Organisational and Strategic Communication Research: European Perspectives

i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i Gisela Gonçalves, Ian Somerville & Ana Melo (Editors) Organisational and Strategic Communication Research: European Perspectives i i i i i i i i Livros LabCom Série: Pesquisas em Comunicação Direcção: José Ricardo Carvalheiro Design da Capa: Madalena Sena Paginação: Filomena Matos Covilhã, UBI, LabCom, Livros LabCom ISBN: 978-989-654-115-6 Título: Organisational and Strategic Communication Research: European Perspectives Editores: Gisela Gonçalves, Ian Somerville & Ana Melo Ano: 2013 www.livroslabcom.ubi.pt www.ecrea-section-strategic-communication.ubi.pt i i i i i i i i Contents Introduction..............................1 Narcissist markets and public relations. Reflections on the post- recession role of PR Adela Rogojinaru ........................5 Theoretical approaches in organizational and strategic communication: A review of the French academic literature Arlette Bouzon ......................... 23 Employee communicative actions and companies’ internal communication strategies to mitigate the negative effects of crises Alessandra Mazzei and Silvia Ravazzani ............ 47 Developing the resilience typology: Communication and resilience in organisational crisis Daniel Morten Simonsen .................... 69 Feedback nightmare: Organisational communication reactions to digital critic exposure. A view on some Portuguese cases (2011-2012) Ana Duarte Melo and Helena Sousa .............. 95 Organizational communication and social media – Challenges for strategizing in business and political communication Natascha Zowislo-Grünewald and Franz Beitzinger ...... 111 Identification of influence within the social media W.B.Vollenbroek, S.A. de Vries and E. Constantinides ..... 119 The (in) communicability of corporate social responsibility – a Por- tuguese insight Gisela Gonçalves ........................ 143 i i i i i i i i i Government communication in a post-conflict society: Contest and negotiation in Northern Ireland’s consociational democratic experiment Charis Rice, Ian Somerville and John Wilson ......... 167 Crisis communication under terrorist threat: A case study of the counterterrorist operation in Chechnya Elena Gryzunova ........................ 193 Media relations in health communication: The sources of information in cancer newspaper articles in Portugal Teresa Ruão, Sandra Marinho, Felisbela Lopesa and Luciana Fernandes ............................ 217 Contributors.............................. 244 ii i i i i i i i i Introduction Created in 2006, the Organisational and Strategic Communication Section of the European Communication Research and Education Association (ECREA) aims to promote an active and critical dialogue among scholars involved in the study of Organisational and Strategic Communication (OSC) and to pro- pose new research topics and debate concepts relevant to the interdisciplinary growth of this field of studies. At the 4th international ECREA Conference in Istanbul (24-27 October 2012), the OSC Section approved more than 40 presentations and 10 posters. Under the conference theme, “Social Media and Global Voices”, the proposals referred to the influence of different forms of public communication, including Public Relations, Advertising, Branding and Internal Communication. With the selected papers in this volume, we attempt to keep alive the debate initiated in that conference and to foster the work of the OSC Section members in other themes as well. The diversity represented in this collection, not only in respect to the Sec- tion members’ nationality but also in theoretical and empirical approaches, is certainly one of the most salient features of the ECREA OSC section identity. Moreover, we believe that the heterogeneity of the authors’ origin (Denmark, France, Italy, Northern Ireland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, and The Nether- lands) as well as the spectrum of themes under analysis shows how organisational and strategic communication research in Europe is widespread and full of vitality. Adela Rogojinaru, from the University of Bucharest, and former chair of the OSC Section, opens the book with “Narcissist markets and public relations: Reflections on the post-recession role of PR”. In this article, the author states that the economic crisis period not only has a negative impact on socie- ties but may also lead to a more consistent moral behavior due to alterations in public expectations. Her argument is that the decrease in the narcissist behavior of the market leads to the rise of public relations in their socially genuine sense of engaging public relationships, based on mutuality and accountability of actions. The following article, by Arlette Bouzon, professor at Toulouse III Uni- versity, is an