Transparency is a complex and multifaceted communication phenomenon. In the current environment, ... more Transparency is a complex and multifaceted communication phenomenon. In the current environment, demands for organizational transparency now come from a wide range of entities we term visibility agents, ranging from nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and global networks, on one hand, to activist coalitions and automated surveillance agents, on the other. We develop a framework to conceive of such visibility agents and the range of transparency demands that they make in the context of environmental issues, positing that visibility agents significantly shape and diversify transparency practices. We identify four major relationships between visibility agents and organizations— inquisitorial, adversarial, associative, and advocative—which are associated with specific kinds of transparency demands, requests, and imperatives: accountability, monitoring, disclosure, and secrecy. We illustrate each set of relationships with examples of environmental reporting practices, one of the most pr...
Revue Française des Sciences de l’Information et de la Communication, Dec 31, 2018
The Center for Information Technology and Society (CITS) at the University of California Santa Ba... more The Center for Information Technology and Society (CITS) at the University of California Santa Barbara (UCSB) is a multidisciplinary center with affiliated faculty from 16 departments spanning the Social Sciences, Humanities, Education, and Engineering. The Center’s overarching goal is to discover and apply integrated knowledge from these diverse perspectives to understand and guide the development, use, and effects of information technologies in contemporary society. To achieve our goals, CI...
This dissertation describes and measures the basic attributes of young children\u27s social netwo... more This dissertation describes and measures the basic attributes of young children\u27s social networks and examines how these attributes relate to children\u27s levels of communicative competence. Two measures were developed: (a) a social network inventory used to measure the formal and substantive attributes of children\u27s social networks including the size, degree of interconnectedness, clustering, diversity, content and role multiplexity, satisfaction, continuity, frequency of interaction, and proximity of networks, and (b) a measure of young children\u27s communicative competence based upon teachers\u27 perceptions of children\u27s performance of four functional competencies: controlling, heuristic, informative, and expressive, as well as sociolinguistic and interactive competencies. Based upon interviews with 55 mothers, a total of 965 links were identified as significant people within preschool children\u27s networks. Systematic differences in component linkages and communicative patterns were identified. Using Smallest Space Analysis (Lingoes, 1973), eight types of network structures emerged. Significant differences in network size, degree of interconnectedness, percentage of kin, percentage of members living in the child\u27s household, frequency of interaction, and number of people who participate in creative, physical, educational, play, and communication activities and go on special outings with the child were found among network structures. Three daycare center teachers filled out competence measures for each child. The results indicated high reliability among teacher ratings. Teachers perceived that children\u27s communicative performance varied along two dimensions--effectiveness and politeness both strongly associated with overall assessments of competence. Females were reported to be significantly more competent than males and older children were evaluated as significantly more competent than younger children. The overall results suggest that children who were perceived to be more competent than other children had large, multiclustered networks with relatively low degrees of interconnectedness, high interaction frequency rates, and large numbers of people who participated in communication activities and special outings. The least competent children were isolated between two small and highly interconnected homogeneous clusters of network members. Two themes run throughout the interpretation of the results. First, based upon Bernstein\u27s (1971) sociolinguistic theory, the advantages of increased diverse social interaction are discussed. Second, the advantage and strength of weak ties (Granovetter, 1973) are highlighted
Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, Oct 18, 2019
A central proposition of the "business case" for corporate social responsibility (CSR) is that a ... more A central proposition of the "business case" for corporate social responsibility (CSR) is that a company's CSR practices are linked to consumer behavior and a firm's financial performance through reputational mechanisms. This study addresses the equivocal support for this proposition through an empirical analysis of the survey items most often used to assess a company's CSR and its stakeholder reputation. This study tests the congruence among nine different measures of environmental, social, and governance dimensions of CSR and a public corporate reputation measure. Two distinct factors are identified-direct CSR impact and assessment/reputation-suggesting that the global corporate reputation does not capture tangible CSR impact (environment and social) and is only congruent with a measure of intangible CSR performance (governance). The study highlights the importance of taking a multidimensional approach. Addressing measurement issues helps unpack the theoretical and practical link between CSR and corporate reputation and provides strategic guidance when planning CSR business and communication strategies.
This study explores the appropriation of traditional media content in an online protest context a... more This study explores the appropriation of traditional media content in an online protest context and highlights the significance of legacy media to activists' communication practices online. Appropriation refers to the direct transfer of content originally produced in traditional media into social media posts. Focusing on the massive 2015 South Korean protests in opposition to the government's decision to issue a single state-history textbook, a content analysis of activists' posts on three social media platforms finds that activists utilize traditional media content to a greater degree than personalized action frames. Interviews suggest that activists are motivated to appropriate legacy media's content by their need for legitimacy and expediency. Platform type was closely associated with the frequency and type of activists' appropriation.
