Date Available

4-27-2018

Year of Publication

2018

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Document Type

Master's Thesis

College

Communication and Information

Department/School/Program

Communication

First Advisor

Dr. Phillip Hutchison

Abstract

Organizational-public relations discourse is changing given the advent of social media, and corporate statements are evaluated under different criteria in the digital age. Grounding Budweiser’s response to controversy over their 2017 Super Bowl advertisement in terms of consumer expectations for corporate social responsibility provides a new perspective for approaching Bostdorff and Vibbert’s (1994) conceptualization of values advocacy. This study recognizes the power of the rhetorical stakeholder, a discursively created public, and demands re-evaluation of the values common to society from a co-creational OPR perspective. Conceptualizing dialectic values advocacy outlines the changing values among contemporary, common stakeholders as well as the means for communicating these values superficially to promote unanimity among publics and organizations. Previously successful universal values like unity and patriotism have since been replaced with sensationalism and discord; formally engendering these values through ambiguous controversy allows an organization to strategically construct audience perceptions of reputation.

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

https://doi.org/10.13023/ETD.2018.096

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