The Federal Reserve as a Social Actor: On the Intersection of Communication and Investor Expectations

As the U.S. central bank, the Federal Reserve sets U.S. monetary policy (i.e., control of the money supply and management of the inflation rate, economic growth, and price stability) through the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) and serves as a lender of last resort. A major actor in the U.S. economic system, it is dispersed geographically across the United States and contains many branches. The chairman of the Federal Reserve communicates on behalf of the entire system before Congress, makes a statement after FOMC meetings, and gives speeches and lectures on economic status and related economic topics. Yet there is little research on what the Federal Reserve actually says. Popular and scholarly literature (e.g., Blinder, Ehrmann, Fratzscher, DeHaan, & Jansen, 2008) assumes or explicitly states that a major goal of the Federal Reserve is to manage economic uncertainty nationally and globally. Uncertainty management has been studied and developed within interpersonal, health, and organizational contexts. Although uncertainty management is associated with information seeking and predictive of interpersonal interactions, it has not been applied to organizations and institutions as speakers or actors (i.e., the Fed as speaker; for notable exceptions to this general claim of application, see Michael Kramer’s body of work, such as Kramer, 1999, 2004). Following the rhetorical tradition of framing organizations as social actors (Cheney, 1992; Coleman, 1974; Hearit, 2006; Heath, 1997; Millon, 2001), in this study, what the Federal Reserve says, and how it says it, has implications for the performance of the economy, much as organizational actors’ talk has implications. As a first step toward understanding how the Federal Reserve manages uncertainty, this study examines what the Federal Reserve says. Conceptualizing the external communication of the Federal Reserve as economic policy communication (EPC), the sentiment (positive, negative, or neutral) of EPC is measured using content analysis of Congressional testimony from the Federal Reserve chairman (specifically Chairmen Volcker, Greenspan, and Bernanke) to explore what the Federal Reserve says when speaking publicly about the performance of the United States economy during times of economic instability and uncertainty. To do so, a content coding scheme was developed with high intercoder reliability. This study examined 114 transcripts of Federal Reserve chairman testimony before Congress to examine a series of five research questions grouped around the following relationships: mentions of the economic future, economy, unemployment, the deficit, and inflation and the association with a) sentiment; b) economic indicators at the time of the Congressional testimony (GDP, the unemployment rate, and the Consumer Sentiment Index); and c) the chair’s level of actual certainty as measured by DICTION, software used to conduct computerized coding. Five logistic hierarchal linear models were tested to measure the association between these micro, sentence-level topics and these macro-level variables (sentiment, economic indicators, and the chairman’s actual certainty). Findings indicate that the chairman of the Federal Reserve does, at times, respond to the performance of the economy during times of high-pressure economic situations. For example, this dissertation identifies associations between the Consumer Sentiment Index (an indicator of household confidence in the future of the economy) and the content of what the Federal Reserve says during testimony before Congress. And while the association between sentence-level content changes and the sentiment and certainty levels are low, this dissertation argues the Federal Reserve chair does, in fact, engage in uncertainty management when speaking about the performance of the economy. While the Federal Reserve does not always seem to respond as strongly to the performance of the U.S. economy as the President might, other extraneous factors (trying to avoid a negative market response or increased economic volatility) may shape the Federal Reserve\u27s discursive response. Overall, this dissertation integrates prior scholarship in interpersonal, organizational, and presidential communication to indicate how the Federal Reserve as a social actor speaks about the economy. For example, when the chairman is more positive, he/she is more likely to speak about unemployment, inflation, or the economic future. When he/she is less certain, he/she is more likely to speak about the economic future, which may be an example of the Federal Reserve chairman tempering public responses to a volatile or uncertain economy. Variations in the three Chairmen indicate that during crises, chairmen respond in unique ways to the economy, but often speak about the economic future, inflation, and the economy. Finally, this project corroborates popular and media perceptions that the main role of the Federal Reserve is to reduce uncertainty, thus extending uncertainty reduction theory to the domain of economic communication and providing pragmatic implications about message content for the Federal Reserve and other governmental and policy-making entities

JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and the mortgage crisis of 2008

