Planned Parenthood entered crisis mode in the summer of 2015 with the release of videos alleging sales of fetal tissue by the Center for Medical Progress. Its crisis communication strategy was implemented to manage its reputation and influence public opinion regarding the organization and potential defunding by Congress. Through the use of womens health and abortion framing, Planned Parenthood was able to prime its publics attitudes towards the organization and potential negative outcomes of removing federal funding from the organization. As discovered through a content analysis, Planned Parenthood specifically addressed the crisis in its press releases, allowing the organization to target political elites, traditional media, and opposition with defensive tone, while managing its reputation through a positive tone in its womens health frame on the social media platforms of Twitter and Facebook.

Nowadays crises are omnipresent with daily news headlines as reminders. The public continues to see or experience many different crises that affect numerous individuals and organizations as well as society in general. Against this backdrop, corporate communication professionals, for effective crisis management, are expected to help the organizations and their leaders make decisions, as well as communicate clearly when crises arise. Considering a fast changing media environment, recent scholars have called for new approaches to crisis communication to enhance theoretical developments. They suggested that researchers should take a broader context beyond the dominant crisis communication research perspectives based on the symbolic approach, which focuses on image or reputation management through strategic messages. In response to their clarion call for new crisis communication theory development, some researchers suggested resilient-oriented crisis communication, adopting the resilience concept (e.g., capacity to bounce back) and highlighting its role in the crisis communication, management and rebuilding processes. Nevertheless, there is ample room for further research to improve their efforts because there remains a lack of empirical evidence. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to explore effective internal crisis communication within the strategic management perspective, considering organizational resilience. By doings so, the study attempted to not only fill the research gaps regarding internal crisis communication but also respond to the calls for a new direction of theoretical development beyond symbolic approach. Considering the resilience concept, the results in this study provide meaningful insight into how organizational resilience can be measured by employees confidence and communicative actions for sensemaking and sensegiving, conceptualized as employee generated organizational resilience (EGORA). In addition, the results of the current study highlighted how internal communication factors such as two-way symmetrical communication and transparent communication can be used strategically to communicate with employees for the organization resilience. The results also revealed the important mediating role of between the resilience and its antecedents, demonstrating that organization-employee relationships (OER) is a strong underlying factor in constructing why strategic internal communication and leadership can exert an impact on organizational resilience.

Walter Lippmanns classic work, Public Opinion, crystallized thinking about the dynamic relationship between the press and public opinion, and clarified the role of each in democracy. Evaluations of that book, however, tend to be one-dimensional. Public Opinion captured just one iteration of his thinking on the subject, not his final statement on the matter. A comprehensive survey of his writing reveals Lippmanns views on the press and public opinion were not static, yet the attention Public Opinion receives continues to overshadow his other works; his evolving views on the press and public opinion are rarely mentioned. Although his views shifted in significant ways over the decades, those changes hewed to a familiar set of issues and oscillated between a fairly narrow set of differences. Lippmanns primary concern was always the functioning of democracy. He wanted it to work. His views on the press and public opinion revolved around a central tenet of progressive thinking that an informed public would reach reasoned conclusions. But Lippmann always wrestled with doubts about the capacity of the electorate; his elitist attitudes conflicted with his reformist sympathies. Could the public really govern itself intelligently? How could the press, with its own limitations, facilitate that process? Lippmann puzzled over the answers to those questions throughout his career. Ultimately, his experiences with the manufacture of consent during World War I undermined his confidence in public opinion; his stature as a member of the press coincided with greater hope in that institution.

ABSTRACT Using a media systems comparative framework, I investigated the relationship between systemic characteristics and news coverage of international events. Leveraging a highly salient event: the Ebola outbreak, I extended the Hallin and Mancini Model to non-western democracies. This dissertation explored differences in media coverage of Ebola across media systems. Findings revealed that characteristics of media systems inform how news about an event is framed by reporters. By investigating news influences, this dissertation broadly sheds light on the latent influences of politics and culture on what audiences receive as news. My results showed that liberal media systems such as those found in the U.S. or the U.K. were more likely to adopt advocacy and partisanship in coverage. I also found that the liberal media systems were more likely to use health expert sources in coverage of health issues rather than elite political sources. I found no difference in the overall type of frame used. Both systems used more of episodic frames than thematic frames.

The HBO television program Last Week Tonight with John Oliver is a new and unique take on the typical political comedy show popularized by programs like The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. Uninterrupted by commercial breaks and with full creative control, host John Oliver and his team spend 30 minutes on Sunday nights discussing a typically underreported story at length, abandoning the monologue and interview portions reminiscent of traditional political comedy shows in favor of a long-form style investigation into a particular issue or topic. The main segment of each episode is then uploaded to the social media website, YouTube, within 24 hours of the shows airing for free viewing by anyone with an Internet connection. As a result, the show has garnered both critical acclaim and an active fanbase of millions who view, share, and interact with the show by responding to numerous calls to action that usually follow each segment. This study seeks to analyze the shows potential effects on news production, specifically within the context of intermedia agenda setting, the ability for the shows content to lead news outlets to cover the topics discussed during each episode in the time following the episodes airing. Through keyword searches, counts of news coverage on online news entities in periods both before and after the shows air date were collected in an effort to determine if there are more articles in the days following a Last Week Tonight episode than in the days preceding one. Paired sample t-tests were used as the primary method of statistical analysis to compare the means of each set of counts. Results indicate at least a moderate effect of the show on levels of news coverage across 25 different episodes for both traditional and native online news entities.

