Communication
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Item “THE FIGHT IS YOURS”: ALLY ADVOCACY, IDENTITY RECONFIGURATION, AND POLITICAL CHANGE(2019) Howell, William; Parry-Giles, Trevor; Communication; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Since at least 1990, scholars and activists have used the term “ally” to describe and theorize a distinct sociopolitical role: someone from a majority identity group working to end that group’s oppression of another identity group. While the term is recent, “allies” are present throughout America’s constant struggle to actualize equality and justice. The identity-rooted ideologies that empowered allies disempowered the groups for and with whom they sought justice and equality. But those empowering identities were pieces, more or less salient, of complex intersectional people. Given the shared nature of identity, this process also necessarily pitted allies against those with whom they shared an identity. In this project, I ask two questions about past ally advocacy—questions that are often asked about contemporary ally advocacy. First, in moments of major civil rights reform, how did allies engage their own intersecting identities—especially those ideologically-charged identities with accrued power from generations of marginalizing and oppressing? Second, how did allies engage other identities that were not theirs—especially identities on whose oppression their privilege was built? In asking these two questions—about self-identity and others’ identity—I assemble numerous rhetorical fragments into “ally advocacy.” This bricolage is in recognition of rhetoric’s fragmentary nature, and in response to Michael Calvin McGee’s call to assemble texts for criticism. I intend to demonstrate that ally advocacy is such a text, manifesting (among other contexts) around the women’s suffrage amendment, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the marriage equality movement. I argue that allies rarely engaged the ideologies underlying identity-based inequality in any open, direct, or thorough manner, especially at these moments when those ideologies were optimally vulnerable. I conclude that allies must accept that they marginalize others through identity and its adjacent ideology, and allies must help identity-group peers reconstitute their shared identity in recognition of this. Such reconstituting is necessary for a healthy American democracy but especially so in the late-2010s, as Americans persistently grapple with a political system fractured along identity lines.Item Managing intractability: Wrestling with wicked problems and seeing beyond consensus in public relations(2019) Capizzo, Luke W; Sommerfeldt, Erich J; Communication; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Managing intractable or wicked problems—irrevocable, difficult-to-solve, often values-driven conflicts—is a regular occurrence for public relations practitioners. Yet, such problems and how to manage them are often outside of the bounds of public relations theories are aimed at building consensus. This dissertation builds on the existing literature carving out a place for dissensus-oriented (e.g., Ciszek, 2016; Ciszek & Logan, 2018; Coombs & Holladay, 2018; Willis, 2016) or agonistic (e.g., Davidson, 2016; Davidson & Motion, 2018; Ganesh & Zoller, 2015) public relations theories and practices. Through interviews with public relations practitioners facing intractable scenarios and the integration of dissensual and agonistic perspectives of Lyotard (1984), Rancière (2010), Mouffe (1999) and others, the dissertation examines the role and impact of wicked problems in practice. Managing intractable problems involves organizational awareness of publics, communities, and societies, as well as a re-evaluation of effectiveness for public relations practitioners. Among its contributions, the dissertation generates a praxis-centered definition of the facets of intractability and new frameworks for social issue engagement and holistic measurement.Item "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).Item 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.Item How Forecasters Decide to Warn about Tornadoes: Multi-Sited Rapid Ethnography Training Guide(2019) Liu, Brooke; Atwell Seate, AnitaSocial scientists are prolific in their recommendations on how to better warn about tornadoes. However, social scientists rarely work in partnership with operational forecasters, begging the question of how applicable their recommendations are to the “real world.” As part of a two-year project funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) with the goal of better understanding how forecasters decide to warn about tornadoes, we conducted a multi-sited rapid ethnography (along with telephone interviews and a cross-sectional survey of forecasters and managers). Here we archive our ethnography training guide should other researchers conduct similar research.Item NELSON MANDELA’S 1990 VISIT TO THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: RHETORIC(S) OF THE ANTI-APARTHEID MOVEMENT(2019) Obike, Nma Winnie; Parry-Giles, Trevor; Communication; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Nelson Mandela’s 1990 visit to the United States of America was a victory tour for Mandela and the anti-apartheid movement in America given the significant role that everyday Americans played to secure his release from prison. In this dissertation, I ask how Mandela’s 1990 visit underscored the historic, visual, and ideographic rhetoric of the anti-apartheid social movement in America. To find answers, I examine Mandela’s rhetoric as expressed in the black power salute, his address to Congress, and solidarity with regional anti-apartheid groups. The anti-apartheid movement in America mirrored the civil rights movement with its myriad protest strategies. Under the umbrella of the Free South Africa Movement (FSAM), boycotts, sanctions, and divestment strategies were implemented at the national and state level to end apartheid. FSAM members hosted Mandela’s 1990 visit during which he used the tools of rhetoric to reach directly to the American people to seek solidarity and support for continued sanctions against the South African apartheid regime. Mandela’s display of the visual gesture of the black power salute contributed to a cultural change in the denotative meaning of the gesture. Once the symbol of radical nationalist black politics, the black power salute became a symbol of black pan-African unity and solidarity.Item Responding to Group-Directed Criticism(2019) Ma, Rong; Atwell Seate, Anita; Fink, Edward L; Communication; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)In this dissertation, I investigated how group members respond to a criticism of their group. Realizing the conflict between two literatures, the black sheep effect and the intergroup