174 research outputs found
âPRi special edition: The intersections between public relations and neoliberalismâ â The road to nowhere: Re-examining activistsâ role in civil societies
The French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu (1977) argued that the presence of critical counter-voices and powers is a fundamental element of any genuine democracy. However, in Australia these counter-voices are increasingly marginalized and threatened by controversial laws that would limit the legal standing of conservation groups and the use of overseas donations for advocacy purposes based on the argument that âsystematic, well-fundedâ environmental campaigns are threatening the nationâs economic prosperity.
Drawing on social movement theory and Bourdieuâs theory of practice, this case study details the final months of the Save Beeliar Wetlands campaign in the lead up to the 2017 West Australian state election. The author challenges three common assumptions in the extant PR activism literature: The existence of activists in opposition to organizations and governments, the presence of a âzone of compromiseâ between activists and the organizations or governments whose actions they are opposing and the conceptualization of activists as homogenous entity.
Evolving into a colorful collective of over 35 local groups, five local councils and thousands of individuals, Beeliar Wetland Defenders successfully created an alternative narrative to the State and Federal Governmentsâ neoliberal agenda. Activists thereby contributed significantly to a change in leadership and the termination of a $1.9billion infrastructure project. This paper argues that activist groupsâ interventions in public debate perform a valuable societal voice as critical counter-voices in challenging established hierarchies and power relationships. However, in mounting and framing their arguments within the neoliberal framework, activist groups may also inadvertently reinforce this worldview
Inselect: Automating the Digitization of Natural History Collections
Copyright: © 2015 Hudson et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. The attached file is the published version of the article
Strategic communication and the entrepreneurial role of the corporate communication officer
Considering the recent evolution of the communication/PR profession in large
organizations both private and public, many scholars agree that a process of
institutionalization is occurring. In other words, communicationâs importance
has been growing, reaching in recent years a strategic position as a lever for
companiesâ governance.
A first objective of this chapter is to describe, looking at management and
communication/PR literature, how and to what extent communication has
become strategic. The main hypothesis is that communication has become
strategic within companiesâ governance in order to help each organization
to develop consistently â mainly in terms of values â within its environment.
A second objective is to describe, looking at the entrepreneurial organization
theory and communication/PR literature, another side of the strategic
evolution of communication, which is to help each organization to develop â
mainly in terms of services, products and reputation â as a different, or preferably
unique, entity as compared to the other organizations.
The evolution of the strategic contribution of communication/PR within
organizationsâ decision-making has a strong impact on the role that corporate
communication officers (CCOs) play in organizations both on the isomorphic
and on the entrepreneurialâinnovative sides of the communicational activity
they carry out to support the evolution of their organizations
Organizing resistance movements: contribution of the political discourse theory
The main purpose of this paper is to explore the possibility of articulating Political Discourse Theory (PDT) together with Organizational Studies (OS), while using the opportunity to introduce PDT to those OS scholars who have not yet come across it. The bulk of this paper introduces the main concepts of PDT, discussing how they have been applied to concrete, empirical studies of resistance movements. In recent years, PDT has been increasingly appropriated by OS scholars to problematize and analyze resistances and other forms of social antagonisms within organizational settings, taking the relational and contingent aspects of struggles into consideration. While the paper supports the idea of a joint articulation of PDT and OS, it raises a number of critical questions of how PDT concepts have been empirically used to explain the organization of resistance movements. The paper sets out a research agenda for how both PDT and OS can together contribute to our understanding of new, emerging organizational forms of resistance movements.</jats:p
Imagining the Lives of Others: Empathy in Public Relations
This paper asks how we might theorise empathy in public relations (PR) in the light of a widespread âturnâ towards emotion in the academy, as well as in popular discourse. Two distinct notions of empathy are explored: âtrueâempathy as discussed in intercultural communication, is driven by a human concern for the other in order to understand experiences, feelings and situations that may be different from our own; whereas âinstrumentalâ empathy, reflecting a self orientation, is said to characterise much neoliberal market discourse in which corporations are urged to understand their customers better. Thus, while empathy may seem highly desirable as a means to enter into dialogue with an organisationâs publics, particularly during times of social upheaval and crisis, it is important to pay attention to empathy in public relations discourses including whose goals are served by empathetic engagement; and the type(s) of empathy called upon