Burton St. John

University of Colorado Boulder | CUB · Advertising, Public Relations & Media Design

Purpose This study is concerned with the dynamics of the internal communications at Netflix following the release of The Closer and the public debate that followed, testing Netflix's long-standing reputation for promoting diverse content and supporting a progressive organizational culture. Design/methodology/approach Using the circuit of culture (...

In the fall of 2018, fracking interests in Colorado initiated a public relations campaign against Proposition 112 – a measure that these interests perceived as an emergent threat to their continued viability. This thematic analysis reviewed the messaging used by the industry and its supporters as it appeared across 1,515 text articles (e.g., news a...

After the January 6th, 2021, riots at the U.S. Capitol, it seemed clear that the public sphere in the U.S. was being challenged by political extremists. Yet, existing public sphere normative theories provide unsatisfying tools for explaining why the riots occurred. Participants in the contemporary U.S. public sphere do not seem to recognize the leg...

makes the case that, over the past generation, public relations has taken what the editors see as a "humanistic turn." It is a turn in six dimensions: first, away from the limitations that had narrowed the enterprise of PR to nothing more than management communications or organizational communication; second, beyond the twentieth-century paradigm t...

An experimental study was conducted to see what impact varying the level of self-disclosure by a journalist, as well as providing information about why and how a story is being covered, has on the perceived credibility of the journalist, the story, and the organization for which the journalist works. A study was conducted that included 885 particip...

Interagency coordination is crucial for effective multiagency disaster management. Viewing government and emergency management organizations as vital components of citizens' disaster communication ecology, this study examines how a group of Texas-based public health departments and emergency management offices engaged in interagency coordination du...

Adaptation to sea level rise (SLR) requires coordination among local, state, and federal entities and collaboration across governments, nonprofits, businesses, and residents. This coordination and collaboration are reflected in institutional arrangements associated with a whole-of-government and whole-of-community approach to regional adaptation. T...

In 2018, the fracking industry in Colorado embarked on a public relations initiative to defeat Proposition 112, a measure that the industry saw as an existential threat. This study reviewed the messaging used by the fracking industry and its supporters, examining 1,515 text articles (e.g., news accounts, op-eds, etc.) and also 38 Facebook posts fro...

A review of public journalism journal articles from 1991 through 2018 revealed significant gaps in (a) conceptualizing the public sphere, and (b) ascertaining the credibility of public journalism efforts. These gaps have implications for a press that is becoming increasingly challenged in an era of self-curated news selection and polarization. This...

In 2018, Disney launched a Marvel Rising transmedia campaign introducing a line of female superhero dolls and supporting media narratives across Disney XD, Marvel Comics, and Hasbro toys. Utilizing textual and industry analysis, we find that the concentration of ownership and the need to attract a new clientele resulted in a “commercialized feminis...

The Action-Oriented Stakeholder Engagement for a Resilient Tomorrow (ASERT) framework enables a participatory approach for adaptation actions related to social-ecological resilience to sea level rise. This framework was field-tested in the Hampton Roads region of coastal Southeastern Virginia in 2016. Results show that structured public involvement...

This experimental study examined whether stories presented on Facebook that appeared to be from a news organization were rated as higher in perceived credibility than stories that appeared to be from a non-news organization. One-hundred-and-seven participants took part in the online study. One group saw stories that appeared to be from a news organ...

Journalists, disheartened in the decade after World War I by their role in spreading domestic wartime propaganda, attempted to restore press integrity through new, professional principles and practices. These efforts to re-assert the press’ standing included an active resistance to the contemporaneous rise of propaganda offered by the domestic publ...

This study focuses on adaptation to sea level rise (SLR) in the specific context of the Hampton Roads region of southeastern coastal Virginia. It analyzes the perspectives of stakeholders who are experts in and have experience with SLR to develop an informed understanding of the region’s ability to address SLR and its readiness to pursue adaptation...

Cases in Public Relations Strategy draws on original, real-world case studies to provide students with a strategic approach to meeting the needs of a client before, during, and beyond a campaign. Using the RACE (Research, Action Planning, Communication, and Evaluation) model, students explore successful contemporary campaigns and evaluate best prac...

This case study describes a region‐wide, multi‐sectoral, and whole‐of‐community stakeholder engagement approach for addressing sea level rise (SLR) and flooding. This approach was implemented through a university‐led community engagement event, the Hampton Roads Resilient Region Reality Check (H4RC), which allowed an examination of its effectivenes...