Annals of the International Communication Association, 1993
It's difficult to believe that small group communication research was so theorybarren in the 1970... more It's difficult to believe that small group communication research was so theorybarren in the 1970's when one considers how theory-rich it was in the 1980's. Three theories (functional, structurational, and symbolic convergence) dominate the decade and should continue to produce impressive gains in the 1990's, but not without difficulty.-Cragan & Wright, 1990, p. 226 F UNCTIONAL theory has generated a great deal of scholarly discussion and communication research. The basic premise of the perspective, that communication serves task functions and the accomplishment of those functions should be associated with effective group decisions, is intuitively appealing and sensible. Functional theory stimulated an empirical positivist tradition that was a welcome and needed antidote to the overly psychologized small group research of the 1970s. The corpus of functional research studies has made an important contribution to our field. As Cragan and Wright note, however, there will be some difficulty in building upon the functional foundation in the 1990s. Gouran, Hirokawa, Julian, and Leatham observe in the preceding chapter that the evolution of the perspective has slowed and "its vitality would undoubtedly be enhanced by the infusion of some new lines of thinking" (p. 594). It is in this spirit that we offer our response to their chapter. Our basic argument is this: Functional theory as formulated by Gouran et a1. presents a restricted view of groups that constrains us from addressing the very concerns that they identify. We will show how the functional perspective,
PART ONE: ORGANIZATIONS AS NETWORKS Connectedness-in-Action A Network Perspective PART TWO: THE C... more PART ONE: ORGANIZATIONS AS NETWORKS Connectedness-in-Action A Network Perspective PART TWO: THE COMPLEX MATRIX Messages Relationships PART THREE: LINKING COMMUNICATION AND ORGANIZATION Hierarchy Participation Conclusion
Transparency is a complex and multifaceted communication phenomenon. In the current environment, ... more Transparency is a complex and multifaceted communication phenomenon. In the current environment, demands for organizational transparency now come from a wide range of entities we term visibility agents, ranging from nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and global networks, on one hand, to activist coalitions and automated surveillance agents, on the other. We develop a framework to conceive of such visibility agents and the range of transparency demands that they make in the context of environmental issues, positing that visibility agents significantly shape and diversify transparency practices. We identify four major relationships between visibility agents and organizations— inquisitorial, adversarial, associative, and advocative—which are associated with specific kinds of transparency demands, requests, and imperatives: accountability, monitoring, disclosure, and secrecy. We illustrate each set of relationships with examples of environmental reporting practices, one of the most prominent areas of transparency management. Implications for both theory and research on transparency are discussed.
6 Technological change and the shifting nature of political organization Bruce Bimber, Cynthia St... more 6 Technological change and the shifting nature of political organization Bruce Bimber, Cynthia Stohl, and ... interaction as generative of trust and norms of reciprocity that constitute social capital. ... bers, namely the paucity of opportunities for individual members to shape the agenda ...
Interaction and Engagement in an Era of Technological Change Challenging the notion that digital ... more Interaction and Engagement in an Era of Technological Change Challenging the notion that digital media render traditional, formal organizations irrelevant, this book offers a new theory of collective action and organizing. Based on extensive surveys and interviews with members of three influential and distinctive organizations in the United States-The American Legion, AARP, and MoveOnthe authors reconceptualize collective action as a phenomenon in which technology enhances people's ability to cross boundaries in order to interact with one another and engage with organizations. By developing a theory of collective action space, Bruce Bimber, Andrew J. Flanagin, and Cynthia Stohl explore how people's attitudes, behaviors, motivations, goals, and digital-media use are related to their organizational involvement. They find that using technology does not necessarily make people more likely to act collectively but contributes to a diversity of "participatory styles," which hinge on people's interaction with one another and the extent to which they shape organizational agendas. In the digital-media age, organizations do not simply recruit people into roles; they also provide contexts in which people are able to construct their own collective experiences.
The business case for CSR argues that it is most profitable when it distinguishes the company fro... more The business case for CSR argues that it is most profitable when it distinguishes the company from its competitors. However, empirical evidence of the positive relationship between CSR and consumer behavior is mixed. Taking a longitudinal approach, this study examines the degree to which CSR is associated with the online assessments of products from two companies within the same sector: TOMS, an 'intrinsic CSR' shoe company where CSR efforts permeate its business model, and BOBS, a line of shoes from Skechers, and an 'extrinsic CSR' company where CSR efforts are not embedded within its overall business operations. A content analysis of over 3000 Amazon reviews for BOBS and TOMS shoes shows that over time, reviewers become less focused on CSR corporate identity and more concerned with the tangible features of the product. The implications of the findings for the connection between CSR and consumer buying behaviors are discussed.
