Learning to stand on their own: contradictory media representations of Burmese refugees by nonprofit organizations

This study examines the arrival of refugees from Burma, also known as Myanmar, to the Midwest of the United States and how the depiction of the refugees in online media often deploys contradictory messages about these new communities. Specifically, this analysis investigates the images and texts created by both U.S.-led refugee resettlement agencies and Burmese-led nonprofit organizations in Indiana. The project weaves together findings from the analysis of online media content along with interviews of twelve organisation leaders and staff members. The analysis reveals that the media created by the two types of organizations differ substantially. While the U.S.-led refugee resettlement agencies portray the refugees as “strangers” deserving of “the life ahead” and as worthwhile citizenship projects, the Burmese-led nonprofit organizations focus on the education of youth as future leaders and on its own members who serve as role models for the ethnic communities. This project underscores the broader implications for how refugees are portrayed in the West’s media during a period of massive exodus of refugees from nations with repressive governments and the need for more research about this topic that transcends national borders.     

Transnational Media Management: Western News Organizations’ Web Operations in China

In 2008, China surpassed the United States as the largest Internet market in the world. This study examines how four prominent Western news organizations respond to this new era of Internet publishing. A series of in-depth interviews with senior managers at The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Reuters, and The New York Times revealed how these news organizations serve Internet users in China through their Chinese-language Web editions—how they overcome geographic, language, cultural, and political barriers to explore this remote market. These cases demonstrate the viability of different operating models and the challenges and opportunities facing these media organizations as they manage transnational news operations in this seemingly lucrative market.     

Revising Legacy Media Practices to Serve Hyperlocal Information Needs of Marginalized Populations

ABSTRACT

This study explores how two nonprofit media organizations–PublicSource and Philadelphia Community Access Media (PhillyCAM)–have transformed their legacy practices to better connect within and serve marginalized populations in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, PA. As traditional newsrooms have been depleted by dire financial realities, new journalism outcroppings have heeded the Knight Commission’s Informing Communities: Sustaining Democracy in the Digital Age (2009) report and, consequently, revised their approaches to community engagement. Adjacent to these reformed legacy newsrooms are community media organizations that operate a municipality’s public, educational, or government (PEG) access media production facilities. Although PEG access media’s legacy has no clear genealogical ties with traditional journalism, an increasing amount of PEG operations over the past ten years have started to intentionally test editorialized forms of community news reporting. The data collected and assessed in this study has indicated that news organizations like PublicSource have an explicit need to do more relational community engagement work that will enable it to fill hyperlocal information gaps and better serve marginalized populations. Community media organizations like PhillyCAM have extensive experience engaging diverse publics; however, as this study reveals, they could benefit from employing formalized news production methods that are guided by journalistic standards.     

A consumer's view of crisis communication: Can an organization benefit from having a response plan?

Crisis communication research establishes the importance of relationships between organizations and their publics. While theoretical treatments and case studies support this relationship, limited empirical investigations have examined how organizational responses to crisis influence public responses. This study sought to determine if grocery shoppers responded differently to organizations engaging in crisis communication practices and those that do not. Results indicate that respondents express stronger intention to continue purchasing from an organization and see the organization as concerned and respectful of the consumer when it engages in crisis communication practices. The discussion section addresses implications of these findings for future research and public relations practice.     

Examining how AI capabilities can foster organizational performance in public organizations

Developing the capacity to digitally transform through AI is becoming increasingly important for public organizations, as a constantly growing number of their activities is now becoming AI-driven. This prompts an understanding of how public organizations should organize in order to derive value from AI, as well as in which forms can value be realized. Against this background, this paper examines how AI capabilities can lead to organizational performance by inducing change in key organizational activities. Using a survey-based study, we collected data from European public organizations regarding the indirect effect AI capabilities have on organizational performance. Data was collected from 168 municipalities from three European countries (Norway, Germany, and Finland) and analyzed by means of structural equation modeling. Our findings show that AI capabilities have a positive effect on process automation, cognitive insight generation, and cognitive engagement. While process automation and cognitive insights are having a positive effect on organizational performance, we found that cognitive engagement negatively affects organizational performance. Our findings document the key resources that constitute an AI capability and showcase the effects of fostering such capabilities on key organizational activities, and in turn organizational performance.     