The practice of financial public relations is widespread in the field of public relations, but there is little research concerning the practice of financial public relations. In response to the call for additional research on financial public relations, this paper will examine the intersections of financial public relations, issue management, and organizational communication. Specifically, this project will explore how contemporary issue management requires companies to maintain their actional and institutional legitimacy. Following the Financial Crisis of 2008, major banks such as JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo attempted to rebuild stakeholder and shareholder trust in the American financial system. Financial public relations played a key role in rebuilding this trust. Through a rhetorical analysis of the use of strategic communication by JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo, a number of conclusions can be drawn about the practice of issue management and financial public relations. Specifically, this paper found that legitimacy is of importance in post-crisis corporate communication. How JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo responded to questions raised about their actional and institutional legitimacy impacted their press coverage and organizational discourse. This underscores the importance of careful communication in managing shareholder and stakeholder concerns and rebuilding public trust in their corporations

General Election News Coverage: What Engages Audiences Down the Ballot

As Election Day approaches, more people seek news and information about politics. To understand the habits of news audiences in the run-up to the election, we analyzed what was being covered in reporting about down-ballot, non-presidential races for U.S. Congress, governor, and local offices in the lead-up to the 2016 general election. The results shared in this white paper suggest a tough spot for news organizations. Issue coverage is often heralded for helping to inform the public, yet the results show that the more issues covered in a news article, the lower the page views and social referrals. Issue coverage also declined in volume as the election approached, right when many prospective voters tuned in. The results do provide some insight into when issue coverage worked, however. Articles discussing social issues and corruption – two highly salient issues during the campaign – saw increased traffic. This report, prepared as a collaboration between the Engaging News Project and the American Press Institute (API) and funded by the Democracy Fund, looks at local news coverage of the 2016 general election and what kinds of campaign coverage may have encouraged engagement with election news. We examined local news coverage by nine newspapers across six states. The Engaging News Project categorized 705 general election-related newspaper stories that referenced a non-presidential campaign from the websites of the nine news outlets, tracking mentions of issues, campaign strategy, and fact-checking, among other campaign coverage characteristics. Where applicable, we compare these findings to an analysis of 435 primary election-related stories from an earlier report. We correlated attributes of election news coverage with data from API’s Metrics for News (www.metricsfornews.com), an analytics tool that measures engagement in new ways and provides unique data-driven insights for publishers. The results offer an illustration of how people engage with various types of election news content

Presidential Communication in Tumultuous Times: Insights into Key Shifts, Normative Implications, and Research Opportunities

Scholars have long been interested in the communication of America’s chief executive, but the context in which that communication takes place has undergone dramatic changes over the past several decades. Given this, the present review aims to provide a foundation for new thinking about presidential communication in the contemporary environment. We attend to presidential communication in transition—to the uncertain paths that scholars have walked as they have sought to make sense of executive communication practices in a time of dramatic change. Building from this review, we explore the normative implications for American democracy of this evolving context. We conclude by suggesting new intradisciplinary avenues for future research on presidential communication

Raising Awareness of Campus Diversity and Inclusion: Transformationally Teaching Diversity through Narratives of Campus Experiences and Simulated Problem Solving

Courses: Organizational Communication, Intercultural Communication Objectives: This activity encourages students to learn collaboratively about diversity through the sharing of student experiences; deepen and complicate their understanding of organizational diversity; and enhance their ability to apply course material to increasingly complex organizational environments

STEM Faculty Response to Proposed Workspace Changes

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to use an affordance approach to understand how university faculty use and value their workspace and respond to proposed spatial changes. Design/methodology/approach - A mixed method survey was given to faculty in the college of engineering at a large public American university. Data were analyzed using an affordance lens. Findings - The analysis indicates that the majority of engineering faculty highly value private offices and appears resistant to non-traditional workspace arrangements. Research limitations/implications - The authors performed the analysis with a relatively small sample (n=46). Practical implications - University administrators need to communicate with faculty and take their opinions on spatial changes seriously. Changes to space may affect STEM faculty retention. Social implications - This paper could affect the quality of work life for university faculty. Originality/value - The paper provide needed research on how faculty use and value their workspace while discussing the implications of alternative workspaces within the academy. Theoretically, the authors contribute to ongoing research on relationship between material and social aspects of organizational spaces