Out of the laboratory: scientists discursive practices in their encounter with activists

This article analyses the discursive practices of scientistsengaged in controversial science in their narrated accounts of encounterswith activists. It explores what happens when scientific credibility andauthority are challenged in a public debate on the benefits and risks of suchscience. The aim is to understand how scientists discursively negotiate andmake sense of their encounters with activists, the range of subject positionsthey claim, and how power is implicated in identification with the public.The article shows how scientists counter emotional appeals, utilizing bothscientific and public identities respectively to legitimate the epistemic andmoral authority of science and to marginalize opposing activists. It is arguedthat a unitary view of scientific identity is inadequate. Rather, in times ofpublic challenge and controversy, scientists may utilize a multiplicity ofsubject positions to achieve identification with public interests. The discursiveconstruct, public interest, is interpreted as a contested discursive space and a discursive resource for influencing public opinion

On Foucault: a toolbox for public relations

Foucault\u27s work provides both critical theory and methods for understanding public relations as a discourse practice with power effects. Within this chapter we introduce the key theoretical concepts of Foucault\u27s work, focusing in particular on discourse, power/knowledge, and subjectivity. A number of tensions that emerge from a Foucauldian consideration of public relations are highlighted and discussed. We then reflect on potential applications of Foucault\u27s theories for our understanding of the role public relations in mapping discourse transformations and change, power effects within relationship management, and identity work. This chapter contends that Foucault\u27s work can offer new critical insights into how public relations works and why it works.I would like my books to be a kind of tool-box which others can rummage through to find a tool which they can use however they wish in their own area.... I write for users, not readers. (Foucault, 1974, pp.523-524

Anti-consumption and brand avoidance

This article focuses on a particular form of anti-consumption; brand avoidance. Specifically, it explores why people may avoid some brands, even when their financial circumstances allow them the option to purchase. The authors use qualitative data to develop a conceptual framework that helps clarify why consumers avoid certain brands. This study reveals three types of brand avoidance: experiential, identity and moral brand avoidance. Experiential brand avoidance occurs because of negative first hand consumption experiences that lead to unmet expectations. Identity avoidance develops when the brand image is symbolically incongruent with the individual\u27s identity. Moral avoidance arises when the consumer\u27s ideological beliefs clash with certain brand values or associations, particularly when the consumer is concerned about the negative impact of a brand on society. Finally, this study highlights potential strategies that managers could implement to deal with brand avoidance

Communication and coalition: rethinking neocapitalist definitions of knowledge management

Developments in the theory of Knowledge Management have occurred in lock step with our understanding of the importance of capital and in particular the intangible elements of social capital of which knowledge and its production and reception are normally associated. Further elaboration of the concept of social capital has led to the development of neocapital, which has gained currency within the field of Human Resources for example. However, an examination of the factors that constitute the received definition of neocapital suggests that the theory building used to construct it has been in reaction to developments in other disciplines, rather than any fundamental unified theory that underpins these factors. Building on Scandinavian and European research into information systems using perspectives gained from the Organisational Semiotics (OS), Language Action Perspective (LAP), and Action Language Organisations and Information Systems (ALOIS) communities, we demonstrate how the adoption of communication-centric theory can provide a more unified approach to understanding the factors that comprise neocapital especially as it pertains to knowledge management definitions in organisational settings. Rethinking neocapital from a communication-theory perspective enables us to examine the structural, functional and semantic characteristics of community and coalition. We utilise a socio-semantic, contextual and functional model of language that has been gainfully employed within the information systems discipline to research organisations and apply it to theorise community and coalitions and their associated knowledge resources and processes. We focus our discussion on defining and exemplifying one set of communication resources known as the reference system. The reference system comprises the language resources social agents use to introduce and subsequent refer to different kinds of participants in communication (people, places and things) relevant to given situational and cultural contents. By selecting relevant completed acts of communication and analysing them for reference resources we can identify and describe the people, places and things that distinguish social groups and coalitions from one or another. By demonstrating how knowledge about communication enables us to identify communities and coalitions over time, we also demonstrate how communication constitutes knowledge within communities and coalitions