This article describes a participatory geographical information system (PGIS) demonstration project used as part of the stakeholder engagement efforts undertaken by the Citizen Engagement Working Group of the Hampton Roads Sea Level Rise Preparedness and Resilience Intergovernmental Planning Pilot Project. The PGIS demonstration project was conduct...

For much of the last century, large, predominantly US corporations used public relations to demonstrate that their missions resonated with dominant societal values. Through the construction and conveyance of the "corporate persona", they aimed to convince citizens that they share common aspirations - and moreover that their corporate "soul" works a...

This study focuses on challenges to adaptation to sea level rise (SLR) on a regional and multi-sectoral scale. We develop, test, and deploy a survey instrument that asks regional stakeholders to assess adaptation readiness and identify barriers to regional adaptation. Informed by the work of Ford and King (Mitig Adapt Strateg Glob Chang 20:505–526,...

There has been little policy effort to address sea level rise in coastal states in the US. It is important to examine, at the state level, how the multitude of different (and changing) actors with different preferences and perspectives contribute to such inertia. This study examines state-level legislative inaction with regards to sea level rise. U...

Scholars have long studied the relationships between professional journalists and public relations practitioners. However, public relations literature (both scholarly and trade) has not sufficiently examined the nature of the relationships between citizen journalists and public relations practitioners. This study addresses that gap through surveyin...

This study examines whether citizen journalists adhere to traditional journalistic norms when reporting. A nationwide survey and follow-up interviews with selected US citizen journalists showed they do consider traditional norms such as objectivity, gatekeeping, and balance to be very important. This is contrary to what some previous studies have f...

Reality television has customarily been studied as an arena where individuals perform who they are within episodic and often highly dramatic contexts. This work, however, finds that the program Undercover Boss offers a different approach: The corporate persona, embodied through the “undercover” top executive, interacts with front-line workers and,...

Beginning in the early 1970s, Mobil Oil's public relations, under the direction of Herbert Schmertz, attempted to demonstrate to Americans that the company acted like a person who worked to benefit society. With an approach he called "creative confrontation," Schmertz offered an adversarial stance toward the news media, coupled with inventive metho...

The acceleration of sea level rise (SLR) has become a threat to the stability of nation-states worldwide and associated with risks to environmental sustainability, economic infrastructure, and public health. However, from both an international and U.S. perspective, there is a lack of research examining legislative decision makers’ perceptions about...

Over the centuries, scholars have studied how individuals, institutions and groups have used various rhetorical stances to persuade others to pay attention to, believe in, and adopt a course of action. The emergence of public relations as an identifiable and discrete occupation in the early 20th century led scholars to describe this new iteration o...

Patch.com, an online community journalism platform, is focused on the reporting of local news at more than 900 communities across the United States. Scholars have observed that community journalists often display personal engagement in the stories that they report, and, envisioning their community, actively work to facilitate a sense of connection...

In the aftermath of the Great Depression, the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) faced growing antibusiness sentiment. In 1940, as part of a widespread propaganda campaign to assuage public concerns about industry and rehabilitate big business's reputation, NAM created and distributed the community relations short film, Your Town. The movi...

Modern mainstream journalism faces a very real disturbance of its foundational premise that credible news is gathered and articulated from an objective stance. This volume offers new examinations of how the traditional notion of objectivity is changing as professional journalists grapple with a rapidly evolving news terrain—one that has become incr...

In 2007, Virginia became the first state in the US to mandate the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine. In 2009, the mandate required that parents of girls entering sixth grade (ages 11-12) vaccinate their daughters or sign the 'opt-out' waiver. This investigation is the first to explore how both the news media and parents framed and responded to the...

Increasingly, Americans are turning away from the traditional press--especially newspapers--for the news of the day. In fact, by May 2009 a Pew survey revealed that 63 percent of Americans said they would not miss their paper if it ceased publishing. Other surveys have revealed that since the late 1990s, Americans have significant concerns about th...

Where does journalism fit in the media landscape of blogs, tweets, Facebook postings, YouTube videos, and literally billions of Web pages? Public Journalism 2.0 examines the ways that civic or public journalism is evolving, especially as audience-created content―sometimes referred to as citizen journalism or participatory journalism―becomes increa...

This review of Lee's tactics in the 1913–1914 rate campaign and the subsequent case he makes for ethical propaganda presents public relations practitioners and scholars with the opportunity to move beyond the progressive critique of propaganda and ask new questions about how propaganda can ethically contribute to dialogue and resolution within a de...

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Saint Louis University, 2005. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 212-219).