Transparency is a complex and multifaceted communication phenomenon. In the current environment, ... more Transparency is a complex and multifaceted communication phenomenon. In the current environment, demands for organizational transparency now come from a wide range of entities we term visibility agents, ranging from nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and global networks, on one hand, to activist coalitions and automated surveillance agents, on the other. We develop a framework to conceive of such visibility agents and the range of transparency demands that they make in the context of environmental issues, positing that visibility agents significantly shape and diversify transparency practices. We identify four major relationships between visibility agents and organizations— inquisitorial, adversarial, associative, and advocative—which are associated with specific kinds of transparency demands, requests, and imperatives: accountability, monitoring, disclosure, and secrecy. We illustrate each set of relationships with examples of environmental reporting practices, one of the most pr...
Revue Française des Sciences de l’Information et de la Communication, Dec 31, 2018
The Center for Information Technology and Society (CITS) at the University of California Santa Ba... more The Center for Information Technology and Society (CITS) at the University of California Santa Barbara (UCSB) is a multidisciplinary center with affiliated faculty from 16 departments spanning the Social Sciences, Humanities, Education, and Engineering. The Center’s overarching goal is to discover and apply integrated knowledge from these diverse perspectives to understand and guide the development, use, and effects of information technologies in contemporary society. To achieve our goals, CI...
This dissertation describes and measures the basic attributes of young children\u27s social netwo... more This dissertation describes and measures the basic attributes of young children\u27s social networks and examines how these attributes relate to children\u27s levels of communicative competence. Two measures were developed: (a) a social network inventory used to measure the formal and substantive attributes of children\u27s social networks including the size, degree of interconnectedness, clustering, diversity, content and role multiplexity, satisfaction, continuity, frequency of interaction, and proximity of networks, and (b) a measure of young children\u27s communicative competence based upon teachers\u27 perceptions of children\u27s performance of four functional competencies: controlling, heuristic, informative, and expressive, as well as sociolinguistic and interactive competencies. Based upon interviews with 55 mothers, a total of 965 links were identified as significant people within preschool children\u27s networks. Systematic differences in component linkages and communicative patterns were identified. Using Smallest Space Analysis (Lingoes, 1973), eight types of network structures emerged. Significant differences in network size, degree of interconnectedness, percentage of kin, percentage of members living in the child\u27s household, frequency of interaction, and number of people who participate in creative, physical, educational, play, and communication activities and go on special outings with the child were found among network structures. Three daycare center teachers filled out competence measures for each child. The results indicated high reliability among teacher ratings. Teachers perceived that children\u27s communicative performance varied along two dimensions--effectiveness and politeness both strongly associated with overall assessments of competence. Females were reported to be significantly more competent than males and older children were evaluated as significantly more competent than younger children. The overall results suggest that children who were perceived to be more competent than other children had large, multiclustered networks with relatively low degrees of interconnectedness, high interaction frequency rates, and large numbers of people who participated in communication activities and special outings. The least competent children were isolated between two small and highly interconnected homogeneous clusters of network members. Two themes run throughout the interpretation of the results. First, based upon Bernstein\u27s (1971) sociolinguistic theory, the advantages of increased diverse social interaction are discussed. Second, the advantage and strength of weak ties (Granovetter, 1973) are highlighted
Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, Oct 18, 2019
A central proposition of the "business case" for corporate social responsibility (CSR) is that a ... more A central proposition of the "business case" for corporate social responsibility (CSR) is that a company's CSR practices are linked to consumer behavior and a firm's financial performance through reputational mechanisms. This study addresses the equivocal support for this proposition through an empirical analysis of the survey items most often used to assess a company's CSR and its stakeholder reputation. This study tests the congruence among nine different measures of environmental, social, and governance dimensions of CSR and a public corporate reputation measure. Two distinct factors are identified-direct CSR impact and assessment/reputation-suggesting that the global corporate reputation does not capture tangible CSR impact (environment and social) and is only congruent with a measure of intangible CSR performance (governance). The study highlights the importance of taking a multidimensional approach. Addressing measurement issues helps unpack the theoretical and practical link between CSR and corporate reputation and provides strategic guidance when planning CSR business and communication strategies.
This study explores the appropriation of traditional media content in an online protest context a... more This study explores the appropriation of traditional media content in an online protest context and highlights the significance of legacy media to activists' communication practices online. Appropriation refers to the direct transfer of content originally produced in traditional media into social media posts. Focusing on the massive 2015 South Korean protests in opposition to the government's decision to issue a single state-history textbook, a content analysis of activists' posts on three social media platforms finds that activists utilize traditional media content to a greater degree than personalized action frames. Interviews suggest that activists are motivated to appropriate legacy media's content by their need for legitimacy and expediency. Platform type was closely associated with the frequency and type of activists' appropriation.
