Spinning at the Border: Employee Activism in ‘Big PR’

Reyes, Camille

doi:10.17645/mac.v9i3.4118

“…In other arenas, such as defense contracts and censorship, employees at large tech companies have staged walkouts, in some cases resulting the in cancellation of contracts and the creation of guidelines for ethical use of artificial intelligence technology (Gallagher, 2019;Shane & Wakabayashi, 2018;Wakabayashi & Conger, 2021). Similar dynamics are emerging outside of content moderation, with consulting firms and public relations firms coming under pressure for their work on fossil fuel disinformation campaigns and contracts with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and private prison operators (Forsythe & Bogdanich, 2021;Reyes, 2021).…”

Section: Corporate Social Advocacy Controversies In Governance Contextsmentioning

confidence: 95%

“…These cases contribute to a growing literature on internal activism that works with external civil society organisations and media coverage (Curtin, 2016;Reyes, 2021). Corporate social advocacy controversies are indicative of public awareness of corporate social responsibility promises and the ability to productively funnel public pressure against the companies that practice it.…”

Section: Corporate Social Advocacy Controversies In Governance Contextsmentioning

confidence: 96%

Chasing the Mainstream: Corporate Social Advocacy and Online Content Governance

Hill

2024

Preprint

0

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Expectations that commercial actors will act responsibly and for the public good have precipitated a growing number of public controversies as companies either line up to demonstrate their commitment by taking sides on a social issue or are forced to respond to public pressure. These controversies can have knock-on effects for the governance of content and expression, as what is tolerated can easily shift in the face of the intense public criticism that surrounds these controversies. Media and communications research has speculated on the role of the profit-motive in content moderation on social media but there are gaps in research directly addressing how the advertising industry attempts to institutionalize its interests in appropriate content, as well as in research extending the examination of professional communications beyond advertising-supported media to the wider environment of online content moderation. Given the high stakes of public interventions by commercial actors, a better understanding of their motivations and the regulatory implications of their actions is needed. This dissertation responds to the questions, what motivates corporate social advocacy? How does information circulate in advocacy events? What issues are compatible with corporate social advocacy? And what role does corporate social advocacy play towards governing online content? To answer these questions, it analyzes three public controversies over online content, representing the advertising-supported environment of social media and non-advertising supported environments such as online infrastructure services and gaming and provides a thematic analysis of the professional communications industry perspective on social advocacy controversy. It takes a framework based in a functional public sphere and draws on theories of economies of worth to position corporate social advocacies as “tests of justification” that are revealing of the normative standards applied to commercial advocacy and governance of content. It finds that while controversies can push companies beyond “owned” issues and change the treatment of certain content, the resource intensive and publicly damaging nature of the controversies incentivise controversy-averse approach to moderation, which can chill the creation of content seen as outside the mainstream.

show abstract

“…In other arenas, such as defense contracts and censorship, employees at large tech companies have staged walkouts, in some cases resulting the in cancellation of contracts and the creation of guidelines for ethical use of artificial intelligence technology (Gallagher, 2019;Shane & Wakabayashi, 2018;Wakabayashi & Conger, 2021). Similar dynamics are emerging outside of content moderation, with consulting firms and public relations firms coming under pressure for their work on fossil fuel disinformation campaigns and contracts with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and private prison operators (Forsythe & Bogdanich, 2021;Reyes, 2021).…”

Section: Corporate Social Advocacy Controversies In Governance Contextsmentioning

confidence: 95%

“…These cases contribute to a growing literature on internal activism that works with external civil society organisations and media coverage (Curtin, 2016;Reyes, 2021). Corporate social advocacy controversies are indicative of public awareness of corporate social responsibility promises and the ability to productively funnel public pressure against the companies that practice it.…”

Section: Corporate Social Advocacy Controversies In Governance Contextsmentioning

confidence: 96%

Chasing the Mainstream: Corporate Social Advocacy and Online Content Governance

Hill

2024

Preprint

0

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Expectations that commercial actors will act responsibly and for the public good have precipitated a growing number of public controversies as companies either line up to demonstrate their commitment by taking sides on a social issue or are forced to respond to public pressure. These controversies can have knock-on effects for the governance of content and expression, as what is tolerated can easily shift in the face of the intense public criticism that surrounds these controversies. Media and communications research has speculated on the role of the profit-motive in content moderation on social media but there are gaps in research directly addressing how the advertising industry attempts to institutionalize its interests in appropriate content, as well as in research extending the examination of professional communications beyond advertising-supported media to the wider environment of online content moderation. Given the high stakes of public interventions by commercial actors, a better understanding of their motivations and the regulatory implications of their actions is needed. This dissertation responds to the questions, what motivates corporate social advocacy? How does information circulate in advocacy events? What issues are compatible with corporate social advocacy? And what role does corporate social advocacy play towards governing online content? To answer these questions, it analyzes three public controversies over online content, representing the advertising-supported environment of social media and non-advertising supported environments such as online infrastructure services and gaming and provides a thematic analysis of the professional communications industry perspective on social advocacy controversy. It takes a framework based in a functional public sphere and draws on theories of economies of worth to position corporate social advocacies as “tests of justification” that are revealing of the normative standards applied to commercial advocacy and governance of content. It finds that while controversies can push companies beyond “owned” issues and change the treatment of certain content, the resource intensive and publicly damaging nature of the controversies incentivise controversy-averse approach to moderation, which can chill the creation of content seen as outside the mainstream.

show abstract

“…Contrary to burgeoning interest on this issue in the business world, the current research tends to focus on customer actions regarding brand activism (Hong and Li, 2021; Mukherjee and Althuizen, 2020), there is limited number of studies focusing on employees (Avery, 2011; Maiorescu, 2017; Reyes, 2021; Lee, 2021b). The brand advocacy research focusing on employees is also limited (Badrinarayanan and Sierra, 2018; Tanwar and Prasad, 2016; Schepers and Nijssen, 2018; Sakka and Ahammad, 2020; Thelen, 2020; Gammoh et al , 2020).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Employees’ online brand advocacy behaviors as a response to justice and emotion

Aksoy

¹

,

Yazici

²

,

Duzenci

³

2023

JPBM

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Purpose This study aims to focus on the information sharing behavior of employees in the context of online brand advocacy based on the cognition–affection–behavior framework. Design/methodology/approach Online surveys were distributed to 840 employees, and the gathered data was analyzed by using structural equation modeling. Findings The effects of perceived organizational justice, employee emotions, organizational trust on online brand advocacy and the moderating role of organizational identification were empirically supported in this study. Noteworthy exceptions to these findings included the lack of evidence of the effect of informational justice on emotions, the effect of procedural justice on negative emotion and the effect of negative emotion on online brand advocacy. Originality/value This study expands brand activism research by investigating online brand advocacy and the employee context. Moreover, this work also extends online brand advocacy research through the employee points of view.

show abstract

Spinning at the Border: Employee Activism in ‘Big PR’

Cited by 7 publications

References 20 publications

Chasing the Mainstream: Corporate Social Advocacy and Online Content Governance

Chasing the Mainstream: Corporate Social Advocacy and Online Content Governance

Chasing the Mainstream: Corporate Social Advocacy and Online Content Governance

Employees’ online brand advocacy behaviors as a response to justice and emotion

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About