sensitivity effect, I drew on theories of face, social identity threat, and emotion to create an integrative model. The model proposed that contextual factors (presence of an outgroup audience and critic’s group membership), a message attribute (message accuracy), and individual perceptions (presumed media influence on the outgroup and identity importance) work in tandem to predict perceived threats to social identity (through perceived critic’s constructiveness) and to collective face. These threat perceptions in turn predict a series of evaluative, emotional, and behavioral intention outcomes. Three pilot studies were conducted to construct the message stimuli, validate the instruments, and check the manipulation of message accuracy and the assumptions of the theoretical model. An experiment was conducted to test the proposed model. Findings have suggested that (1) it is important to consider multiple causes of threat perceptions; (2) it is necessary to differentiate the two types of collective face threats, as well as the four types of social identity threats; (3) some threat perceptions can lead to desirable outcomes; (4) there may be two major strategies to restore positive distinctiveness of the group in the face of criticism; (5) collective face threat can lead to facework by group members, which involves resolving the issue mentioned in the group criticism; and (6) future research on group criticism should examine the nuances of critic’s group membership, as well as the effects of expected critic’s effort. Although with limitations, this study contributes to theory and research on group criticism specifically, and on intergroup communication more broadly.Item Gold Star Pilgrimages: Tracing Maternal Citizenship Through the Great War Era, 1914-1933(2019) Lucas, Melissa Anne; Parry-Giles, Shawn J.; Communication; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)From 1930-1933, the U.S. government funded Gold Star Pilgrimages—two-week voyages for Gold Star mothers to military graveyards in Europe where their sons were buried. These Pilgrimages emerged after a decade of public deliberation over the responsibilities of American mothers to motivate sacrifice during war and commemorate death at war’s end. The political rhetoric surrounding the Pilgrimages often valorized white, biological, and patriotic Gold Star mothers as the most authentic ideals of women’s citizenship, condemned women who challenged the patriotism of maternal sacrifice, and marginalized African American mothers through segregationist practices. This project analyzes how Pilgrimage rhetoric constructed American Gold Star mothers as models of citizenship and how this ideal empowered and limited women’s political engagement and identity during an era of war, social protest, and suffrage. The chapters specifically trace how public discourse before and during the Pilgrimages defined, challenged, and reinterpreted maternal citizenship throughout the Great War era. In this study, I analyze three case studies that shaped Gold Star rhetoric and in turn conceptions of maternal citizenship from 1914 to 1933. Prior to American entry into the Great War, women’s peace and preparedness organizations publicly clashed over meanings of maternal responsibility (Chapter 1). After the war and women’s enfranchisement, Pilgrimage advocates and government officials debated Gold Star Pilgrimages through a series of congressional hearings. In the process, they exalted the Gold Star mother over more progressive forms of women’s citizenship (Chapter 2). After the government announced its decision to segregate the Pilgrimages, many prospective African American Gold Star Pilgrims publicly justified their decision to accept or boycott the Pilgrimages as a performance of maternal citizenship (Chapter 3). The Pilgrimages debates ultimately illustrate how war commemoration can function to exalt and discipline performances of maternal citizenship. The contemporary rhetoric of Gold Star mothers continues to spark public debate about what it means to authentically embody the Gold Star ideal. This project challenges the notion that the Great War has been “forgotten” in U.S. public memory by highlighting the enduring rhetorical legacies of Gold Star Pilgrimages in contemporary political discourse.Item CONSTRUCTING A LEGACY: THE ROLE OF ANNIVERSARY COMMEMORATIONS IN REMEMBERING BROWN V. BOARD OF EDUCATION(2019) Bruner, Jaclyn Leigh; Pfister, Damien S.; Communication; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Brown v. Board of Education (1954) was the landmark Supreme Court decision that outlawed legal segregation in the United States. This project engages with three commemorative events that mark the anniversary of the decision--the 25th, 50th, and 64th anniversaries--to investigate how public memory of Brown v. Board of Education is constructed and how the legacy of the decision is remembered. Anniversaries, as moments where kairotic and chronotic conceptions of time come together, offer an opportunity to (re)define the past through the work of public memory. Although Brown’s memory at the “monumental” 25th anniversary featured coordinated regional commemorations, Brown’s legacy of race and memory is nationalized and largely sanitized by the 50th anniversary. In contrast to these momentous anniversaries, the non-monumental 64th anniversary articulated a counter-regional identity for Topeka, Kansas. By tracing the public memory of Brown across a 60-year period, this dissertation extends James Boyd White’s theory of justice-as-translation, asserting that the critical, rhetorical attention to the public memory of the Brown decision enacts a form of narrative justice and, consequently, advances a new way of conceptualizing persistent, de facto segregation and racial injustice in our contemporary world.Item Leadership under fire: How governments manage crisis communication(2019) Liu, Brooke Fisher; Iles, Irina A.; Herovic, EminaCrisis leadership is fundamental to preventing, preparing for, managing, and learning from crises. Despite leadership during crises being heavily reliant on communicative processes, the research record predominantly reduces crisis communication leadership to managing organizations’ images. To contribute to limited knowledge on leadership communication during crises, we interviewed 24 U.S. government leaders and conducted a content analysis of U.S. government communication leadership during a major wildfire. We find that crisis communication leadership involves crisis perceptiveness, humility, flexibility, presence, and cooperation. We offer a message catalog of crisis response options for government leaders, and show how leaders employed some of these messages in response to a large-scale wildfire. This study expands the state of the art in crisis communication leadership research with implications for theory and practice.