Theses and Dissertations from UMD

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New submissions to the thesis/dissertation collections are added automatically as they are received from the Graduate School. Currently, the Graduate School deposits all theses and dissertations from a given semester after the official graduation date. This means that there may be up to a 4 month delay in the appearance of a give thesis/dissertation in DRUM

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Now showing 1 - 10 of 33
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    THE PUBLIC PERSPECTIVE: EXAMINING THE ROLES AND SOCIAL INFLUENCE OF INSTAGRAM INFLUENCERS AND UNCOVERING IMPLICATIONS FOR PUBLIC RELATIONS PRACTICE AND THEORY
    (2023) KAMRAN, NEHA; Anderson, Lindsey B; Khamis, Sahar; Communication; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    This dissertation examines the public relations roles played by Instagram influencers.Specifically, I explore how social media publics (e.g., followers) perceive influencers. I do so by applying role theory as a primary theoretical lens and apply Cialdini’s principles of persuasion (authority, consistency, scarcity, reciprocity, liking, social proof, and unity) to investigate the experiences and perspectives of social media followers directly. This dissertation addresses the following three research questions by exploring the social media influencer-follower storyline: RQ1: How do social media influencers define ‘social media influencer’? RQ2: How do social media followers engage with social media influencers and what public relations roles do they see them fulfill? RQ3: How do social media influencers–through persuasive principles–exert influence on different publics? These questions contend with, respectively, firstly, how social media followers define a social media influencer, the second is concerned with the nature and frequency of social media followers engagement with social media influencers. The third and final research question answers what sources of influence used by social media influencers are described as persuasive and worthy of support by followers. By answering these questions, the dissertation serves to fulfill the goals of capturing how publics perceive and define social media influencers; what unique roles social media influencers play from a public relations perspective or viewpoint; and finally, the extent and nature of the influence that social media influencers enact in the public space. Given these research questions, I used qualitative methods of inquiry. Specifically, I conducted an initial questionnaire, which was followed up with in-depth interviews and triangulated by a content analysis. The findings, in order of the aforementioned research questions, (1) illuminated how publics define influencers and engage with them on Instagram—as extensions of their social circle akin to family and friends, (2) demonstrated that social media influencers add to the social influence aspect by building a relationships with their publics, and in doing so, (3) showed how Instagram influencers play an important role in participants lives through the platform and engaging with on an almost daily basis. These specific findings are the ones that fulfill the goals of the research project; the rest of the several findings are by-products or offshoots and can serve as future research areas. In the theoretical context, there have been attempts to define exactly what is meant by the term ‘influencer’, especially in a public relations context. This study fulfills the need of showing how social media influencers are perceived by their publics and how they are changing the landscape of public relations functions research and practice. As such, this work explicates the influential roles influencers play in public relations and in doing so contributes to public relations research and practice. In the applied context, this study examines how social media influencers, with their communication, occupation of online spaces, and bonds with their social media users create relationships with publics. The discussion explores the ramifications of the relational power that is exerted by enacting the role of social media influencer in the public relations space. Social media influencers are staking their place, and much of that role has been enacted through the Instagram platform. This study gets directly at the viewpoint of Instagram users, or in other words, the followers of Instagram influencers.
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    Understand You Are Going To Deal With Hardships That Women Deal With In The Civilian World, Kind Of Like On Steroids”: Air Force And Army Women Veterans’ Perceptions Of The United States Military
    (2023) McDermott, Victoria Marie; Anderson, Lindsey B; Communication; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    The United States military (USM) is a totalistic and hegemonically masculine institution that leaves lasting effects on former members sense of self and identity. The performance of gender by individual members, and the gendered nature of the institution itself make it a challenging profession for those categorized into the subordinate gender to navigate and succeed. Using feminist standpoint theory, this dissertation explores women’s perspectives of their experiences during and after military service to better under the role of gender on institution-public relational meaning making. Findings demonstrate that gender performed, on individual and institutional levels forms gendered relationships to the institution that have long term effects on individuals willingness to engage with the institution. From the findings identified, theoretical extensions and practice implications, as well as recommendations for the USM to improve its relationships with women veterans are suggested.
