Speak Up!: Advocacy, Activism, and Critical CSR

This study examines experiences of those who volunteered with March For Our Lives (MFOL) to organize protests on June 11, 2022 and their responses to a call to organize following the Robb Elementary School shooting. Their responses were analyzed using the anger activism model (AAM). Through nine interviews, this study examines how anger, response and self-efficacy, and message processing all played a role in the participants' decisions. Analyses revealed that the participants' anger was sparked by the crisis and that the participants prioritized the existence of a crisis response over a specific response. Also, several participants felt unprepared to take on this task but felt their self-efficacy increased due to support from MFOL. Finally, most of the participants responded quickly to the call to organize and described not thinking through the decision before making it. These findings present direction for how AAM can be further examined in crisis contexts. 

PR research about social movements speaks to the approaches and effectiveness of social change efforts and the conflict between activists and the organizations or social forces they oppose. Building on this research, this study explicates how mental health advocates/activists perceive convergence and divergence within the U.S. mental health social movement to account for such tensions within PR theory. It presents literature about social movements and PR, explains U.S. mental health social movement philosophies, and showcases findings from interviews with mental health advocate/activists (38). Findings suggest that participants across movement philosophies share visions of change but diverge on approaches to actualize such visions. Participants share strategies of connecting to other social movements and staying hopeful. This study also considers implications for PR theory about convergence/divergence within social movements and introduces the sociological concept of social movement spillover to illuminate the non-linearity and multifaceted-ness of social progress. 

Drawing on legitimacy theory, this study examines how polarized public responses on Twitter affect interactive engagement and perceived motivations for brands' advocacy campaigns. Results indicate that in both Nike and Gillette groups, participants with high and moderate levels of value alignment and exposed to supportive messages yielded higher intentions of engagement than participants with low levels of value alignment. When evaluating brands' motivations for corporate social advocacy, results showed that participants with low levels of value alignment and exposed to positive social media messages became more likely to support the motives of brands' campaigns than participants with moderate and high levels of value alignment. Qualitative evidence shows that most participants voiced strong support for brands' CSA campaigns, and some even expressed intentions to protect the brands under attack. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed. 

This paper examines major AI companies' corporate social responsibility (CSR) communication of responsible artificial intelligence (AI). AI companies deliberately avoid defining their communication on responsible AI as CSR to avoid their social responsibility towards their affected publics, but this paper argues that these communications require CSR scrutiny. Guided by critical theory approaches in public relations literature (corporate historical responsibility (CHR), corporate responsibility to race (CRR), and critical humanism for public relations), a qualitative textual analysis of the blog posts of four major AI companies (Google, Meta, Microsoft, and OpenAI) revealed several strategic choices these companies have made when communicating responsible AI, which did not acknowledge their historical injustice and excluded historically-marginalized publics. Recommendations for future CSR communication of responsible AI included ensuring the direct engagement of affected publics and explicitly acknowledging historical injustice.