The 1962 Democratic primary for the United States Senate seat from Louisiana was not much of a contest, with incumbent Russell B. Long handily defeating his opponent, Phil A. St. Amant. But the defamation case that stemmed from that campaign has had a lasting impact on defamation law in the United States. While the U.S. Supreme Courts decision in St. Amant v. Thompson often now gets lost in the myriad decisions labelled as Sullivans progeny, the ruling established standards for the application of the actual malice test established in New York Times v. Sullivan. The confusion over these standards is shown by the shifting results in the St. Amant case as it progressed through the trial and appellate courts, and in the debate amongst the justices of the Supreme Court. This dissertation examines the law of defamation prior to the trial in Deputy Sherriff Herman Thompsons libel case against St. Amant, including its origins in English common law, the development of the principles of the First Amendment, and the influence of Louisianas unique history on defamation law in the state. It then examines the circumstances of the 1962 Senate campaign, and the televised statement that led to the lawsuit. It then examines the court proceedings in the trial and appellate courts in detail, with a particular emphasis on the behind-the-scenes deliberations of the U.S. Supreme Court justices. Finally, the dissertation examines the lasting legacy of the St. Amant v. Thompson decision, including how it has been cited and used in subsequent cases, both nationally and in Louisiana. It concludes with an analysis of the legacy of the case and its meaning for libel law today and in the future. The St. Amant case came in the midst of a redefinition of the meaning of the First Amendment, expressed in a series of U.S. Supreme Court precedents from the 1960s thorough the 1980s. Until this work, it has been an underappreciated part of this history. This dissertation is an attempt to examine the case and place it in its proper role in the legacy of First Amendment jurisprudence.

This study tested the spiral of silence in both Social Networking Sites (SNS) and online discussion forums. It argued that online expert participation may influence people's willingness to take part in an online discussion. A two (opinion climate) by two (expert participation) experiment was designed to examine how expert participation influenced the relationship between peoples willingness to speak out and opinion climate with the controversial topic: abortion. In this study, the spiral of silence effect was only found when experts were present in the discussion.

From an advertising perspective fathers are a highly attractive consumer demographic. In order to market to this audience it is important to understand how fathers are framed. With an increase in the number of fathers identifying themselves as caregivers according to the 2012 census, effective marketers would be well-served if they understood what type of frame applies when fathers are employed vs. stay at home. This analysis used framing theory to determine how message givers use frames within their advertisements to explain which particular aspects of the father are given salience. This study is a content analysis of father frames in advertising over a variety of highly circulated mens magazines from 2009-2014. This analysis divided the magazines into two-time periods and looked for examples of care-giving fathers, wage-earning fathers, and recreational fathers in advertisements. In addition, the analysis looked at the question of competence in these advertisements, observing if the fathers were depicted as competent or not. The research supported that the dominant father frame of the pre-2012 time period was the care-giving father and the dominant father frame of the post-2012 time period was the recreational father. Fathers were not mostly observed as competent. This study supported the idea that the post-2012 father frame in male-based highly circulated magazines is more likely to be a father who leads their children in leisurely activities.

This study focuses on how media usage can affect ones perceptions of Black collegiate and professional male athletes. While early research focused solely on traditional media, this study focuses on social media as well. This study investigates the relationships between the amounts of time spent using traditional and social media, and the perceptions of athletes in regards to their physical capability, the likelihood of being criminals, and prevalence of committing violent crimes. To explore relationships, this study utilized a total of 145 White participants. Findings showed a positive relationship existed between social media usage and perceptions of criminal-like characteristics. It was found that as social media usage increases, an increase in the perceptions of Black collegiate and professional male athletes having criminal-like characteristics increases as well. Also, results showed that perceptions of criminal-like characteristics, physical prowess, and violent crimes are attributed more to Black athletes than to White athletes. Lastly, findings showed heavy users of traditional and social media attribute more perceptions of criminal-like characteristics than light users of traditional and social media.

From Scott Baios endorsement of Donald Trump to Sarah Silvermans endorsement of Bernie Sanders and subsequent rejection of the Bernie or Bust crowd at the DNC, celebrities have habitually inserted themselves into the political sphere, however, there has been little empirical research on celebrity endorsements of political candidates. Rooted in branding theory, this study seeks to understand the effectiveness of celebrity political endorsements by utilizing advertising effectiveness models. The primary model, derived from work done by Amos, Holmes, and Strutton (2008), translates source factors of a celebrity product endorser to those of a celebrity candidate endorser, such as credibility, attractiveness, and trustworthiness. While in traditional advertising research, effectiveness is measured by outcomes such as brand attitude, and intention for product purchase, this study defines effectiveness in terms of attitudes toward the candidate, endorsement believability, recognition, and willingness to engage in electoral and online civic behaviors. After providing demographic information and information about digital media use and partisanship, participants were provided with a social media post, allegedly from a famous actor, endorsing a fictitious candidate and were asked to rate the actor on 21 attributes of a good endorser (source factors) and answer questions relating to their identification with the celebrity, perceptions of the celebrity-candidate fit, and their perceptions of the candidates viability in the election. They were subsequently asked to evaluate the candidate, the endorsements believability, recognize information from the endorsement, and indicate how likely they were to perform nine civic behaviors for the candidate. The data suggest that the endorser effectiveness model used by advertising researchers is useful for understanding the source factors and other considerations upon which celebrity political endorsement effectiveness is predicated. The study found that source factors vary in effectiveness between attitude, cognitive, and behavioral measures, leading to the conclusion that celebrity endorsers with different characteristics may be useful to political campaigns depending upon desired voter outcomes, particularly with regard to time during a campaign cycle.