Online engagement for sustainable energy projects

This paper addresses the question, how can sustainable energy projects increase engagement from consumers using interactive media communications? To this end, a systematic literature review was conducted in order to synthesise findings across four major disciplines, with the goal of identifying current and imminent challenges, as well as potential solutions, to engaging consumers with sustainable energy projects in the era of interactive media. The authors propose a Socially Dynamic Communications Framework (SDCF) that can be used organisationally to address core challenges and generate solutions within a single iterative cycle. Initial findings indicate that consumer behaviours are most likely to be influenced through strategic social interactions using diverse, networked platforms, in order to be meaningful in contemporary social and technological contexts. Furthermore, this type of interaction is likely to become integral to future energy delivery systems, making interactive, online engagement with energy initiatives an important area for investigation. While many organisations may cite a lack of control in digital and social media as a risk justifying avoidance, the majority of engagement and marketing literature emphasise the greater risk inherent in not engaging effectively online

A VSA Communication Model for Service Systems Governance.

This paper proposes a conceptual framework for governance and management of the decision making process for corporate communication. The aim is to address a gap in the literature in that to date, by adopting some basic assumptions from Viable Systems Approach, integrated with Service Science perspective, in order to identify communication resources, the nature (static and dynamic) of the corporate communication activities, and “engineering” communication process. Parsons’ sociological approach, with reference to the classification of organisational decisions (policy, allocation and coordination) results fundamental to contextualise this approach to the decision-making within corporate communication function/departmen

Engaging universe 4.0: The case for forming a public relations-strategic intelligence hybrid

In this article we follow a range of significant academics, practitioners and policy makers in highlighting the need to engage with the disruptive digital transformation of the fourth industrial revolution. Often called universe 4.0, this is an economy based on data that dilutes, in an unprecedented fashion, the boundaries between the physical, biological and digital world in all spheres of society. In having to face up to the uncertainty, complexity and speed associated with this global challenge, organisations of all kinds will be impelled to rethink future skills, jobs and business models. We focus on how this uncertain situation affects public relations. We suggest that the resulting paradoxes and controversies become an opportunity to research and reflect on the past and present of our discipline and redirect attention to the processes, strategies, and tools of intervention required for improved contemporary and future effectiveness. This present study analyses universe 4.0 processes affecting both the practice and the social function of public relations and argues for close linkages with multidimensional strategic intelligences and disruptive technologies based on artificial intelligence. It also involves conducting exploratory qualitative research based on a bibliometric analysis of specialised literature; undertaking content analysis via computational linguistics techniques; and applying Delphi methodology to consider public relations in universe 4.0. Our findings suggest not only that strategic intelligence is under researched in our field, but that a more developed public relations intelligence capable of adapting to universe 4.0 needs to be a hybrid of existing public relations and contemporary strategic intelligence

The Visibility and Communication of Cohesion Policy in Online Media

This study evaluates the visibility and communication of cohesion policy in online media. It employs a mixed methods approach to investigate media coverage, representation and user perceptions of cohesion policy in online media. The research draws on an original dataset of over 60,000 news articles and 100,000 user-generated comments. It also analyses social media – over 11,000 Facebook posts and over five million tweets on Twitter – and 13,000 EU press releases. The key conclusion is that cohesion policy visibility is relatively low in online media. Policy recommendations are provided to improve cohesion policy visibility particularly through citizen engagement

Social Media Challenge: Sentiment Analysis in Maruti Suzuki India Ltd.

The growth of social media platforms and its users has shown a stupendous growth since 2005. According to a survey done by Social Media Examiner with social media marketers, 83% of the respondents agreed that social media is the need of the hour for organization because customers use it for giving their opinion about the product/service the organization offers. It’s a proven fact that social media distributes information much faster than traditional word-of-mouth. Thus, it’s more important than ever for organisations to monitor what is being said about their product/service across all social media networks. Social media monitoring requires gaining insight for the positive, negative or neutral opinion given by the users or in other words gaining insight for sentiment analysis. On the basis of sentiment analysis, organisations can identify the opportunities, implement novel strategies, adjust campaigns duly and improve their brand image leveraging the power of social media. This study focuses on the challenges faced by India’s leading automobile company, Maruti Suzuki India Ltd. during the process of sentiment analysis

Participatory Patterns in an International Air Quality Monitoring Initiative

The issue of sustainability is at the top of the political and societal agenda, being considered of extreme importance and urgency. Human individual action impacts the environment both locally (e.g., local air/water quality, noise disturbance) and globally (e.g., climate change, resource use). Urban environments represent a crucial example, with an increasing realization that the most effective way of producing a change is involving the citizens themselves in monitoring campaigns (a citizen science bottom-up approach). This is possible by developing novel technologies and IT infrastructures enabling large citizen participation. Here, in the wider framework of one of the first such projects, we show results from an international competition where citizens were involved in mobile air pollution monitoring using low cost sensing devices, combined with a web-based game to monitor perceived levels of pollution. Measures of shift in perceptions over the course of the campaign are provided, together with insights into participatory patterns emerging from this study. Interesting effects related to inertia and to direct involvement in measurement activities rather than indirect information exposure are also highlighted, indicating that direct involvement can enhance learning and environmental awareness. In the future, this could result in better adoption of policies towards decreasing pollution.Comment: 17 pages, 6 figures, 1 supplementary fil