Reconceptualising public relations in Australia: A historical and social re-analysis

An analysis of the history of public relations in Australia through a case study of the creation and promotion of Australia Day which shows PR deeply involved in the historical, social, and cultural fabric of society

An 'outside-in' PR history: Identifying the role of PR in history, culture and sociology

Historical, social and cultural understanding of public relations in Australia is limited because most histories of PR examine practices specifically labelled `public relations and almost all study PR from `inside out that is, from the subjective perspective of PR practitioners. This article reports an alternative approach to PR history which applies historical analysis of major events, icons, and institutions in society to identify the methods of their construction politically, culturally and discursively. This article specifically reports historical and critical analysis of the creation and celebration of Australias national day, Australia Day from soon after the British flag was hoisted in Sydney on 26 January 1788 to the sophisticated pageantry of the nations bicentenary in 1988 and its entry to the new millennium in 2000. This research challenges a `blind spot in social science and humanities disciplines in relation to public relations by showing that the practices of PR are deeply embedded in the social and cultural construction of societies. This study confirms Taylor and Kents claim that all nation building campaigns include large communication components that are essentially public relations campaign

The construction of Australia Day: a study of public relations as 'new cultural intermediaries'

Australia Day is a foremost expression of Australian culture and identity, but historical and critical analysis shows that, far from being an organic or spontaneous expression and celebration of identity and culture, Australia's national day has been ma

Public Relations

A compendium of 500 articles on the history and contemporary practice of media corporations, individuals, industries, audiences, policy, and regulation in relation to Australian media from publication of the first Australian newspaper in 1803 to contemporary media developments

Multilingual gendered identities: female undergraduate students in London talk about heritage languages

In this paper I explore how a group of female university students, mostly British Asian and in their late teens and early twenties, perform femininities in talk about heritage languages. I argue that analysis of this talk reveals ways in which the participants enact ‘culturally intelligible’ gendered subject positions. This frequently involves negotiating the norms of ‘heteronormativity’, constituting femininity in terms of marriage, motherhood and maintenance of heritage culture and language, and ‘girl power’, constituting femininity in terms of youth, sassiness, glamour and individualism. For these young women, I ask whether higher education can become a site in which they have the opportunities to explore these identifications and examine other ways of imagining the self and what their stories suggest about ‘doing being’ a young British Asian woman in London

Second chances: Investigating athletes’ experiences of talent transfer

Talent transfer initiatives seek to transfer talented, mature individuals from one sport to another. Unfortunately talent transfer initiatives seem to lack an evidence-based direction and a rigorous exploration of the mechanisms underpinning the approach. The purpose of this exploratory study was to identify the factors which successfully transferring athletes cite as facilitative of talent transfer. In contrast to the anthropometric and performance variables that underpin current talent transfer initiatives, participants identified a range of psychobehavioral and environmental factors as key to successful transfer. We argue that further research into the mechanisms of talent transfer is needed in order to provide a strong evidence base for the methodologies employed in these initiatives

Bifurcations and chaotic dynamics in a tumour-immune-virus system

Despite mounting evidence that oncolytic viruses can be effective in treating cancer, understanding the details of the interactions between tumour cells, oncolytic viruses and immune cells that could lead to tumour control or tumour escape is still an open problem. Mathematical modelling of cancer oncolytic therapies has been used to investigate the biological mechanisms behind the observed temporal patterns of tumour growth. However, many models exhibit very complex dynamics, which renders them difficult to investigate. In this case, bifurcation diagrams could enable the visualisation of model dynamics by identifying (in the parameter space) the particular transition points between different behaviours. Here, we describe and investigate two simple mathematical models for oncolytic virus cancer therapy, with constant and immunity-dependent carrying capacity. While both models can exhibit complex dynamics, namely fixed points, periodic orbits and chaotic behaviours, only the model with immunity-dependent carrying capacity can exhibit them for biologically realistic situations, i.e., before the tumour grows too large and the experiment is terminated. Moreover, with the help of the bifurcation diagrams we uncover two unexpected behaviours in virus-tumour dynamics: (i) for short virus half-life, the tumour size seems to be too small to be detected, while for long virus half-life the tumour grows to larger sizes that can be detected; (ii) some model parameters have opposite effects on the transient and asymptotic dynamics of the tumour.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Understanding Changes in Modeled Land Surface Characteristics Prior to Lightning-Initiated Holdover Fire Breakout

Lightning initiated wildfires are only 16% of the total number of wildfires within the United States, but account for 56% of the acreage burned. One of the challenges with lightning-initiated wildfires is their ability to "holdover" which means smolder for up to 2+ weeks before breaking out into a full fledged fire. This work helps characterize the percentage of holdover events due to lightning, and helps quantify changes in the land surface characteristics to help understand trends in soil moisture and vegetation stress that potentially contribute to the fire breaking out into a full wildfire

Defining the gap between research and practice in public relations programme evaluation - towards a new research agenda

The current situation in public relations programme evaluation is neatly summarized by McCoy who commented that 'probably the most common buzzwords in public relations in the last ten years have been evaluation and accountability' (McCoy 2005, 3). This paper examines the academic and practitioner-based literature and research on programme evaluation and it detects different priorities and approaches that may partly explain why the debate on acceptable and agreed evaluation methods continues. It analyses those differences and proposes a research agenda to bridge the gap and move the debate forward

Media Representations of Breech Birth: A Prospective Analysis of Web-Based News Reports

© 2017 by the American College of Nurse-Midwives Introduction: Recent research has demonstrated that the media presentation of childbirth is highly medicalized, often portraying birth as risky and dramatic. Media representation of breech presentation and birth is unexplored in this context. This study aimed to explore the content and tone of news media reports relating to breech presentation and breech birth. Methods: Google alerts were created using the terms breech and breech birth in online English-language news sites over a 3-year period from January 1, 2013, to December 31, 2015. Alerts were received daily and filed for analysis, and data were analyzed to generate themes. Results: A total of 138 web-based news reports were gathered from 9 countries. Five themes that arose from the data included the problem of breech presentation, the high drama of vaginal breech birth, the safe option of cesarean birth versus dangers of vaginal breech birth, the defiant mother versus the saintly mother, and vaginal breech birth and medical misadventure. Discussion: Media reports in this study predominantly demonstrated negative views toward breech presentation and vaginal breech birth. Cesarean birth was portrayed as the safe option for breech birth, while vaginal breech birth was associated with poor outcomes. Media presentations may impact decision making about mode of birth for pregnant women with a breech fetus. Health care providers can play an important role in balancing the media depiction of planned vaginal breech birth by providing nonjudgmental, evidence-based information to such women to facilitate informed decision making for birth