Ethnic Media in the United States: An Essay on Their Role in Integration,Assimilation, and Social Control

Hundreds of thousands of immigrants have entered the United States in the last 2 decades and even more are expected to do so in the coming years. This increasing presence of members from diverse ethnic identities is leading to what some have characterized as a permanently unfinished American society. Ethnic groups have grown active and have established institutions to sustain their ethnicity and ease their transition into American society with varying degrees of success. One such institution with a significant role in assimilation and integration is the ethnic mass media. This article is a theoretical exegesis on the role of ethnic media from a functional conflict perspective. Drawing from the literature on immigration, the sociology of the community press, social conflict, and postindustrial theories, we speculate on the functions of ethnic media and how that may manifest in their news content. Finally, propositions are offered for a more systematic study of ethnic media and their roles given their importance to current debates on American identity and multiculturalism raging in the country.     

Living Our Mission: A Study of University Mission Building

At the same time that organizational communication and management scholars are focusing attention on trends of spirituality in the workplace, faith-based organizations are taking up the question of how they might maintain a distinct spiritual identity. For these institutions, communicating mission becomes the defining feature of institutional identity. Explicitly religious organizations provide a venue for understanding the implications of incorporating spirituality in organizational discourse. This empirical study explores a mission-building conference and examines the ways in which communicating a spiritual mission simultaneously enriches and constrains both the individual members and the organizations as a whole.     

Television Viewing,Racial Attitudes,and Policy Preferences: Exploring the Role of Social Identity and Intergroup Emotions in Influencing Support for Affirmative Action

This paper explores how White viewers' perceived portrayals of African-Americans and Latino-Americans on TV influence their real-world feelings and beliefs about these outgroups, which in turn affect their support for race-targeted policies. A computer-based survey (N=323) included measures relating to perceptions about racial/ethnic groups on television, real-world stereotypical beliefs, prejudicial feelings, and support for affirmative action policies. The affective-cognitive model of policy reasoning presented in this paper extends and improves upon prior research in several ways. It considers intergroup emotions as an important mediator by including prejudicial feelings toward racial/ethnic outgroups in the path analyses. Unlike past research that typically grouped all negative stereotypes into one global measure, this study explores how specific types of stereotypes such as criminality and laziness work independently and simultaneously to influence policy preferences. Finally, this integrated cognitive-affective model of policy reasoning is applied to both perceptions of African-Americans and of Latino-Americans, which provides greater confidence in the applicability of the model. Implications of the results and directions for future research are discussed.     

The problematic status of u.s. statistics on race and ethnicity: An “imperfect representation of reality”

This article extends Stratford's brief observations about the problematic status of racial and ethnic group statistics to a discussion of the relationship among these statistics, public policy, and the conceptual status of race and ethnicity. Federal statistics are organizational products that are socially constructed. They represent the implementation of public policies that govern political, social, and economic life. It is the interaction between politics and the subjective meaning of race and ethnicity that is responsible for the continual modification of racial and ethnic group statistics. The article discusses the premises on which racial and ethnic group statistics have been based and illustrates how they were implemented in the instructions of the decennial censuses for classifying the race and ethnicity of the population. The article then summarizes some of the empirical evidence from recent research conducted by federal agencies and social scientists to show that racial and ethnic group statistics produced by government record keeping systems have no objective status. The meaning of race and ethnicity is contextual, situational, and subjective, and, thus, how respondents and observers define these concepts has significant consequences for the quality of federal statistics.     

