results have implications for future strategic environmental communication research exploring media content and effects, public opinion and persuasion, and policy implications.     

Social Media Influencers in Strategic Communication

ABSTRACT

In this editorial, I (1) explain why social media influencers bear relevance for strategic communication, (2) provide a brief introduction to research on social media influencers, and (3) unroll the rationale behind this Special Issue of the International Journal of Strategic Communication.