Corporations need to avoid the ethical blindspots of volunteerism

PR managers play a key role in ensuring that staff stands to gain from volunteering, writes Donnalyn Pomppe

Researcher-Researched Difference: Adapting an Autoethnographic Approach for Addressing the Racial Matching Issue

This introspective essay was inspired by a desire to reflect on the use of qualitative research methods--where I am a Caucasian woman examining work experiences of women of color. I launched a journey backward to discover respondents' motivation for participating in my focus groups over the years, to closely examine their comfort level with a cross-ethnic dyad. The exercise enabled me to reflect on how I had negotiated power issues inherent in the research process. It contributes to the ongoing dialogue about autoethnography--where understanding of self in socio-cultural context is both the subject and object of the research enterprise. Overall, I interrogate epistemological and methodological practicalities of researching difference

Media literacy and COVID-19 communication: Work and home sphere differences

As a learning process wherein we ask questions to enhance knowledge, media literacy offers a powerful lens for examining how people practice communication across diverse applied contexts such as professional communicators shaping messages about COVID-19. Borrowing a page from Renee Hobbs’ (1998, 1999, 2010, 2011, 2021) media literacy education research, we sought to compare/contrast media content creators’ (journalism, advertising, public relations, marketing communication) information-seeking behaviors during the 2020-2022 COVID-19 pandemic for both their paid work and unpaid volunteer work, as well as for their own and family edification. Blending the media literacy lens with social construction theory (Berger & Luckmann, 1967), our survey findings collected at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2021 suggest that professional communicators (N=174) relied more frequently on media sources (64.9%) for COVID-19 information for work (paid and unpaid) and on people such as medical professionals (51.5%) as sources for COVID-19 information for their own personal and family use. Other findings detail professional communicators’ use of media literacy learning processes of accessing, analyzing, creating, reflecting, and taking action

Corporate social responsibility, sustainability and ethical public relations: strengthening synergies with human resources

This book offers practical advice for building organizations with social responsibility and sustainability organically built in - based on two-way communication between human resources (HR) and public relations (PR) departments working together as an organizational consciencetouchstone benefiting People, Planet, and Profit