interesting contribution that promotes academic literature on organisational communication in French. Examining underlying epistemolo- gical foundations, the past chair of the ECREA OSC Section discusses how i i i i i i i i 2 Organisational and Strategic Communication Research: European Perspectives communication phenomena has turned out to be a recurrent theme in France, leading to a growing body of scientific output. The organisational and communicational crisis theme is central to the articles of different authors in this collection. More specifically, Alessandra Maz- zei and Silvia Ravazzani, from IULM University, Milan, and Daniel Morten Simonsen, from the Aarhus University in Denmark, contribute with articles on the relation between Internal Communication and Crisis Management. Maz- zei and Ravazzani use a case study approach to highlight how employee communicative actions and companies’ internal communication strategies may “mitigate the negative effects of crises”. Somonsen discusses the link between communication and resilience in organisational crisis. More precisely, Simon- son explores the various roots that create organisational resilience and in view of the different understandings of the resilience-phenomenon, develops a typology of resilience. The crisis theme is also relevant in the article entitled “Feedback nightmare: organisational communication reactions to digital critic exposure”. By analyzing how corporate and political organisations deal with critical reactions to their communication in digital platforms, Ana Duarte Melo and Helena Sousa, from the University of Minho, Portugal, discovered common traits in organisational behavior during crisis situations. That is, that organisational communication reaction during critical situations, namely in social media, is mainly generated by patriotic claims. Social media research continues at the center of analysis in the two following articles, authored by German and Dutch researchers. Assuming that social media changes the organisational realm and requires an organisational strategy capable of adapting to a changing environment, Natascha Zowislo- Grünewald and Franz Beitzinger, from the Universität der Bundeswehr Mün- chen, alert us to the need for a revision of the common understanding of strategic corporate communication, both for political and business organisations. In particular, as they stress, because the ability to plan communication has been reduced. W.B.Vollenbroek, S.A. de Vries and E. Constantinides, from the University of Twente, present a study entitled “Identification of influence within the Social Media”. Based on a literature review and a Delphi study, the authors constructed a model for the identification of the “social media corporate reputation influencers model”. The model assists in our understanding of how social media has an impact on corporate reputations. www.livroslabcom.ubi.pt i i i i i i i i Gisela Gonçalves, Ian Somerville & Ana Melo (Editors) 3 The corporate reputation and legitimacy theme, but now from a CSR perspective, is also central to the contribution made by Gisela Gonçalves, from the University of Beira Interior, Portugal. More concretely, the researcher exa- mines the links between communicating CSR and public relations both from a theoretical and practical perspective. Drawing on data from interviews with Portuguese PR practitioners, the author endeavors to foster the debate over current issues and assumptions on the difficulties of communicating CSR in a socially skeptical environment. The richness of approaches in the field of Organisational and Strategic Communication is well evidenced in the articles that follow. The study by Charis Rice, Ian Somervile and John Wilson, from the University of Ulster, Belfast, features an original contribution to political public relations literature. Drawing on data from elite interviews with government information officers, special advisers and journalists, the paper analyzes their perspectives on the impact and role of special advisers in Northern Ireland’s devol- ved, power-sharing government. In the ensuing article, “Crisis Communi- cation under Terrorist Threat: a Case Study of Counterterrorist Operation in Chechnya”, Elena Gryzunova, from MGIMO-University, Russia, places counterterrorism, an under-researched theme in the literature, at the center of analysis. Based on internal government documents, she studies crisis communication and media relations from the Information Policy Department of the President of Russia between 2000 and 2004, during the counterterrorist operation in the Chechen Republic. Finally, the last article of this book focuses on a classic theme in Public Relations Studies – that of Media Relations. More precisely, Health Media Relations. The co-authored text by Teresa

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