Fabienne Bünzli

News value theory aims to predict a story’s chance of being selected for publication based on news factors and ascribed news values. News values can also predict the coverage of corporate press releases. For news decisions, a newspaper’s revenue model may force editors to consider whether the source of a press release is an advertising client, despite the ‘separation of church and state’. In addition, for business journalism, corporate press releases have become an increasingly important news source. This study combines news values and advertiser weight to predict news coverage of press releases of banks in the news of partly and fully advertising-funded newspapers in Switzerland. Results show that advertiser importance can explain press release coverage concerning article length and tone in few cases, but has no universal news value. Public relations material is also not used as editorial subsidy for news. Larger companies are more successful in terms of press release uptake. However, their articles consist of a greater share of non-public relations material. Thus, our findings confirm editorial independence instead of copy-paste or obsequious journalism.

Stakeholder management’s popularity is a double-edged sword: while the approach has established itself in research fields such as business communication, the myriad of different definitions and frameworks makes it difficult to capture its essence. Based on a review of literature, we therefore provide a communication-oriented synthesis of stakeholder management in terms of its underlying assumptions and practical implications. We argue that developing an appropriate communication strategy tailored to the attitudes of an organization’s relevant interest groups lies at the heart of stakeholder management. Drawing on a process perspective, we show that the reviewed stakeholder management concepts all converge regarding three core phases. Moreover, we discover that these concepts can be categorized into two different proceeding methods. We also state that communication is a critical factor for strategy implementation outcomes. Dealing with the application fields of stakeholder management, we further identify three lines of argumentation and their implications for organizational communication.

This case study shows how social media analytics impact the way that the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) engages with its stakeholders in humanitarian crises. Referring to the organization’s mission in one African context, the case illustrates the role that social media analytics played in detecting an unexpected stakeholder constellation and in strengthening the ICRC’s presence as protection provider. Through the case study, students learn what "managing stakeholders" means for an international humanitarian nonprofit organization that helps and protects victims of humanitarian crises. The case also shows the significance of social media analytics as a complementary decision-making tool to clarify stakeholder constellations, understand interests of key actors, and engage with them. Analyzing this case should enable students to evaluate the role of social media analytics for a humanitarian organization’s mission, understand the challenges of such tools, and to develop strategic communication approaches to make insights from social media analyses actionable.

Nonprofit organizations have eagerly embraced Facebook as a strategic tool to reach out to their stakeholders and cultivate relationships with them. An important indicator for the success of these relationship-building efforts is the extent to which they foster engagement in the form of likes, comments, and shares (Saxton & Waters, 2014; Smith, 2018). Although Facebook is a predominantly visual media, research on the efficacy of visual relationship-building is scarce (Eftekhar et al., 2014; Smith, 2018). A handful of studies suggests that nonprofit organizations can significantly increase user engagement by adding photos to their posts (Brubaker & Wilson, 2018; Kim & Yang, 2017; Smith, 2018; Strekalova & Krieger, 2017). However, missing from current knowledge is what specific types of photos may facilitate relationship building and boost user engagement.