Annals of the International Communication Association, 1993
It's difficult to believe that small group communication research was so theorybarren in the 1970... more It's difficult to believe that small group communication research was so theorybarren in the 1970's when one considers how theory-rich it was in the 1980's. Three theories (functional, structurational, and symbolic convergence) dominate the decade and should continue to produce impressive gains in the 1990's, but not without difficulty.-Cragan & Wright, 1990, p. 226 F UNCTIONAL theory has generated a great deal of scholarly discussion and communication research. The basic premise of the perspective, that communication serves task functions and the accomplishment of those functions should be associated with effective group decisions, is intuitively appealing and sensible. Functional theory stimulated an empirical positivist tradition that was a welcome and needed antidote to the overly psychologized small group research of the 1970s. The corpus of functional research studies has made an important contribution to our field. As Cragan and Wright note, however, there will be some difficulty in building upon the functional foundation in the 1990s. Gouran, Hirokawa, Julian, and Leatham observe in the preceding chapter that the evolution of the perspective has slowed and "its vitality would undoubtedly be enhanced by the infusion of some new lines of thinking" (p. 594). It is in this spirit that we offer our response to their chapter. Our basic argument is this: Functional theory as formulated by Gouran et a1. presents a restricted view of groups that constrains us from addressing the very concerns that they identify. We will show how the functional perspective,
PART ONE: ORGANIZATIONS AS NETWORKS Connectedness-in-Action A Network Perspective PART TWO: THE C... more PART ONE: ORGANIZATIONS AS NETWORKS Connectedness-in-Action A Network Perspective PART TWO: THE COMPLEX MATRIX Messages Relationships PART THREE: LINKING COMMUNICATION AND ORGANIZATION Hierarchy Participation Conclusion
Transparency is a complex and multifaceted communication phenomenon. In the current environment, ... more Transparency is a complex and multifaceted communication phenomenon. In the current environment, demands for organizational transparency now come from a wide range of entities we term visibility agents, ranging from nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and global networks, on one hand, to activist coalitions and automated surveillance agents, on the other. We develop a framework to conceive of such visibility agents and the range of transparency demands that they make in the context of environmental issues, positing that visibility agents significantly shape and diversify transparency practices. We identify four major relationships between visibility agents and organizations— inquisitorial, adversarial, associative, and advocative—which are associated with specific kinds of transparency demands, requests, and imperatives: accountability, monitoring, disclosure, and secrecy. We illustrate each set of relationships with examples of environmental reporting practices, one of the most prominent areas of transparency management. Implications for both theory and research on transparency are discussed.
6 Technological change and the shifting nature of political organization Bruce Bimber, Cynthia St... more 6 Technological change and the shifting nature of political organization Bruce Bimber, Cynthia Stohl, and ... interaction as generative of trust and norms of reciprocity that constitute social capital. ... bers, namely the paucity of opportunities for individual members to shape the agenda ...
Interaction and Engagement in an Era of Technological Change Challenging the notion that digital ... more Interaction and Engagement in an Era of Technological Change Challenging the notion that digital media render traditional, formal organizations irrelevant, this book offers a new theory of collective action and organizing. Based on extensive surveys and interviews with members of three influential and distinctive organizations in the United States-The American Legion, AARP, and MoveOnthe authors reconceptualize collective action as a phenomenon in which technology enhances people's ability to cross boundaries in order to interact with one another and engage with organizations. By developing a theory of collective action space, Bruce Bimber, Andrew J. Flanagin, and Cynthia Stohl explore how people's attitudes, behaviors, motivations, goals, and digital-media use are related to their organizational involvement. They find that using technology does not necessarily make people more likely to act collectively but contributes to a diversity of "participatory styles," which hinge on people's interaction with one another and the extent to which they shape organizational agendas. In the digital-media age, organizations do not simply recruit people into roles; they also provide contexts in which people are able to construct their own collective experiences.
The business case for CSR argues that it is most profitable when it distinguishes the company fro... more The business case for CSR argues that it is most profitable when it distinguishes the company from its competitors. However, empirical evidence of the positive relationship between CSR and consumer behavior is mixed. Taking a longitudinal approach, this study examines the degree to which CSR is associated with the online assessments of products from two companies within the same sector: TOMS, an 'intrinsic CSR' shoe company where CSR efforts permeate its business model, and BOBS, a line of shoes from Skechers, and an 'extrinsic CSR' company where CSR efforts are not embedded within its overall business operations. A content analysis of over 3000 Amazon reviews for BOBS and TOMS shoes shows that over time, reviewers become less focused on CSR corporate identity and more concerned with the tangible features of the product. The implications of the findings for the connection between CSR and consumer buying behaviors are discussed.
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Papers by Cynthia Stohl