This study examined the influence of mass media on students' perceptions of terrorism by applying the situational theory of publics (Grunig & Hunt, 1984). Behavior is the consequence of perception of reality. But perception of reality is not always consistent with the reality itself. Because of the important role of the media in shaping perceptions, terrorist organizations rely on it to spread fear and advance their political goals beyond the people directly affected by their attacks. The media not only spreads the news of an attack, it contributes significantly to formulating and disseminating the message of terrorist organizations. This study explores University of South Florida (USF) students' perceptions of terrorism, and the role of mass media in shaping such perceptions. It also examines assumptions, asks pertinent questions, and seeks answers by conducting a survey of college students. The findings of this study support the basic premise of the situational theory of publics and contribute to better understanding of how media influences perceptions of terrorism. The findings of this study and future studies on the same subject might be used to better educate students, and inform communication professionals about methods to increase awareness about the U.S. position on terrorism.

This study examined attitudes and behavioral responses to a social marketing campaign's video messages. Independent variables in the study were the regulatory framing of the campaign message, personal involvement, and collective efficacy. Results revealed main effects of both collective efficacy and personal involvement on attitude toward the brand, attitude toward the issues, and behavioral intentions. Significant interactions between collective efficacy and the regulatory frame of the video were found to affect the dependent variables. Gender was also found to significantly moderate the findings. Theoretical implications and practical implications are discussed. / Master of Arts

Kommunikationsdirektör vid Sundsvalls kommun önskade undersöka hur man på bästa sätt kommunicerar vid kris med personer som inte talar svenska. Detta eftersom att Sundsvalls kommun ansåg att man saknade tillräckliga språkkunskaper för att hantera kriser. Enligt forskningen är det just personer av annat ursprung än landet det bor i som är mer utsatta vid kris (Olofsson, 2007:7), varför det är viktigt att anpassa kommunikationen så att den når ut till och kan hjälpa alla medborgare. Jag fann det därför intressant att undersöka Sundsvalls kommun och dess kriskommunikativa anpassning genom att intervjua de som inom kommunen är ansvariga för kriskommunikationen samt undersöka hur det ser ut i landet i stort. Syftet med uppsatsen är att undersöka om Sveriges kommuner anpassar sin kriskommunikation för medborgare med utländsk bakgrund med huvudfokus på hur Sundsvalls kommun arbetar strategiskt med sin kriskommunikation.   Metod och material: Kvalitativ samtalsintervju med Camilla Nilzén och Ulf Wallin vid Sundsvalls kommun med kompletterande kvantitativ webbenkät till 121 svenska kommuner. Huvudresultat: Sundsvalls kommun är inte anpassade i sin kriskommunikation till medborgare med utländskbakgrund vilket även antas gälla en större del av landets kommuner. Däremot visar resultatet på att kunskapen om att kommunicera på ett anpassat sätt finns varför Sundsvalls kommun och de av landets kommuner som inte är anpassade på ett enkelt sätt kan bli bättre på att anpassa sin

Throughout the history of the United States, Americans customarily have given away their money, as well as their time to serve the common good. Americans will give "to build something, to fight something, or to save something" (Fink, 1990, p. 136). They make gifts to causes, or the societal problems represented by organizational missions, that are important to them. Individuals give not only to advance a common good, but also to receive private goods, or benefits that are internal, intangible, and in some cases, tangible (Steinberg, 1989). To create this feeling of reciprocity for prospective donors who have not actually benefited from the organization, charitable organizations attempt to attract these individuals by providing them with a benefit from the organization as a result of their donation of time or money. A benefit many individuals are now receiving as a result of their donations is the personal association, real or perceived, with a celebrity (Wheeler, 2002). Preliminary empirical evidence suggests that celebrities are more effective as endorsers when they are personally connected to a cause not only because they help raise awareness for the cause, but they also have a perceived higher level of involvement in the organization. To date, most celebrity endorsement research remains in the field of marketing, while fund raising is more effective when discussed from the public relations perspective (Kelly, 1991, p. 163). However, there currently is no discipline-specific public relations theory that merges the concept of celebrity endorsement with the concepts of symmetrical and asymmetrical fund raising. Fortunately, the interdisciplinary nature of public relations fosters the use of theoretical constructs from other areas of the social sciences, including marketing research (Werder, 2003). The mixed motive model of public relations (Dozier, L. Grunig, & J. Grunig, 1995) provides a framework when it is adapted to guide celebrity endorser fund raising success on a continuum between marketing and public relations. This study did not find support for the integrated communication model of celebrity endorsement fund raising since no significant differences existed between the different endorsers ability to increase the active seeking of information and acting on that information, information processing, and willingness to donate money and volunteer time for a charitable organization.

