Tiffany Derville Gallicano

Terms of engagement

We examine a social-media user perspective of engagement using interviews and focus groups.Engagement is an informative, personal, present and social experience.Millennials engage organizations via social media to facilitate social interactions.Engagement may be as much a spontaneous activity as a premeditated one. Despite the growth of research on social media engagement over the last five years, studies have failed to define exactly what engagement is. While many studies equate engagement with the broad array of social media activities, this study argues that engagement is conceptually distinct, and involves cognitive and emotional immersion that may not characterize all social media usage. This study addresses the need to clarify the concept of social media engagement in both communication research by exploring drivers of this immersive state of social media engagement from the perspective of those who are among the most active in social media: Millennials. The study also explores Millennial consideration of engagement with organizations online. In-depth interviews and focus groups suggest that engagement is driven by information consumption, interest immersion, sense of presence, and social interaction. Furthermore, findings point toward the need to consider the spontaneous nature of online sociability, the relationship between online engagement and the organization-public relationship, and the concept of engagement itself.

I Love What I Do, But… A Relationship Management Survey of Millennial Generation Public Relations Agency Employees

Millennials, those born in 1982 or later, represent the largest and most racially diverse generation, as well as the fastest-growing segment of the workforce. They have been characterized in the popular press as being entitled and lacking a strong work ethic. Millennial agency practitioners were surveyed to determine how they rate their relationships with their employers. We also explored the role of gender, ethnicity, and sexual orientation. We asked respondents to identify the stresses they experience in those relationships and to suggest ways in which their employers could improve relations. We find that respondents love what they do, but…

Personal relationship strategies and outcomes in a membership organization

Purpose – This study seeks to investigate strategies for building personal relationships with an organizations members, and to examine the outcomes of personal relationships in an advocacy organization.Design/methodology/approach – The case study includes interviews with 39 staff people at national, state, and affiliate levels of the organization; 58 members; and five former members, for a total of 102 participants. Document analysis and participant observation were supplemental methods.Findings – The following strategies for cultivating personal relationships were identified: direct engagement, task sharing, constitutive rhetoric, peer linking, hat‐in‐your‐hand, investment in local relationships, and targeting of aware affiliates for diversity efforts. To contribute to the discussion about the value of personal relationships in organizations, the study also investigated the outcomes of personal relationships. The outcomes found in the study include affective commitment, political leverage, social capita...

Development and test of a multidimensional scale of blog engagement

ABSTRACT One of the most important areas of social media measurement is engagement; however, industry measures that equate engagement with social media interactions are often inadequate. This study contributes to the ongoing discussion about how to conceptualize engagement and introduces a valid, reliable scale for measuring blog engagement that is grounded in qualitative research. The qualitative research resulted in four dimensions; however, one of the dimensions did not make it through the data analysis process. The resulting blog engagement scale consists of presence, virality, and utility dimensions.

Internal Conflict Management and Decision Making: A Qualitative Study of a Multitiered Grassroots Advocacy Organization

This study explores decision making and strategies for managing conflict with and among titled volunteers of affiliates in a nonprofit organization. This investigation describes priming, conflict climbing, problem parking, and insulation and addresses experiences with mediation. Through a systems theory approach, it describes the importance of detoxification and proposes capacity building as a revised goal inside of systems theory. This study also provides an example of how one organizations history and culture shapes the power politics at play and subsequent conflict management dynamics.

Relationship stresses: new ground for relationship management research

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to advance knowledge about organization‐public relationships by establishing a theoretical category for understanding them and by contributing to a foundation of knowledge in that category. Relationship stresses are presented as the factors that constrain organization‐public relationships. This study identifies stresses on the relationship between a grassroots advocacy organization and its former members, as well as stresses between the organization and members who have decreased their participation in it.Design/methodology/approach – In‐person interviews were conducted with 24 people, phone interviews were conducted with 44 people, and e‐mail interviews were conducted with 13 people. Interviewees included staff members, former volunteers, and volunteers who had decreased their participation in the organization.Findings – Several relationship stresses were identified: the silver curtain, the emotion tax, relationship speeding, invisible isms, weak leadership, disagre...

Assessment of a Diversity Assignment in a PR Principles Course

Abstract This study assesses an assignment for incorporating diversity into the principles of public relations course. The assignment is tailored to the challenges of using an active learning approach in a large lecture class. For the assignment, students write a goal, objectives, strategies, an identification of tactics, and evaluation plans for either low-income African-American women or low-income Hispanic women living in an urban food desert. Based on focus group data, this assignment appears to help students focus on lectures and retain the material a year after the assignment. With rare exception, the participants who completed the assignment had a better level of cultural understanding than participants who did not have the assignment, as measured by performances on a similar case study one year after the assignment.