Social media responses and brand personality in product and moral harm crises: Why waste a good crisis?

The purpose of this research is to understand the process of attitudinal changes towards a brand in crisis and the brand’s communication around the crisis by utilising balance theory and brand personality. Four crisis case studies were selected and data was collected from brands’ Twitter platforms on either side of the crisis event horizon. Results demonstrate an opportunity to update the balance theory approach in a crisis by considering the type of crisis (product harm vs. moral harm) relative to brand personality (brand competence vs. brand character). Balance theory helps explain how consumer attitude changes occur through a crisis. Further, the mapping of brand communications in social media over four selected case studies show that brand personality identity can change as a result of a crisis and demonstrate how brand managers can actively frame their online communication to help the brand to recover more effectively from a crisis

Post-overdose interventions triggered by calling 911: Centering the perspectives of people who use drugs (PWUDs)

BackgroundOpioid overdose deaths have increased exponentially in the United States. Bystander response to opioid overdose ideally involves administering naloxone, providing rescue breathing, and calling 911 to summon emergency medical assistance. Recently in the US, public health and public safety agencies have begun seeking to use 911 calls as a method to identify and deliver post-overdose interventions to opioid overdose patients. Little is known about the opinions of PWUDs about the barriers, benefits, or potential harms of post-overdose interventions linked to the 911 system. We sought to understand the perspectives of PWUDs about a method for using 911 data to identify opioid overdose cases and trigger a post-overdose intervention.Methods and findingsWe conducted three focus groups with 11 PWUDs in 2018. Results are organized into 4 categories: willingness to call 911 (benefits and risks of calling), thoughts about a technique to identify opioid overdoses in 911 data (benefits and concerns), thoughts about the proposed post-overdose intervention (benefits and concerns), and recommendations for developing an ideal post-overdose intervention. For most participants, calling 911 was synonymous with "calling the police" and law enforcement-related fears were pervasive, limiting willingness to engage with the 911 system. The technique to identify opioid overdoses and the proposed post-overdose intervention were identified as potentially lifesaving, but the benefits were balanced by concerns related to law enforcement involvement, intervention timing, and risks to privacy/reputation. Nearly universally, participants wished for a way to summon emergency medical assistance without triggering a law enforcement response.ConclusionsThe fact that the 911 system in the US inextricably links emergency medical assistance with law enforcement response inherently problematizes calling 911 for PWUDs, and has implications for surveillance and intervention. It is imperative to center the perspectives of PWUDs when designing and implementing interventions that rely on the 911 system for activation

Regime complexity and global governance: The case of trafficking in persons

What are the consequences of increasing regime complexity and institutional proliferation on global governance? Does the growing density and overlaps among institutions facilitate or hinder the ability of states to manage transnational threats through cooperation? This article argues that the impact of regime complexity on the effectiveness of cooperation depends not only on the nature of spillovers among overlapping regimes, but also on the cross-institutional strategies of states and non-state actors. I distinguish between two types of strategies through which actors can take advantage of institutional overlaps: (1) “opportunistic” or non-cooperative attempts by states to bypass legal commitments, which tend to undermine the goals of cooperation; and (2) “cooperative” strategies by intergovernmental organizations, civil society organizations, and other principled actors. These actors also engage in regime shifting, forum linking, and other cross-forum strategies to promote their institutional mandates and normative agendas. To probe the plausibility of these theoretical claims, I focus on the case of the anti-trafficking in persons regime. The overlaps between anti-trafficking laws and the migration, labor, and human rights regimes illustrate the different ways in which intergovernmental organizations and their allies in society can exploit institutional overlaps to promote greater cooperation and expand the regime complex