May 23, 2023 • Jonathan McVerry

Page Center scholar Nicole O’Donnell, assistant professor at Washington State University, studies the relationship between role models and the people they inspire. She has a particular interest in the health and prosocial behaviors of both groups. O’Donnell has conducted several studies in this area, including one funded by the Page Center in 2021 that viewed CEOs as role models. A recent proposal was funded as part of the Center’s 2023 research call on prosocial communication. That… More

May 16, 2023

By Anli Xiao, University of South Carolina, and Christen Buckley, Pennsylvania State University

As CSA is inherently controversial, determining how companies can communicate with people who oppose their stance on the issue is critical for companies to strategically orient their CSA efforts. As part of our grant from the. Page Center, we launched two studies directed toward diametrically opposed stakeholder groups, one of which was directed toward those who are on the other side of the… More

May 16, 2023

By Anli Xiao, University of South Carolina, and Christen Buckley, Pennsylvania State University

The 2023 Edelman Trust Barometers reports that 53% of globally surveyed consumers believe their countries are more divided today than ever before and report an increasing lack of trust in government and nongovernmental entities.

In fact, they reported that businesses are currently perceived as the only competent and ethical institutions, but that they still need to contribute more. Increasingly polarized political identities… More

May 1, 2023

By Chuqing Dong, Michigan State University and Jordan Morehouse, Clemson University

While government public relations practitioners are constantly challenged by poor public trust, we have limited knowledge about how to foster organization-public relationships (OPR) in the public sector. Building and sustaining quality relationships with diverse publics presents distinct difficulties for government entities as compared to their corporate and nonprofit counterparts.

Governments, for example, do not get to choose “strategic publics,” but must serve all publics… More

April 26, 2023 • Tara Wyckoff

Editor's Note: Special thanks to Joseph Niedziejko for helping with this project.

I recently attended the Institute for Public Relations Bridge Conference where practitioners and professors were mostly talking artificial intelligence. It struck me that practitioners were saying that they anticipate that new graduates will be very adept and interested in using AI, and they were looking at these digital natives to help sort out how AI can impact their work.

In my limited, informal classroom research (show… More

April 24, 2023

By Erin Willis, University of Colorado-Boulder; Erin Schauster, University of Colorado-Boulder; Maria Len-Rios, University of Georgia;  and Marjorie Delbaere, University of Saskatchewan

Social media influencers are gaining in popularity and in influence. Patient influence is a strategic practice used by pharmaceutical marketers to engage directly with consumers. It reflects the patient-centered approach to healthcare and consumers’ reliance on influencer recommendations. Patient influencers carefully curate and share their disease experience with followers attempting to create… More