The world has faced a major increase in forced displacement and the theme has also become the subject of many public, media and political debates. The public communication of refugee organizations thereby increasingly impacts their operations, the public perception on forcibly displaced people and societal and policy beliefs and actions. However, little research has been conducted on the topic. Therefore, this conceptual article aims to (1) define refugee organizations’ public communication, (2) situate it within broader research fields, and (3) motivate the latter’s relevance as research perspectives. In order to be able to achieve these research objectives, the article first discusses the social and scientific relevance of the research subject and identifies important gaps within literature which both form an essential scientific base for developing the main arguments. Adopting a historical perspective, the article demonstrates that in recent decades the social and scientific relevance of research on strategic and non-profit communication in general and on refugee organizations’ public communication in particular have increased. Nevertheless, these fields remain underdeveloped and are mostly text-focused, while the production and reception dimensions are barely explored. Remarkably, however, little or no research has been conducted from an organizational communication perspective, although this article demonstrates that the subject can be adequately embedded in and examined from the fields of strategic, non-profit and public communication. Finally, the article highlights the relevance of the holistic Communicative Constitution of Organizations perspective and argues that future research can benefit by adopting multi-perspective, practice-oriented, multi-methodological, comparative and/or interdisciplinary approaches.

The world has seen a major increase in forced displacement since 2011. As a growing number of states implement restrictive refugee policies, public communication has become essential for refugee organisations. This study analysed, therefore, three international refugee organisations’ discursive strategies towards the recent Syrian crisis, as well as their production and the social context. A critical discourse analysis of international press releases (N=122) and six semi‐structured interviews with press and regional officers revealed that the observed actors largely dehumanise displaced people and subordinate them to the ‘Western self’ and state interests; displaced people hardly ever acquire their own voice. The study found that the medium characteristics of press releases and the importance of media attention result in a depersonalising humanitarian discourse. In addition, there were indications of a post‐humanitarian discourse that reproduced the humanitarian sector's ‘marketisation’. Finally, the examined organisations use the political realist cross‐issue persuasion strategy, displaying displaced people as resettlement objects.

An emerging field of research within communication sciences examines public communication within organizational contexts and the broader public sphere. As its visibility and (societal) relevance have grown in recent years, an increasing number of scholars scrutinizes the subfield of non-profit communication, which is mainly (but not exclusively) performed by civil society. Nevertheless, non-profit communication has often not been theorized accurately within communication research, as most studies in the field have adopted a business-and profit-driven logic to develop theories, models and case studies, largely ignoring non-profit organizations' (NPOs) social values and goals. Strategic communication for non-profit organisations therefore aims to provide relevant insights into new, multidimensional approaches on NPOs' communication, thereby adopting a multi-perspective view of the role of strategy. Editors Evandro Oliveira, Ana Duarte Melo and Gisela Conçalves certainly succeed in achieving this main objective, as their book volume proves to be a significant, original and wide-ranging contribution to the literature and academic debate on NPO's strategic communication.The book consists of thirteen chapters divided into an introduction and four main parts which provide both a theoretical conceptualization of, and several empirical case studies on, non-profit communication, which itself is divided in six subfields: (1) Development Communication, (2) Civic Relations Communication, (3) Health Communication, (4) Environmental Communication, (5) Science and Innovation Communication, and (6) Religious Communication. Examining all these subfields, Strategic communication for non-profit organisations focuses on various dimensions of NPOs' internal and external communication strategies -situated in distinct contexts, channelled through diversified media and/or directed on different target audiences -and their different underlying motives and implications. Although 'non-profit communication' and 'strategy' are throughout the whole book considered as complex and diverse concepts of which specific research findings are difficult to generalize, the editors advance one distinctive element of non-profit communication. That is "humanity and the relations with the fields of life in the public sphere, notBrought to you by | Ghent University Library

In an increasingly globalizing world, knowledge about catastrophes, suffering and injustice is mainly gained through traditional and, increasingly, social media. Besides this primary informative function, media also play an important social role. They often act as public fora for, and producers of, collective emotional support, therapy, solidarity, and charity, both for the people affected and the broader community. As people's ability to function as political subjects and to act in solidarity largely depends on their capacity to understand, feel, imagine, and critically think about these issues and their causes, media play an essential role in providing spaces for these practices.Kaarina Nikunen investigates in her interdisciplinary book Media solidarities. Emotions, power and justice in the digital age the new, self-developed concept of 'media solidarities', and this from a text, production, and reception perspective. Media solidarities refer to the different ways in which media create, shape, disseminate, materialize, and engage in expressions, participations, and representations of solidarity. Underpinning these practices and the presented studies is 'the media solidarity paradox'. While in the age of neoliberalism, various economic, political, and technological developments have eroded traditional solidarity structures, there are simultaneously more mediated solidarity expressions and calls.By discussing, examining, and linking, both theoretically and empirically, various fields, theories, concepts, and moral and practice-based perspectives, Media solidarities proves to be a wide-ranging and innovative contribution to the literature on media and solidarity. More concretely, the work's focus, central argument, and relevance can be summarized by four key approaches. First, Nikunen theoretically extends the 'ethical turn' in media studies by moving beyond the often used sociological and political theories about solidarity and related conceptions of 'we' and engages in post-colonial and feminist perspectives of dissonance and 'common differences'. Second, she empirically and analytically extends current research. Whereas most studies focus on news coverage and humanitarian communication from a text and, to a lesser extent, production dimension, this book critically examines media production, reception, and, to a lesser extent, rep-

SamenvattingAnnotatie Deze studie onderzoekt de beeldvorming binnen Vlaamse kranten van westerse en niet-westerse hulporganisaties die steun verleenden aan de Filipijnen nadat het werd getroffen door tyfoon Haiyan (2013). Een kritisch geïnspireerde kwalitatieve inhoudsanalyse leert dat westerse hulporganisaties, en in het bijzonder Belgische instanties, meer en positievere media-aandacht verkrijgen dan niet-westerse hulporganisaties. Dit duidt op een onderliggende praktijk en discours van ‘Othering’. Annotatie