Recently, the reputations of celebrities have been scrutinized. Reputation management was a concept thought to be beneficial for celebrities. Image restoration theory has been a concept formulated for use by individuals; therefore it was used for this study. This study is one of the first to review the theory's use in public relations, and its influence on celebrity status.Celebrity R. Kelly was the subject because he was involved in legal scandal. The objective was to determine if Mr. Kelly's publicist utilized image restoration theory as the basis for constructing response statements.A case study approach was utilized to provide an understanding of how this strategic plan might salvage reputations. The researcher reviewed documents and interviewed persons who had knowledge of the R. Kelly crisis. This study found use of elements of image restoration theory in this case as a form of reputation management, thereby confirming the usefulness of it as a cogent public relations tactic. / Department of Journalism

Increased smoking by attractive celebrities in films may be one source of influence on young people's increased smoking behavior. Theories of observational learning and cognitive scripting suggest that actions and perceptions may be influenced by viewing behaviors of attractive models and that observers may be more likely to imitate the observed behaviors when they are in specific contexts similar to the ones viewed. We investigated the effects of viewing characters either smoking or not smoking while having either positive or negative experiences on participants' perceptions of the characters, smoking urge, and intentions to smoke. We found that viewing characters smoking in negative scenes decreased likelihood of smoking for participants. Females were more likely than males to report a likelihood to smoke after viewing negative scenes, regardless of whether characters smoked. Female regular smokers were more likely to smoke in negative scenarios than in positive scenarios, and male occasional smokers and nonsmokers were more likely to smoke in positive scenarios than negative scenarios. / Department of Psychological Science