The Ethical Dimension of Public Relations in Europe: Digital Channels, Moral Challenges, Resources, and Training

Digital communication tools and practices improve the spread and impact of organisational messages. Quite often, however, they also pose moral problems. This article examines how often public relations practitioners encounter moral issues in their day-to-day work, how they assess digital communication tools and practices in terms of ethics, and the resources on which they rely to tackle moral challenges. Four research questions were addressed in an online survey among 2,324 practitioners who work in PR departments of organisations or in PR agencies across Europe. Results show that PR practitioners face more moral challenges in their daily work than they have faced in the past. Regarding digital communication tools and practices, they report moral concerns especially related to using bots, exploiting personal data for big-data analyses, paying social media influencers, and using sponsored content. Personal values and beliefs are the most important resource for dealing with moral issues—whether because only a minority of practitioners has participated in any formal ethics training within the past three years, or because existing ethical guidelines are outdated. Results call for the development of ethical guidelines that can provide explicit advice in the area of digital communication. Furthermore, structured training programs and ethics courses in graduate programs are needed to enhance practitioners’ ethical knowledge

Engendering Trust in Internet Business using Elements of Corporate Branding

In this article we discuss the role of trust as a crucial factor for success in meeting the challenges faced by companies selling goods to consumers on the internet. Corporate branding is proposed as the key vehicle by which the necessary trust-signals for reducing risk as perceived by consumers may be transmitted, based upon a theoretical definition of trust, the trust-signals important to engender trust, and the main elements of corporate brand building

Corporate Media - An Approach for Corporate Community Management

With the rapid development of Information and Communication Technology companies face several problems today. The increasing speed of product development leads to the problem that products and services need to be communicated and explained to potential customers. Shareholders and investors should gain a certain insight into the company’s activities - also the public domain and journalists demand to be better informed. At the same time the information overload of corporate community members, like journalists, analysts, customers, shareholders, employees, etc., lead to the problem that the scarce source today is attention. How should companies react to those challenges? A solution could be the design of Corporate Media, which integrate all corporate (sub-) communities to give them tailor made services. Based on the concepts of agent, media, and community, we develop an integrated platform for the exchange of tangible (e.g., products) and intangible (e.g., knowledge) objects

Examining the Role of Transparent Organizational Communication for Employees’ Job Engagement and Disengagement During the COVID-19 Pandemic in Austria

This study provides an understanding of how employees’ perception of organizational transparency during the long-lasting situation of the COVID-19 pandemic engendered their job engagement as well as job disengagement. Data were collected by means of an online survey among 410 employees in Austria during March 2021. Results show that employees’ perception of their organization’s approach to transparency directly influenced their job engagement and disengagement. Importantly, the relationship between transparency and job engagement was also mediated through organizational trust, and job-specific state anxiety mediated the relationship between transparency and job disengagement. The results imply the importance of transparency during times of great uncertainty and emphasize the necessity to closely consider employees’ emotional states and worries during a crisis

Wirtschaftsberichterstattung im Rundfunk der Schweiz: eine inhaltsanalytische Untersuchung zu Unterschieden zwischen den Sprachregionen

The study analyzes to which extent economic broadcasting coverage differs between the three main language regions – the German-, French- and Italianspeaking parts of Switzerland. According to the obligations of Public Service, one main function which should be fulfilled by public broadcasting is the integration of the different language regions. Therefore, we conducted a content analysis of economic news in main public and private TV and radio news broad-casts in the three language regions. We evaluated the quantity of economic news, but also the relevance of the covered events and comprehensibility of the economic news. Findings indicate that in all three language regions, about 20 percent of the news broadcasts are economic news. Topics concerning the meso level, companies and industries, are by far most often covered in all three languages. This provides the possibility of interpersonal conversation about these subjects and thus helps integration. Nevertheless, events which happen on a regional level in the other language regions are covered very infrequently

Enough is enough! When identification no longer prevents negative corporate associations

Negative publicity has the potential to create negative corporate associations. However, consumers' identification with a company might moderate the extent of this effect. This article examines the impact of consumer-company identification on reactions to variable levels of negative publicity about a company. Exposing consumers who had strong identification with a company to moderately negative publicity was found to result in less negative corporate associations than for consumers who had relatively weak identification. In contrast, consumers' levels of identification did not affect reactions to extremely negative information, resulting in equally negative corporate associations for those with strong versus weak consumer-company identification. Thus, strong identification mitigates the effects of moderately negative publicity but does not attenuate the effects of extremely negative publicity. Consumers' perceptions of and thoughts regarding negative information about a company partially mediated the effect of identification on attitudes and behavioral intention

Effects of news coverage on a victim's character during a crisis (SUF edition)

Full edition for scientific use. The research addresses the question how reporting of irrelevant information on a crisis victim’s bad character impacts on empathy towards the victim, the victim’s reputation as well as the reputation of the news medium that published the information. This was analyzed by means of a one-factorial experiment with manipulating the reporting on the crisis victim’s character plus a control condition. Respondents (registered members of an online panel) were 245 consumers from the United Kingdom