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This article examines the relationship between corporate social responsibility (CSR) communication and the commitment to CSR in practice, specifically on the topic of employee diversity. A large-scale textual analysis is used to investigate CSR communication and the factors that differentiate news organizations. By integrating the scholarship on CSR communication, journalism, and management, the article furthers the understanding of ways news organizations publicly signal the implementation of diversity practices. In addition, the article proves useful as news organizations seek ways to institutionalize their CSR communications and evaluate their own commitments to diversity initiatives as an organizational priority. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The advent and popularity of digital and social media have forever transformed the news media industry, specifically impacting the overall production and distribution of hard-copy newspapers. Much of the scholarship on the transformation of the news media industry tends to focus on the phenomenon from the perspective of the journalist and how the process of journalism itself is changing. Often, however, this work overlooks how the process and labourers of newswork are more wholly affected. Thus, this paper argues for a reorientation of the categories of workers involved in the news media industry to account for those involved in media operations – those that play an active role in maintaining the infrastructure that physically creates and disseminates newspapers on a text by text basis. In order to achieve this goal, the paper seeks to uncover the newswork that occurs in the concealed world of media operations and then illustrates how changes to the industry are impacting this area of focus. We conclude by offering several potential avenues of future research that would benefit from utilising a media operations perspective. In doing so, the paper furthers a more robust comprehension of the labour needed to perform newswork as the industry continues to undergo digital transformation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Communication education relies heavily on experiential learning, but such an approach rarely provides opportunities for students to participate in inter-disciplinary collaborations and build inter-organizational relationships. The current paper describes a simulation, called 'The Trifecta,' in which students in the disciplines of journalism, public relations and video production worked together to produce media content over a six-week period in a fictional municipality. Debriefing research following the simulation showed that students gained not only technical knowledge, but also began to see how to build and maintain effective relationships across disciplines as well as point out ineffective relationships. To this end, 'The Trifecta' stands as an example of how communication education must push toward a third paradigm which crosses into innovative problem solving from students and mentoring from instructors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

April 8, 2019, marked the 25th anniversary of Kurt Cobain's death. Since his suicide, Cobain's image has been immortalized in a variety of ways: there are documentaries and popular press books dedicated to his life and death, there is a park in Aberdeen, Washington, named after him, his personal paintings are part of a traveling art show and his handwriting is available as a downloadable font. Moreover, dozens of retailers sell merchandise featuring him and his band, Nirvana. Although a large amount of academic literature has been written on Kurt Cobain and the music he created, there is still a gap: little to no work investigates his rise to celebrity status. To fill in the gap in academic knowledge, the current paper considers the legacy of Kurt Cobain at the silver anniversary of his death. It does so by utilizing a constitutive view of communication to explain how the narratives surrounding Kurt Cobain create both a rise in his fandom as well as the commodification of his reputation as an antihero. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Leaders spend countless hours creating written instruments, such as letters, e-mails, and reports. However, as important as writing is to leadership communication, there is a paucity of research in the area, particularly in relation to gender differences. The purpose of this study is to investigate if differences exist between the prose of male and female leaders. Data were collected via a survey in which respondents were asked to assign gender to the introductory sections of the CEO's annual letter to shareholders, noting the rationale for such selections. The results show that the writing style of both female and male CEOs is gender ambiguous. Business leaders have adopted elements of "traditional" gendered attributes to create an institutionalized form of gender indistinct writing. Yet, given that gender is both performative and culturally constructed, this study calls for future research on how readers affirm the gender of leaders, not only through what is presented, but by placing written discourse into a larger matrix of thought and experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Director Kevin Smith understands guys, particularly the men of Generation X and of the Northeast corridor. In Smith's "View Askewniverse," his canon of films and assorted projects, much attention is given to time and place. Although his first feature, Clerks (1994), remains a critical and pop cultural marker of success, our work looks to review the relationship between gender, time, and physical space that takes place in Chasing Amy. We do this by considering the numerous male narratives that take shape, underscoring traditional notions of masculinity and/or challenging these very perceptions predicated on the settings in which events takes place. For Smith, the age-old adage rings true: location, location, location. Accordingly, masculinity functions in his films not in a sweeping essentialized sense, but rather as an identity marker forged in a distinct place. Smith's approach to navigating his film or helping the viewer to do so is nothing if not overt. Shot in four locales, comic conventions, suburban NJ, urban NYC, and at a nondescript diner along the road of one of the many tributaries that spill in and out of Gotham, gender is brought under scrutiny. Smith notes each location, whether through drastic shifts in scenery, collocating main street USA with Broadway, or by simply opening the scene with text--a stark indicator of the here and now. In these localized vignettes, stories are told--particular narratives uttered--each with a distinct tone, highlighting the plurality of masculinity predicated on distinct moments rather than some overarching gendered script. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose – Project communication is overwhelmingly viewed as the proper and timely delivery of pertinent project information. The view of communication in this way misses the constitutive nature of communication. Communication is more than message exchange but a way that project managers generate the grounds for a project. The purpose of this paper is to explore how the communicative practices of project managers creates a dialogue with stakeholders that ultimately impacts the content, direction and outcome of a project. Design/methodology/approach – Semi-structured interviews were performed with project managers from the Project Management Office of a large international bank. The project managers were responsible for their own projects of varying size with scopes that included everything from marketing initiatives to heavily oriented technology projects. Findings – Overall, the project managers interviewed for the current project do not subscribe to the belief that communication is part of a constitutive dialogue. Instead, when discussing their overall views of communication, 82 percent of the interviewees took a transmission approach to the action. To that end, they believe that the goal of communication is to send clear, unambiguous and complete information. Originality/value – Unlike other studies about communication within the field of project management, the current study looks to uncover how communication is part of a constitutive dialogue between a project manager and project stakeholders. The researchers did not look just to understand the micro-level exchanges between project managers and stakeholders but how those exchanges enabled a sustained dialogue that shapes the scope and trajectory of a project. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Communication is a response that can mitigate and even restore the damage resulting from organizational crisis. Yet what is often asserted in most of the research is that organizations are in a state of crisis and that they are indeed engaging in crisis communication. Sometimes organizations are in controversy as opposed to crisis. The distinction between controversy and crisis, in turn, has implications for the practice of communication. The current paper takes the opportunity to show the fruitful directions to be taken up based on the differences between crisis and controversy and how these differences impact organizational communication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this research note was to investigate how female leaders in the securities industry use communication to overcome masculine norms. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with female leaders in the industry to investigate how they use communication to not only survive in the securities industry, but also to thrive in it. Two specific, yet interrelated, findings were identified. Every female leader interviewed demonstrated an enhanced ability to develop and convey succinct messages that are tailored to the audience. Irrefutably, all 11 of the female leaders interviewed for the current project have adopted the same unique communication competency-one that is unlike traditional communication models. The research findings make a twofold contribution to the literature. First, they explore the consequences of gender in everyday work-life interactions. Second, they illuminate how certain women have handled institutionalized structures within the industry to reach the top of their profession. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose – The research on virtual team leadership does well to describe the skills that are needed to guide and direct effective teams. However, what is presupposed in the previous research is that virtual teams have assigned leaders. That is, leaders were either management, appointed by management or were chosen by the team itself. Yet in today's global economy not all virtual teams have assigned leaders, instead many virtual team leaders emerge on their own to direct the group's actions. The purpose of this paper is to examine which emergent leadership competencies most impact virtual team effectiveness. Design/methodology/approach – This is a mixed method study where both a participant survey and content analysis of actual participant messages are used to determine the competencies of emergent virtual team leaders. The research participants for the current study were required to work in assigned teams on organizational case analyses. At the end of each case, teams presented their solutions in the form of final recommendations designed to fix the problem present in the case. Findings – Results indicate that not only do leaders emerge in virtual teams, but in most cases multiple leaders emerge. Results also show that the model that best describes team effectiveness includes the competencies of asking questions, cognitive and creative ability and vision setting. Originality/value – The contribution of the current study is that it extends the research on emergent virtual team leadership by introducing the idea that this type of leadership is often a collective action among individuals. It also advances a model of emergent virtual team leadership as a practice of communication. The better emergent virtual team leaders are at communicating to team members the more effective the team will be in completing tasks and projects, which in turn can lead to a more effectively functioning business unit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the idea that celebrity public relations has emerged as an inclusive field of communicative practice and that there fruitful directions to be taken up when academic attention is centered on understanding the field. Topics discussed include how the role of communication in cultivating the context where choice is made is undervalued in celebrity studies and how celebrity public relations is discussed in classrooms that attend to public relations or celebrity.

Although a great deal of research has focused on communicating Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), the literature is diverse and encompasses a plethora of theories and approaches. It is still unclear what communicative behaviors carry the messages of organizational virtuosity and the implementation of responsible initiatives. What is missing is a simple, inclusive assessment of how organizations explicitly communicate the behaviors that constitute CSR. Accordingly, the purpose of this paper is to provide an illustration of the accounts that constitute CSR communication. Fifty US firms are examined for CSR moves within a variety of organizational contexts. The results show that communicating CSR is limited to large organizations and primarily, that they communicate CSR by conveying information about classically accepted responsible and virtuous behaviors. This patterned communicative behavior is a process that organizations engage in to make sense of CSR. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]