ABSTRACT Hispanic parents face several barriers that impede their involvement in their children’s education. This lack of parental involvement negatively affects the academic outcome of students, graduation rates, and college attendance. This study uses the situational theory of publics to determine what kind of public Mexican parents are, and makes recommendations on what is the best way to engage them and motivate them to participate in schools. Seventeen Mexican mothers were interviewed about their views on education and relationships with their children’s teachers and schools. Findings revealed that the main barriers to parental involvement among Mexican parents are work, language and lack of childcare. The study discusses some strategies that schools can use to help parents overcome barriers to involvement. This research is important because for the first time it uses communications, and more specifically public relations theories, to further the research on Hispanic parental involvement.

Master of Science - Agricultural Education and Communication / Department of Communications and Agricultural Education / Jason D. Ellis / Genetically modified crops have been beneficial to farmers in terms of saved time, money, and energy while increasing yields and often times reducing pesticide dependency. These benefits outweigh the increased costs, allowing genetically modified crops to become one of the fastest adopted farm technologies in history. Despite overwhelming approval of genetically modified crops among farmers, consumers have been hesitant to consume genetically modified food. Consumers see genetically modified food as a risk without immediate reward. Millennial consumers are a powerful population segment that rivals or overtakes other population segments in terms of size, influence, and purchasing abilities. Yet, they are often lumped into one homogenous group by marketers when they are a diverse group comprised of unique segments. The purpose of this study was to better understand how millennial consumers find and process risk information about genetically modified food so that agricultural communicators can better strategize communication efforts. Applying the Situational Theory of Publics and the Risk Information Seeking and Processing Model, this study went one step further by differentiating between Supportive and Non-supportive publics. The research objectives of this study are as follows: 1) Identify the individual characteristics of both Supportive and Non-supportive millennial publics of genetically modified food; 2) Examine relevant channel beliefs of Supportive and Non-supportive millennial publics of genetically modified food; 3) Identify and describe the information gap of Supportive and Non-supportive millennial publics of genetically modified food; 4) Define the perceived information gathering capacity of Supportive and Non-supportive millennial publics of genetically modified food; and 5) Characterize the information seeking and processing behavior of Supportive and Non-supportive millennial publics of genetically modified food. An Internet survey was distributed to individuals between the ages of 18 and 36 within the United States. The majority of Non-supportive publics had a high level of issue involvement and the majority of Supportive publics had a low level of issue involvement. Meaning, the majority of Non-supportive publics are more active about the issue than Supportive publics. Age was found to be correlated with systematic processing and information avoidance with older millennials more likely to systematically process information and less likely to avoid information. Additionally, this study found that regardless of knowledge level, wealthier individuals who do not support genetically modified food are more likely to be actively involved in the issue and wealthier individuals who support the technology are more likely to be passive about the issue. The majority of millennial publics in all eight groups reported a knowledge deficit to some degree. The research also found that heuristic processing was negatively correlated to systematic processing and higher levels of information avoidance were negatively correlated with lower levels of active information seeking. Non-supportive Active publics (high issue involvement/high knowledge) were found to have the highest mean active information seeking and systematic processing scores and lowest mean heuristic processing and information avoidance scores; supporting past findings that knowledge does not always equate to support and that communication practitioners may have trouble changing the opinion of a large portion of Non-supportive publics.

