Damion Waymer

Emergent Agents: The Forgotten Publics in Crisis Communication and Issues Management Research

Crisis communication research rarely highlights the voices of marginalized publics or their advocates whose interests are affected by crisis situations. We take a different approach by using a response to a natural disaster to expand our theorizing about crisis situations beyond those that hurt the bottom line. Using official statements from Senators Landrieu and Obama about events surrounding Hurricane Katrina as texts for analysis, we demonstrate how they used transcendence, rhetorically, and appropriated the Bush administrations key term—security—to garner more support for their positions, Katrina sufferers, and relief efforts. Implications of this strategy serve to broaden crisis communication theorizing, and to provide insights into ways to strengthen the quality of crisis emergency response planning and response protocols.

Organizational Rhetoric: A Subject of Interest(s)

At the heart of this special issue on external organizational rhetoric is the pursuit of unearthing the ways that complex organizations, performing as modern rhetors engaged in discourse, can work to make society a good place to live. One way that this can be achieved is by problematizing organizational rhetoric. To do so requires taking a critical stance that identifies the hidden ideographs and assumptions embedded within them. External organizational rhetoric scholars, aiming to foster a more fully functioning society, need to expose, smooth, and neutralize these assumptions and tacit constraints if there is to be continued progress in the study and application of the ways external organizational rhetoric, including public relations, might further contribute to society at large.

Walking in Fear An Autoethnographic Account of Media Framing of Inner-City Crime

For decades, scholars have studied the powerful effects of media. More specifically, researchers have found that media can be considered agents of socialization—shaping and influencing peoples identities and identity formations. Because media is often our only “gateway” to witness what occurs outside of our view, it becomes the lens in which we use to view our world—especially when it comes to the framing of crime in the inner city. In this essay, I use the events surrounding Cincinnati, Ohio, and its race riots of 2001 as the case for analysis. Specifically, I use an autoethnographic account to detail the impact that news coverage on crime in Cincinnati can have on minority individuals who do not reside in the inner city. Finally, this essay further establishes the role—intentional or unintentional—that reporters and journalists play in community and public relations issues.

Different Transitions into Working Motherhood: Discourses of Asian, Hispanic, and African American Women

Little is known about how diverse women perceive, talk about, and enact their transitions into working motherhood in ways that reflect (and are shaped by) their social identities. While we do not mean to imply that these 16 Asian, Hispanic, and African American women are representative of the variety of women who self-categorize themselves in these particular identity groups, we do want to display the ways in which their discourses about their transitions are suggestive of different constructions within and across their ethnic categories. As such, their discourse conveys their struggles over and the interplay among mainstream United States and diverse cultural values in work and family considerations as well as their family structures of support.

The Journey into an Unfamiliar and Uncomfortable Territory: Exploring the Role and Approaches of Race in PR Education

Race has been, and continues to be, one of those topics that is timely, current, and highly relevant in contemporary society; however, discussion and problematizing of race in public relations (PR) scholarship has been mostly absent (Edwards, 2010; Pompper, 2005). This study continues to address this void by exploring how some faculty perceive the role of race in PR, as well as how they approach race in their curriculum. This article, using a mixed-method design of the e-mail interview method (Hunt & McHale, 2007) and an autoethnographic analysis (Ellis & Bochner, 2000) of the first authors PR experiences, demonstrates the challenges that some faculty members face, as well as the opportunities that they have undertaken to integrate race into the PR curriculum in meaningful ways.

Each one, reach one: An autobiographic account of a Black PR professor’s mentor–mentee relationships with Black graduate students

In this study by explicitly positioning race and mentoring at the center of this work, via autobiography, I uncover different discourses and practices in mentor–mentee relationships in public relations (PR) than have been highlighted by other scholars and then extend findings to confront the issues that Black PR faculty and Black PR graduate students encounter in the way that they view and enact mentor–mentee relationships. This study introduces autobiographic analysis to public relations research and inquiry and makes the case for its potential scholarly contributions to the discipline.

Unlocking corporate social responsibility: Minimalism, maximization, and neo-institutionalist resource dependency keys

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore the proposition that organizational policies and actions gain more legitimacy when they proactively improve (rather than reactively defend) their corporate social responsibility (CSR) standing by meeting challenges discursively mounted by competitors, watchdog activists, and governmental officials. Design/methodology/approach The paper reviews literature, including social capital, to consider CSR as both a reactionary and proactionary construct that guides how organizations defend and publicize their corporate social performance (CSP). The paper examines four premises relevant to the discursive (contentious and collaborative) approach to formulating and implementing CSR norms. The case of fracking (hydraulic fracturing) in the USA provides text for exploring these premises, especially the advantages of a proactionary strategy. Findings This paper concludes that CSR expectations of industry performance rest on threshold legitimacy standards that not only withstand but also are improved by discursive challenge. Research limitations/implications The case study offers limited support for the findings; more cases need to be examined to determine whether the findings are robust. Practical implications This paper, based on theory and research, proposes a strategic management and communication approach to social responsibility based on proaction. Social implications CSR communication is most constructive to a fully functioning social that generates social capital by proactive engagement rather than reactive challenges of stakeholder CSR expectations. Originality/value Discussion of CSR and CSP as employing profit for the good of society, based on discussions of legitimacy and social capital, strengthens CSR as strategic management and communication options. Such research clarifies how evaluative expectations of CSR are a legitimacy threshold as well as basis for reputational enhancement.

Interrogating corporate voice: Implications for dialogue, transparency, tragedy, lobbying, and leadership in public relations scholarship and practice:

From a critical rhetorical perspective, several public relations scholars (see Boyd and Waymer, 2011; Heath, 2011; Ihlen, 2011) theorize and view public relations as a form of organizational rhetoric – whereby no matter who is speaking on behalf of the organization, it is the organization speaking not the individual. Of course, logic would tell us that the corporate voice cannot represent adequately multiple, competing interests, simultaneously, and yet that is precisely what many stakeholders and publics expect organizations, including government and corporate actors, to do (see Waymer, 2009). In one form or another, several of the articles in this issue highlight this dialectic between corporate/ organizational self-interest and stakeholder/public interest. In so doing, as a collective, the authors contributing to this issue challenge readers to reconsider how we talk about, theorize, and nuance key terms, practices, and frameworks, such as dialogue, transparency, tragedy (vs crisis response), and lobbying and media framing of lobbying efforts. In the opening article, ‘Panacea, placebo or prudence: Perspectives and constraints for corporate dialogue’, written by Øyvind Ihlen and Abbey Levenshus, the authors highlight the limitations of public relations scholars using dialogue as normative ideal and best practices for technical exchange. The authors use a discussion of the macroeconomic rationality of businesses coupled with a sociological, Bourdieusian perspective on the environments in which businesses operate to conclude that scholars have not paid enough attention to systemic, macro-level limits that constrain practitioners’ ability and willingness to engage in dialogue. Thus, a theoretical blind spot exists and public