August 12, 2019

By Jessica Myrick, Pennsylvania State University

People like stories. More than we even realize, we organize our societies and daily lives around narratives. We feel more comfortable when we know the background plot before being presented with a new crucial bit of information. Stories tend to stick with us longer, too, whereas bullet point lists of facts can easily slip our mind.

Science communication scholars have caught on to the notion that stories are powerful ways to… More

July 26, 2019

By Lewen Wei, Penn State Ph.D. student

Environmentally-focused corporate social responsibility (CSR) helps to create and maintain a favorable corporate image as it appeals to stakeholders and publics who appreciate efforts in environmental protection and sustainable operations.

Despite those promising benefits, using such CSR in a corporate crisis can subject companies to undesirable suspicion as people are likely to consider CSR in this context more as “front-stage performance” to solve the crisis, and not sincere efforts for… More

July 25, 2019

By Juliana Fernandes and Weiting Tao, University of Miami, and Yi Grace Ji, Virginia Commonwealth University

Repetition permeates our lives. Every day we are exposed to numerous stimuli that are repeated multiple times.

Just think about your news consumption routine. You open your Facebook page and there is a news story about an important sociopolitical issue. You then open your email and the media sources you subscribe to alert you about the same story.

Later in… More

July 15, 2019

By Yen-I Lee, Washington State University; Xuerong Lu, University of Georgia doctoral student; Yan Jin, University of Georgia

#MeToo, the most impactful social movement campaign in recent memory, has spread around the world through social media. One of the key questions is what makes social movement messages, like #MeToo, go viral in the increasingly complex and competitive social media environment.

Previous studies say narrative framing and visual framing can facilitate a public’s message selection and sharing behaviors… More

June 24, 2019

By Jenny Zhengye Hou, Queensland University of Technology

Let me set the scene for you. You are a government communication officer and today is the anniversary of a tragic international disaster. For example, it could be the anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001, the Wenchuan earthquake in 2008, or the Christchurch mass shooting in March of this year.

You open the newspapers or browse social media content and sense strong, mostly negative feelings among the… More

June 18, 2019

By Jeff Conlin and Guolan Yang, Penn State Ph.D. candidates

What do honoring women warriors, spurring local business growth and spotting “Big Foot” in corporate America have in common?

Well, not much. Except these topics were among the most popular political video storylines of advertisements that ran during the 2018 midterm elections. In today’s fragmented and polarized media environment, a well-crafted story may hold unique abilities to convince voters who otherwise might not be… More