This project summary presents the details of a podcast project conducted from April to December of 2006. The project consisted of the creation of a new Internet-based audio interview show entitled Spirit In The Law. The interviews were delivered to listeners who requested the shows via the Internet, and were available to a targeted audience of law students in the United States and abroad. The show featured interviews with 20 notable attorneys and professionals who answered questions regarding spiritual values in their professional practice. The project was informed by two theoretical frameworks: New Media theory and Situational Theory of Publics. The results, when applying both theoretical frameworks, were mixed. While podcasting did demonstrate universality, it was hindered by the complexity of traditional radio production roles. Similarly, it was useful to use the Situational Theory of Publics to help to conceptualize audiences in groups, but the goals of moving the groups into activity were not completely achieved. The main objective for the project was to understand more about the opportunities and obstacles of the new communication technology of podcasting.

When the covid-19 pandemic started, managers were only able to lead their employees through digital communication. During the subsequent telework a completely new research area, in need of new knowledge, was created. The purpose of this study is to gain an understanding of opportunities and challenges of remote leadership, experienced by managers. This at a time of only digital communication with employees, with no physical meetings or interactions. The study will answer the following two issues, “What factors are important for managers to take into account when applying a leadership style to teleworking employees?” and “Which internal communication functions in the organization have worked better or not according to managers, when remotely managing employees?”. This exploratory study has its theoretical starting point in situational theory, as well as in Richmond, McCroskey and Powell’s six functions in organizational communication. Through semi-structured interviews, empirical data has been collected and then analyzed through coding, thematization and summation. The result of this study indicates that future managers, conducting digital leadership, will need to take each employee's needs and personal situation into account. Managers need to adopt a functioning leadership style, while keeping important factors regarding employees in mind. This in order to successfully lead each teleworking employee through digital communication.

This work explores the effect of social media on expectations held by nonprofit publics as they seek to build and maintain relationships with nonprofit organizations (NPOs) in the context of expectancy violation theory, social capital, and the situational theory of publics. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 14 individuals who follow a nonprofit on social media to understand the public perspective on nonprofit organizations' relationship building and maintaining behaviors on social media. The study found that nonprofit publics do have specific expectations for how NPOs should build and maintain relationships on social media (i.e., high-quality posts, level of interaction being limited to likes on social media and interpersonal interactions, high visibility to prove legitimacy, high transparency, and posts that are positive in tone). The study also found that nonprofit publics immediately end relationships when these expectations are violated, but tolerate relationships if these expectations are met. Finally, nonprofit publics expect to build relationships by interacting in a face-to-face or interpersonal setting, but also expect to maintain these relationships on social media, shedding light onto the importance of combining the use of interpersonal and computer-mediated communication.

The purpose of this research study was to analyze the leadership styles of owners of small land surveying businesses in the states of Tennessee and Virginia to determine what leadership style was currently being employed by the majority of those owners. The participants in this study were chosen from members of the Virginia Association of Surveyors and the Tennessee Association of Professional Surveyors. The respondents to the questionnaire were licensed land surveyors who owned small firms of fewer than 101 employees. In addition, a corollary purpose was to flesh out the skeletal literature available on small business leadership styles and their effect on small business success. The owners of the small surveying businesses were asked to reply to a series of questions on demographic data and Likert-type scale questions designed to examine the respondents' leadership styles as Participatory, Situational, or Autocratic in a both external and internal environments. The results of the questionnaire produced nominal data, which were analyzed using Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) software to compute the frequency and significance. Additionally, a nonparametric Kruskal-Wallis K Independent Samples procedure and one-way Chi -Square tests were used to analyze the statistical relationships and differences in the respondents' answers. The results of this study suggested that the majority of the respondents used a participatory style of leadership when confronted with internal environment decisions and an autocratic leadership style in the external environment. The overall conclusion drawn from this study was that the owners of small land surveying firms who responded to the questionnaire were predominantly situational because they adjusted their leadership styles to meet the needs and demands of their changing situations.