within a PR context. A literature review identified a socio-cultural definition of empathy as âimaginary effortâ. A review of the public relations literature, however, found that while empathy is considered an important principle and personal attribute, notions of empathy, with a few exceptions, are under-explored. Nonfunctionalist, socio-cultural research which examines the meanings that practitioners associate with empathy is distinctly lacking; therefore in order to gain further insight into empathy, two sources of data were explored. The analysis of a popular online practitioner blog showed that other-centred empathic skill is discursively framed as instrumental in achieving clientsâ business objectives. The analysis of three empathy statements drawn from 12 in-depth interviews with practitioners revealed complex empathic discourse in practitioner-client relationships. While the findings are limited to illustrative analyses only, this paper challenges researchers to develop conceptualisations and perspectives of empathy as imaginary effort in public relations
Incidence, severity, aetiology and type of neck injury in men's amateur rugby union: a prospective cohort study
<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>There is a paucity of epidemiological data on neck injury in amateur rugby union populations. The objective of this study was to determine the incidence, severity, aetiology and type of neck injury in Australian men's amateur rugby union.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Data was collected from a cohort of 262 participants from two Australian amateur men's rugby union clubs via a prospective cohort study design. A modified version of the Rugby Union Injury Report Form for Games and Training was used by the clubs physiotherapist or chiropractor in data collection.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The participants sustained 90 (eight recurrent) neck injuries. Exposure time was calculated at 31143.8 hours of play (12863.8 hours of match time and 18280 hours of training). Incidence of neck injury was 2.9 injuries/1000 player-hours (95%CI: 2.3, 3.6). As a consequence 69.3% neck injuries were minor, 17% mild, 6.8% moderate and 6.8% severe. Neck compression was the most frequent aetiology and was weakly associated with severity. Cervical facet injury was the most frequent neck injury type.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>This is the first prospective cohort study in an amateur men's rugby union population since the inception of professionalism that presents injury rate, severity, aetiology and injury type data for neck injury. Current epidemiological data should be sought when evaluating the risks associated with rugby union football.</p
Factor XIIIA-expressing inflammatory monocytes promote lung squamous cancer through fibrin cross-linking
Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer-related deaths worldwide, and lung squamous carcinomas (LUSC) represent about 30% of cases. Molecular aberrations in lung adenocarcinomas have allowed for effective targeted treatments, but corresponding therapeutic advances in LUSC have not materialized. However, immune checkpoint inhibitors in sub-populations of LUSC patients have led to exciting responses. Using computational analyses of The Cancer Genome Atlas, we identified a subset of LUSC tumors characterized by dense infiltration of inflammatory monocytes (IMs) and poor survival. With novel, immunocompetent metastasis models, we demonstrated that tumor cell derived CCL2-mediated recruitment of IMs is necessary and sufficient for LUSC metastasis. Pharmacologic inhibition of IM recruitment had substantial anti-metastatic effects. Notably, we show that IMs highly express Factor XIIIA, which promotes fibrin cross-linking to create a scaffold for LUSC cell invasion and metastases. Consistently, human LUSC samples containing extensive cross-linked fibrin in the microenvironment correlated with poor survival
Coordination in climbing: effect of skill, practice and constraints manipulation
BACKGROUND:
Climbing is a physical activity and sport involving many subdisciplines. Minimization of prolonged pauses, use of a relatively simple path through a route and smooth transitions between movements broadly define skilled coordination in climbing.
OBJECTIVES:
To provide an overview of the constraints on skilled coordination in climbing and to explore future directions in this emerging field.
METHODS:
A systematic literature review was conducted in 2014 and retrieved studies reporting perceptual and movement data during climbing tasks. To be eligible for the qualitative synthesis, studies were required to report perceptual or movement data during climbing tasks graded for difficulty.
RESULTS:
Qualitative synthesis of 42 studies was carried out, showing that skilled coordination in climbing is underpinned by superior perception of climbing opportunities; optimization of spatial-temporal features pertaining to body-to-wall coordination, the climb trajectory and hand-to-hold surface contact; and minimization of exploratory behaviour. Improvements in skilled coordination due to practice are related to task novelty and the difficulty of the climbing route relative to the individual's ability level.
CONCLUSION:
Perceptual and motor adaptations that improve skilled coordination are highly significant for improving the climbing ability level. Elite climbers exhibit advantages in detection and use of climbing opportunities when visually inspecting a route from the ground and when physically moving though a route. However, the need to provide clear guidelines on how to improve climbing skill arises from uncertainties regarding the impacts of different practice interventions on learning and transfer
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