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Purpose: This study examines the interplay between media-induced emotional crisis framing (anger vs sadness) and message sidedness of crisis response on publics' attribution of crisis responsibility as well as subsequent company evaluation and supportive behavioral intention. Design/methodology/approach: A 2 (emotion: anger vs sadness) x 2 (crisis response: one-sided vs two-sided) online experiment was conducted among 161 participants in the USA. Findings: Results showed that anger-inducing media framing of the crisis elicited higher levels of crisis responsibility attribution and more negative company evaluation, compared with sadness-inducing media framing. One-sided message response was more effective than two-sided message response in lowering attribution of crisis responsibility when sadness was induced, but no difference was found under the anger-induced condition. Attribution of crisis responsibility fully mediated the effects of emotional crisis framing on company evaluation and supportive behavioral intention toward the company. Originality/value: This study is among the first to examine the interaction effect between emotional media framing and response message sidedness in an ambiguous crisis. Drawing on the interdisciplinary theoretical frameworks, this study integrates the situational crisis communication theory, appraisal-tendency framework and message sidedness in persuasion literature. As such, it contributes to theoretical development in crisis communication and offers communication managers guidance on how to effectively address emotionally framed crises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Asian American communities have experienced an uptick of anti-Asian discrimination, racism, and hate incidents in recent years since the outbreak of COVID-19, yet anti-Asian discrimination and racism have historically been overlooked. Drawing on interdisciplinary insights from psychological empowerment, social media engagement, and collective action, this study examines if and how Asian Americans' various forms of social media engagement activities could lead to their collective action in combating anti-Asian discrimination and racism, as well as mental well-being, and the role of psychological empowerment in these processes. Results revealed a nuanced view on how social media engagement activities may lead to psychological empowerment in the context of Asian Americans' social media use amidst experiences of racism and discrimination: contributing social media engagement was positively associated with intrapersonal empowerment, whereas consuming social media engagement was positively associated with interactional empowerment. While both intrapersonal and interactional empowerment significantly contributed to Asian Americans' collective action, only intrapersonal empowerment significantly contributed to mental well-being. Theoretical and practical implications were discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines startups' social media communication practice in China through the theoretical lens of dialogic communication. Drawing interdisciplinary insights from public relations and computer-mediated communication, this study explored conversational human voice and social presence as antecedents of startups' dialogic communication with publics on social media and explored publics' trust and positive word-of-mouth as potential outcomes of this process. Results from an online survey with 1061 social media users in China who had followed at least one startup organization revealed that startups' conversational human voice and social presence on social media helped drive organization–public dialogic communication, which in turn fostered publics' trust and positive word-of-mouth toward startups. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigated nonprofit organizations' (NPOs) emotion-based content strategies on Facebook and publics' engagement behaviors. More than 52,000 Facebook posts and corresponding comments were collected from the top 100 NPOs in the United States. The emotion-carrying status and valence of the messages were analyzed with computer-assisted sentiment analysis procedures. Results confirmed emotion-carrying posts and posts with negative emotions led to increased public engagement as indexed by the volumes of likes, shares, and comments. The presence of emotions and valence of the NPOs' posts were also found to have a diffusion effect on user comments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates whether hybrid strategy would be more effective than corporate social responsibility (CSR) strategy in boosting CSR information recall and company evaluation. Informed by the corporate ability (CA)-CSR-hybrid communication strategy typology, the associative network theory, and memory interference and integration literature, this study conducted a 2 (prior corporate associations) × 2 (subsequent corporate communication strategies) between-subjects experiment. Findings showed that hybrid (vs. CSR) strategy was more effective in generating CSR information recall when a company had previously established CA associations but did not outperform CSR strategy when the company had no previous CA associations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]