Journal of Public Relations Research

Sha, Bey-Ling

2020 Journal of Public Relations Research

doi: 10.1080/1062726X.2020.1862748

Zhao, Hui

2020 Journal of Public Relations Research

doi: 10.1080/1062726X.2020.1802732

There is a growing body of literature concerning the social construction of crisis. This study aimed to clarify inconsistencies regarding the social constructionist perspective by examining how the key terms of social constructionism are applied in crisis communication and crisis management studies. Through an analysis of 65 scholarly works in both communication and business journals, this study proposes a four-dimensional model of social constructionist crisis research (SCCR): (1) cause – the objective facticity and subjective meaning of crisis; (2) text – a constitutive view of language; (3) meaning – multiple actors and multiple realities; and (4) context – societal context awareness. Next, three approaches to SCCR are identified: a terminological approach, a framing approach, and a complexity-based approach. Lastly, the implications of social constructionism for theory and methodology development in crisis communication are discussed.

Xu, Sifan

2020 Journal of Public Relations Research

doi: 10.1080/1062726X.2020.1802731

Based on the identity framework (social identity theory and self-categorization theory), this study proposes an identity-based approach to organization-public relationships. A pilot study and a 3 (issues) x 2 (organizational affirmation) x 2 (organizational type) between-subjects experiment were conducted. Results suggest that issues have different capacities to trigger the salience of identities. A person’s overall identity salience and an organization’s affirmation on the issue significantly affect individuals’ perception of the organization as an ingroup (POI) and their identity expression, where POI plays a mediating role. Results of this study show a promising path to theorizing issues as contexts for identity contentions and organization-public relationships as identity connections. Results also suggest that individuals build connections with organizations to serve their self-definitional and self-enhancement needs. This identity-based view not only narrows the gap between segmentation approaches to publics and relationship research, but also points to the reason why individuals have connections to certain organizations – to validate and express their salient identities.

Cheng, Yang

2020 Journal of Public Relations Research

doi: 10.1080/1062726X.2020.1830405

Although the relational approach has been a focus in many published public relations studies, the dynamic and longitudinal aspects of relationships deserve more exploration. Through explicating and examining the concept of contingent organization-public relationship (COPR) in two empirical studies, this article investigates relationships between corporations and activist publics, and provides dynamic instances of the value of COPR and its six modes in conflictual situations. By tracking the stances of each corporation and its activists longitudinally through content analysis, results generate the occurrence and changes of relationship modes over time. Findings show that COPR is equally applicable in both resolved and unresolved U.S. conflicts. Regardless of whether the problems were resolved or not, competing relationships occurred more frequently than cooperating relationships, which strengthens the argument that both parties maintain competing relationships for self-interests and may adopt strategies to achieve mutual benefits as well. The integrating of the contingency theory of accommodation into the relationship management paradigm shows great promise reflected in current findings as well as future directions.