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    Issues Management of Compounding Wicked Problems by Critical Infrastructure Utilities: Cybersecurity and COVID-19
    (2022) Williams, Gareth Thomas; Sommerfeldt, Erich J; Communication; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    “Wicked problems” present issues managers in public relations with complex challenges and no definitive resolutions. Multiple concurrent wicked problems may compound these challenges. This study extends understanding of how issues managers address compounding wicked problems with a multiple-case study. The multiple-case study focuses on the experiences of issues managers at public cooperative electric distribution utilities and includes interviews with issues management personnel at multiple levels of oversight and influence, including regional, national, and federal organizations. Interviews with issues managers explore strategies for identifying and addressing wicked problems and reactions to messaging from other organizations. Examination of publicly available organizational communications and media triangulate conclusions. This study illustrated that compounding wicked problems require issues management, issues managers do not directly address the wicked problem(s), education alone or enforced by policy did not produce lasting changes in behavior advocated to publics, that study of compounding problems requires the problems also have common publics; and issues management by critical infrastructure seeks cocreation. Specific observations include that cultivated networks of communication improved perceptions of legitimacy in sources of information and guidance, attempts to convey legitimacy from the cultivated network to other publics were not successful, utilities were subject to and responded to power imposed upon them by state authorities, and that utilities relied heavily on establishing organizational legitimacy with member/owner publics when communicating about changes resulting from external influences of either legitimacy or power. In addition, this study illustrated that resilience is the overwhelming priority of critical infrastructure utilities when responding to wicked problems, and both supply chain and utility personnel play indispensable roles in organizational resilience. This study extends existing issues management literature of critical infrastructure utilities, which are currently under-represented in issues management literature.
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    Developing effective communication for climate change adaptation and disaster risk mitigation
    (2021) Lim, JungKyu Rhys; Liu, Brooke Fisher; Communication; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    Preparing for natural disasters and adapting to climate change can save lives. However, little research has examined how organizations can effectively communicate climate change adaptation and disaster risk mitigation behaviors. This dissertation employs two studies to examine how to effectively communicate disaster mitigation and preparedness to help at-risk publics better prepare for natural disasters. Fragmented studies so far have not provided an integrated model to identify the most effective factors for explaining and predicting disaster preparedness behaviors and policy support. Moreover, studies have not yet developed and tested communication messages that can motivate publics’ disaster risk mitigation through experiments. Thus, in Study 1, this dissertation attempts to build an integrated model and identify the key factors that motivate disaster preparedness behaviors and policy support through three large-scale online surveys (N = 3,468). Two of the most common federally declared disasters in large disaster-prone states are studied: wildfires and hurricanes with floods. Study 1 finds that social norms and self-efficacy strongly motivate disaster preparedness behaviors, while response efficacy strongly motivates policy support behaviors. Then, based on Study 1 and consultation with eight communication experts, Study 2 develops messages using social norms and efficacy. Study 2 tests the social norms and coping appraisal messages through four between-subject online experiments (2 X 2 X 2 X 2) with an additional vicarious experience condition in flood- and hurricane-prone states (N = 5,027). Injunctive norms and disapproval rationale strongly encourage at-risk publics to take mitigation behaviors, and vicarious experience seems promising for message design. Additionally, this dissertation reveals at-risk publics’ awareness, behavioral engagement, preferred communication channels, and information sources for preparing for hurricanes and wildfire risks. Weather forecasters and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), including the National Weather Service (NWS), were the preferred information sources for preparing for hurricane risks. Conversely, local and state fire departments were the preferred information sources for preparing for wildfire risks. By developing and testing messages on the strongest factors using preferred information sources, the dissertation provides guidance for risk communication researchers and professionals.
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    Mental Health Advocates as Cultural Intermediaries: A Sociocultural Perspective of Advocacy and Legitimacy
    (2021) Aghazadeh, Sarah Abigail; Aldoory, Linda; Communication; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    This study sought to understand how advocacy as a public relations activity can give voice to marginalized publics and how/if mental health advocates perceive their advocacy work as influencing culture as it relates to mental health. This study incorporated the theoretical frameworks of fully functioning society theory (FFST) and the circuit of culture. Additionally, this study investigated the concepts of advocacy, legitimacy, cultural intermediation and discourses as they entangle with and within FFST and the circuit of culture. The juxtaposition of these theories helped to uncover both culturally situated best practices of advocacy and interrogate the frames that underpin the rhetorical ideals of a fully functioning society. This study employed qualitative, in-depth interviews with 38 mental health advocates who communicated a variety of perspectives about mental health and illness. Some themes that emerged include: advocacy as both education and empowerment, legitimacy as authority that can derive from both lived and learned experience, the multiple subcultures within the field of mental health advocacy, and the variety of mental health discourses. Furthermore, two overlapping, but distinct missions of advocacy exist including 1) general mental health for all of society and 2) advocacy for people who have experienced significant challenges to daily life and/or harm (e.g., prejudice, discrimination) because of a psychiatric diagnosis. This dissertation extended FFST and the circuit of culture to present a culturally embedded conceptual model of advocacy and theoretical propositions to help guide future theory building. The theoretical propositions outline how advocacy is a vehicle for voice to change status quos, how dysfunction and marginality are parallel within FFST, and how legitimation and cultural intermediation align in the context of culturally situated responsible advocacy. The findings also contributed to the existing theories by applying those theories to a specific context of mental health advocacy, which illuminated the importance of questioning normalized values within FFST and approaching intermediation with reflectiveness. This research considers the consequences of advocacy for people with lived experiences and situates advocacy within social justice contexts to inch closer towards the ideals of FFST.