When Routines are Not Enough

Interest in crisis management among journalism scholars grew in the wake of the terror attacks of September 11, 2001. Yet, few studies explore journalists and their organizations from a newsroom and organizational crisis management perspective. In this study, we study journalists’ ability to conduct news work when faced with a frame-breaking news event—in this case, the July 22, 2011 attacks in Norway. Dividing the journalistic response to these events into three stages, each with its own particular challenges, we have been able to unpack how these Norwegian journalists were capable of reporting on the events despite the chaos and uncertainty that followed in their wake, including the fact that the newsroom itself suffered severe damage from the bomb blast. This study shows that coping mechanisms in times of organizational stress will range from the expected (routine, habit) to the unexpected (improvisation, bricolage). The individual must pick up where the organization leaves off, relying upon experience and professionalism as well as face-to-face interaction and the assistance of whatever technology survives.     

Toward a Communication Model for the Socialization of Voluntary Members

Because most socialization/assimilation research focuses on employment as the primary membership role in groups and organizations, the accompanying models have failed to consider the unique characteristics of voluntary membership. In addition, those models have been criticized for being too linear and based on concepts of organizations as containers. Using principles of the bona fide group perspective and a case study, this paper develops a model that emphasizes the unique characteristics of the socialization of voluntary members. The multilevel model also examines how membership in various other groups, such as work and family, influence and interact with individuals’ voluntary memberships. With a focus on communication, the model emphasizes the fluid process of voluntary associations in organizations with ambiguous boundaries.     

The Flexible Organization: How Contemporary Employees Construct the Work/Life Border

The subject of work/life balance and boundaries has received much scholarly attention in the last 15 years. How employees understand these concepts and organizational response to this construction can and does have real consequences for an employee's work/life balance. Consistent with work/life border theory, initial qualitative data indicated that employees identify flexibility and permeability as key concepts in work/life balance. We sought to understand how contemporary employees define these terms. Interview data suggested that contemporary employees desire four distinct but interdependent types of flexibility: time, space, evaluation, and compensation. The emphasis on flexibility suggested a trend, at least among this sample, toward integrating the domains of work and life consistent with work/life boundary theory and raised questions about the changing conception of work in contemporary organizations. Conclusions and implications are discussed. Results of this study suggest that future research should seek to uncover what communicative strategies organizations and employees use to co-create and negotiate this work/life border.     

A Clearer Picture

As journalists continue integrating social media into their professional work, they wrestle with ways to best represent themselves, their organizations, and their profession. Several recent studies have examined this trend in terms of branding, raising important questions about the changing ways in which journalists present themselves and how these changes may indicate shifts in their personal and professional identities. This study combines a visual content analysis of the images journalists use in their Twitter profiles with analyses of their profile text and tweets to examine how journalists present themselves online with an eye toward individual and organizational branding. Findings indicate journalists choose a branding approach and apply it consistently across their profiles, with most profiles consisting of a professional headshot while notably lacking organizational identifiers such as logos. Journalists also tend to lean toward professional rather than personal images in their profile and header photographs, indicating a possible predilection for professional identity over personal on social media.     

谈少数民族古籍的整理和保护

少数民族古籍为进一步深层次地研究我国少数民族的历史文化,提供了极其真实宝贵的资料。整理与保护少数民族古籍是一项时间长、专业性强的工作。本文通过分析我国民族古籍的保存现状,就如何整理和保护少数民族古籍提出建议。     

Punditry as a reward system: audience construction and the logics of the punditry sphere

The article explores the relationship between the punditry sphere and democracy by analyzing how pundits and media organizations think about their audience. It also examines the role of punditry in the political environment in which the media organizations operate. Using Portugal as an example, the study draws on data gathered from interviews with pundits, journalists and news editors. Findings suggest that pundits and media organizations construct a punditry sphere that revolves around the circles of power. The article argues that this conception of the punditry sphere reflects the reward system under which pundits and media organizations work. Punditry seems to be a field primarily oriented to pundits themselves and to managing their stakes in the public arena while operating as a sphere where media organizations rework their relations with and within established powers, where politicians hold a special place. This construction reflects the co-dependence between media organizations and circles of power in Portugal and offers organizational-structural understanding of the logics of the punditry sphere and the role pundits play in public communication.     