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    "We band of brothers"? A social-identity-based study of military public affairs professional identity, organizational socialization, and collaboration
    (2019) Bermejo, Julio Javier; Liu, Brooke F; Communication; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    Today, military public relations, or military public affairs (Levenshus, 2013), is drawing attention for the lessons it might have to offer to organizations more broadly. Yet, military public affairs has been neglected within the public relations scholarly field (Toledano, 2010). In the present study, I applied the “social identity approach” (Hornsey, 2008, pp. 204-205) as my conceptual framework to explore the development of military public affairs professional identity through socialization of public affairs managers in joint entry-level military public affairs training. Along with professional identity and organizational socialization, I explored the development and practice of collaboration as a public affairs competency. To complete the study, I conducted semi-structured interviews (27 initial interviews, three follow-up interviews) with 27 students, practitioners (i.e., former students), instructors, and administrators of the U.S. Defense Department’s entry-level Public Affairs Qualification Course. Findings supported the scholarly understanding that public relations practice is a boundary spanning function, with internal boundary spanning an important aspect of the public affairs manager’s work (Neill, 2014). Findings helped to extend understanding of organizational socialization by suggesting that the public affairs manager, as a nonprototypical member of the organization, must be accepted by the commanding officer and other leaders, often representing combat arms fields, to achieve inclusion in the organization (Wenzel, Mummendey, & Waldzus, 2007). Findings further helped to broaden understanding of public relations collaboration by drawing attention to vital collaboration partners that have been obscured through their agglomeration in the concept of the “dominant coalition” (Grunig, 2006, p. 160). Findings suggested the new insight that public affairs managers are socialized for proactivity, an unexpected outcome given the priorities of military organizations as “high-reliability organizations” (Myers, 2005, p. 345). Additionally, findings suggested that ambiguity attends the public affairs function and that this ambiguity can constrain public affairs, but also create opportunities for collaboration, especially under conditions of contextual uncertainty (L. A. Grunig, 1992; Rast, Gaffney, Hogg, & Crisp, 2012). Findings additionally suggested that collaboration opportunities may increase for public affairs when those efforts are more visible to the organization and are seen to benefit it (Platow & van Knippenberg, 2001).
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    EXPLORIGN PUBLIC RELATIONS PRACTITIONERS’ ETHICAL DECISION-MAKING AT WORK: A WHOLE-PERSON, PROCESSUAL, AND CONTEXTUAL LENS
    (2019) Guo, Jiankun; Anderson, Lindsey B.; Communication; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    The topic of ethics is gaining importance and urgency, particularly for public relations, a field responsible for communicating and building relationships between organizations and publics. While normative ethical theories abound in this discipline, tensions exist between traditional theories privileging rationality, autonomy, universality, and professional ethics, and emerging theories that value emotions, relationships, contexts, and personal ethics. Furthermore, practitioners’ ethical decision making process in their embedded organizational, industry, and sociopolitical environments has not been fully addressed. This dissertation fills in these research gaps by exploring public relations practitioners’ meaning making of ethics and thereby reconciliating tensions between traditional and emerging ethical theories (RQ1), detailing practitioners’ ethical decision making (EDM) process from a whole-person perspective (RQ2), and assessing how micro, meso, and macro level ethicality interact from a participants’ point of view (RQ3). 37 semi-structured, qualitative interviews were conducted with current or past U.S. public relations practitioners who represent a variety of work settings, industries, specializations, and sectors. Interviews were transcribed and data were coded thematically and analyzed abductively. Findings suggested that practitioners constructed the meaning of ethics primarily via their concerns for work and organizational-public relationships, contextual particulars, and an alignment of personal and professional ethics. They utilized a variety of cognitive, emotional, intuitive, imaginative, and discursive skills during their ethical decision making (EDM) process exhibiting a whole-person based approach to EDM. Additionally, practitioners’ ethicality was both a result of contextual influences as well as a contributor to higher levels of ethical standards for their environment—on organizational, industry, and societal levels. Theoretical and methodological implications were drawn from the findings, so were practical implications provided in terms of ethics training programs.