Negotiating the Model Minority Image: Performative Aspects of College-Educated Asian American Professional Men

This study is a chapter in a larger work, in which the authors explore how eight college-educated Asian American professional men negotiate the model minority image to present the performative constructions of their multiple identities within the racialized and gendered context of U.S. organizations where they work. The authors first discuss the participants' perceptions of how others view their social identities as part of a homogenized concept, regardless of their diverse Asian American subjectivities. Then, they examine how the participants engage in performative aspects of the model minority image to promote positive impressions on others and to empower themselves in U.S. organizations. Exploring the subjective standpoint of being the model minority in the context of mainstream organizations, the authors aim to further reconsider the concept of identity as relational in the context of intercultural interactions.     

A cue or two and I'll trust you: Determinants of trust in government organizations in terms of their processing and usage of citizens' personal information disclosed online

This article discusses the results of a large-scale Internet survey (with 1156 respondents) that investigated the cues and factors that could positively influence Dutch Internet users' trust in government organizations in terms of their usage and processing of citizens' personal data. Confidence in online privacy statements, as indicated by the results of this study, significantly influences trust in government organizations among Dutch Internet users with and without previous e-government experience. Among those with e-government experience, the quality of their online government transaction experience and a positive government organizational reputation can also increase their trust in government organizations, specifically in terms of how they process and use citizens' personal data.     

“Making do”: Adapting transaction systems to organizational needs

Transaction systems are designed for processing high volume, repetitive tasks, such as filling orders and logging payments. Organizations typically purchase commercial off-the-shelf software (COTS) products for these applications — products that are chosen with care and that offer cost savings over proprietary systems. Little, however, is known about how these systems are actually used within organizations. Designed for rapid data entry and task completion, they must also support cooperative aspects of work, such as exception handling and problem solving. This article describes a study of three organizations that use the same COTS product for providing customer service, as well as for processing transactions. Each organization was observed “making do” with systems designed for one application to meet their needs for other tasks.     

Recordkeeping professionals’ understanding of and justification for functional classification: Finnish public sector organizational context

Today functional classification is the predominant approach to records organization. It is, however, apparent that the functional approach to records classification often involves methodological and conceptual confusion as well as usability issues. The purpose of this study is to gain a better understanding of how recordkeeping professionals perceive functional classification, what are the purposes the classification serves and how they justify this method in Finnish public sector organizations. The article presents the results of the study in which 22 recordkeeping professionals in three Finnish public sector organizations were interviewed. The data were analyzed with qualitative methods. The results show the integration of the functional approach in Finnish recordkeeping practices and records management tools. The results also describe various purposes served by functional classification in organizations. They illustrate various justifications for this method and the recordkeeping professionals’ lack of methodological alternatives.     

Apolitical politics: GOP efforts to foster identification from Latinos, 1984–2000

The growth and youth of the U.S. Latino population at the close of the 20^th century makes them a desired constituency for both major political parties. Intriguingly, the party organization which has long resisted the recognition of internal voting blocs—the GOP—allocated unprecedented resources between 1980 and 2000 to inspire identification from Latinos. This study investigates the nature of these invitations. Specifically, it reveals how a party, whose organizational identity opposes acknowledging individuals as ethnic group members, appeals to an ethnic group. By examining (a) English and Spanish language television advertisements and (b) elite interview data with Republican Latino strategists, we argue that these ads depict satisfied Latino citizens, emphasize Latino family connections, and eschew traditional political issues. These identification strategies are notable for they may have considerable effects on the American polity at the dawn of, and well into, the 21^st century.