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    MEASURING A WORLD IN CRISIS: A NEW MODEL OF REPUTATION REPAIR
    (2018) Page, Tyler Grant; Liu, Brooke F; Communication; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    Reputation repair is a paradigm within public relations and crisis communication. The reputation repair paradigm is currently focused on the symbolic strategies organizations use to repair their reputations in the aftermath of a crisis. This dissertation proposes significant revisions to the reputation repair paradigm and builds a series of scale measures and a revised model of reputation repair to achieve this goal. Using moral foundations theory, situational crisis communication theory (SCCT), image repair theory, and input from 20 participants with expertise in public relations, this dissertation designs new measures for instructing information, adjusting information, reputation management messages, offensiveness of a crisis, and perceived virtuousness that buffers against reputational harms posed by crisis. This dissertation then refines and validates these measures with a pilot test with 797 participants recruited from mTurk. Finally, it concludes with an experiment testing these measures in a crisis situation operationalized as a potentially deadly fire in a building. The experiment used 1,000 participants recruited from mTurk in a 2 (crisis types: rumor or organizational misdeed) x 2 (offensiveness: high or low) x 2 (instructing information: yes or no) x 2 (adjusting information: yes or no) x 2 (crisis response: denial or rebuilding) factorial design to test the effect of SCCT’s matching construct of response strategies and the proposed revised model of reputation repair that explains how messages, offensiveness of a crisis, and perceived virtuousness impact post-crisis reputation. This dissertation finds that matching strategies according to SCCT have a very small effect (ή2 = .005) on post crisis reputation while reputation management messages overall have a very strong structural effect on post crisis reputation (.814). Further, it finds that the revised model of reputation repair explains how messages, perceived offensiveness, virtuousness, and post-crisis reputation interrelate and that the revised model changes slightly under different situations. Implications for theory and practitioners are discussed.
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    CULTIVATING #CUPFUSION: AN EXPLORATION OF THE UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES OF COMMUNICATION IN A PUBLIC RELATIONS CAMPAIGN
    (2018) Penn, Timothy Shaw; Toth, Elizabeth L; Communication; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    This dissertation is an exploration into the application of Merton’s (1936) typology of the unanticipated consequences of purposeful social actions, to a public relations campaign. Merton gave consideration to using scientific analysis to understand factors leading to the unanticipated consequences of purposive actions, rather than attributing them to chance or fate. Four of his five factors, including lack of foreknowledge, habit, myopia, and values, have proved applicable to the public relations campaign examined in this case study. The case involves the 2016 Reese’s #Cupfusion campaign. When news of a new Reese’s product, Peanut Butter Cups stuffed with Reese’s Pieces, was leaked on Facebook, the brand manager at Reese’s and a small public relations team at Ketchum decided to “tease” the truth about the release of the product, rather than reveal the existence of the candy. Using qualitative methods, including in-depth interviews, organization-provided document analysis, and content analysis of the Reese’s brand Facebook page, this researcher found that by using innovative public relations strategies, combined with a proactive relationship management technique which used social media to cultivate an existing relationship with Reese’s fans on Facebook, the #Cupfusion team was able to cultivate an unintended “viral” outcome for their product roll-out. Merton’s typology of unintended consequences has application for public relations theory and practice. The concept of lack of foreknowledge has implications for both chaos and complexity theory, and how they can be applied to the digital environment and social media, including how organizations can respond to unintended consequences and crisis. This research also supports and adds to social media and strategic campaign planning practice, by providing a lens for the analysis and execution of both pre-implementation and evaluation of public relations campaigns.
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    An Identity-Based Approach to Organization-Public Relationships and Interactions
    (2018) Xu, Sifan; Sommerfeldt, Erich; Communication; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    Public relations research has vigorous agendas on theorizing publics and organization-public relationships, but the conceptualization of publics is mostly separated from the theorization of organization-public relationships. This is reflected in organization-public relationship research, where the matter of who is a public is usually ill-defined. Research involving organization-public relationships and interactions also assumes that relationships are inherently mutually beneficial, without fully investigating the utilities of a relationship for publics. An identity approach to organization-public relationships and publics' interactions with an organization is proposed in this study. This identity approach is grounded in the identity perspective based on social identity theory and self-categorization theory, and is able to connect the research areas involving issues, publics' communicative behaviors, and organization-public relationships. A 3 X 2 X 2 experiment is conducted, where participants (N = 483) are randomly assigned to one of the three issues related to diversity, politics, and environment. In each issue, a nonprofit organization or a for-profit organization (two types of organizations) either fully discloses its position on the issue (affirmation) or does not have any clear stance (non-affirmation). Results of this experiment show that issues affect salience on certain identities, and individuals' overall identity salience and an organization's affirmation on a particular issue significantly affect individuals' identity expression and perception of the organization as an ingroup, which in turn impact individuals' communication and relationships towards the organization. Such results indicate that publics' interactions and relationships with an organization are used to reinforce their identity and essentially related to their identity building. This project builds a foundation to theorize publics as identity-activated individuals based on issues, and their communicative behaviors and relationships as identity expression and identity connections. The significant moderating role of organizational type in these processes indicates that an individual's overall perception of a specific type of organization matters for public relations research.