Jeong-Nam Kim

• Gaylord Family Endowed Chair of Strategic Communication at University of Oklahoma, Director, Debiasing and Lay Informatics (DaLI) Lab

Through a review of related research programs within the behavioral, strategic management paradigm in public relations, this article integrates the use of formative and evaluative research in two types of public relations problems. Aiming to propose a theory-driven guiding procedure for public relations practice, this article first defines 2 differ...

Computer-mediated communication, specifically blogs, has expanded the range of the communicative action of patients with chronic disease from information seeking to information forwarding. The authors examine the effects of these 2 types of communicative action on perceived affective and physical coping outcomes. Using a survey dataset of 254 chron...

Addressing criticisms about the current segmentation methods of publics in public relations, this study adopts a new theoretical framework of Communicative Action in Problem Solving (CAPS) in order to elaborate on J. E. Grunig (199718. Grunig , J. E. 1997 . “ A situational theory of publics: Conceptual history, recent challenges and new research ”...

In public relations, employees are regarded as one of the most important strategic constituencies because they interact with external publics on a daily basis. However, employees' communication behavior (ECB) has not been extensively researched in public relations. The purpose of this research was to conceptualize and develop concrete measurements...

This article introduces the situational theory of problem solving (theory of problem solving) as an extended and generalized version of the situational theory of publics (theory of publics). The theory of problem solving introduces a new concept, communicative action in problem solving, as its dependent variable. To explain communicative action, th...

Government agencies tasked with soliciting comments from the American public in response to changes in rulemaking have long been interested in finding effective techniques to automatically process spam comments, including flagging and filtering duplicate comments. Duplicate submissions are problematic because they obscure genuine public input and m...

This study focused on the role of Americans’ communication about COVID-19 vaccines, and its potential associations with two significant vaccine determinants. Two studies informed by the Situational Theory of Problem Solving (STOPS) were conducted. In the first, the researchers incorporated the intention to receive vaccination against the COVID-19 p...

Purpose Although belief in conspiracy theories has been researched since the 1970s, specific research on conspiratorial thinking in the workplace is scarce. Conspiratorial thinking could be fostered among employees in workplaces because of unequal power relations resulting from the organizational hierarchy. This study examines workplace conspiracy...

Extant research has examined country-of-origin (CoO) from a marketing perspective, examining the effects of consumers’ evaluations of a country’s image on attitudes toward products from the country. To advance research on CoO, there are calls to approach CoO from the perspectives of other disciplines. From the perspective of public relations, this...

This retrospective review of nearly a century of publications in Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly (JMCQ) traces the maturation of media studies toward a scientific discipline. The field’s dominant paradigms—media effects and communicator uses—persist, adapt, and diversify over time, yielding actionable insights. Challenges include (a) br...

We use the situational theory of problem solving to explicate how publics engage in conspiratorial thinking as a form of cognitive problem solving. In doing so, we develop a new typology of conspiracy theories and introduce conceptual definitions and operationalizations of conspiratorial thinking as both dispositional and situational. We conduct tw...

The internet was once seen as a beacon of hope for democratizing public access to information, but scholars argue that social media has led to frustration, isolation, and pseudo-information. This volume presents empirical studies exploring paths to potentially rebuild ideal communication situations, if ever, in the digital age and cope with digital...

The situational theory of problem solving (STOPS) was first published in 2011 as a generalized extension of the situational theory of publics (STP) (J.-N. Kim & Grunig, 2011). STP, which was first developed in the 1970s, explores how and why people do or do not use communication to cope with life situations (Grunig, 2003). Both theories were founde...

Publics can be understood as a subset of stakeholders. Unlike stakeholders, which refers to any individuals or entities that affect or are affected by organizations, publics is used in place of stakeholders in public relations as subsets of stakeholders who are segmented based on common characteristics (Rawlins, 2006). Segmentation is necessary bec...

Using an online survey conducted in China (N = 1089), this study aims to understand the characteristics of active publics on the issue of genetically modified (GM) foods and provide effective communication strategies with active publics in China. In doing so, this study segments active publics regarding GM foods and predicts their communicative beh...

Purpose The digital setting empowers users to actively engage in communicative actions. The problem is that this active communication can increase misjudgment in determining the facts around social issues. When this communication is integrated with partisan biases, the effects can be particularly detrimental. Our study tested whether active communi...

Today’s public sphere is largely shaped by a dynamic digital public space where lay people conform a commodified marketplace of ideas. Individuals trade, create, and generate information, as well as consume others’ content, whereby information as public space commodity splits between this type of content and that provided by the media, and governme...

Background The COVID-19 outbreak is no longer a pure epidemiological concern but a true digital infodemic. Numerous conflicting information and misinformation occupy online platforms and specifically social media. While we have lived in an infodemic environment for more than 2 years, we are more prone to feel overwhelmed by the information and suff...

Purpose This research aims to examine how two management strategies (symmetrical communication and inclusive management) work in handling workplace conflicts (interpersonal/organizational levels), especially with regard to employee advocacy and job turnover intentions. Design/methodology/approach A total of three employee survey datasets were used...

Effective risk communication is essential for disaster risk management. Apart from empowering communities to make informed risk choices, risk information disclosure can also drastically enhance their disaster preparedness, especially concerning conjoint scenarios of technological and natural hazards (Natech). A fundamental precondition is the actua...

This study determined the antecedents of diffusion scope (total audience), speed (number of adopters/time), and shape (broadcast vs. person-to-person transmission) for true vs. fake news about a falsely claimed stolen 2020 US Presidential election across clusters of users that responded to one another’s tweets (“user clusters”). We examined 31,128...

We adopt the cultivation theory to identify the ways the increased exposures to (mis)information in social media and traditional media cultivate the perceptions of (1) informational mistrust and (2) ill-confidence in dealing with Covid-19 pandemic risk. Importantly, we expanded the theory and hypothesized about the roles of informal societal ties b...

Asynchronous, anonymous online debaters might be less likely than face-to-face debaters to value their public self-image (face), and thus disagree more freely. In this study, we examined whether polite disagreements (as opposed to rude ones) help online debaters win over audience members. An analysis of the most voted-on 100 political debates on De...

Existing crisis communication theories are useful in guiding organizations to choose crisis responses that help buffer them from a crisis by shaping how publics interpret the crisis. However, in crises, publics who suffer from negative consequences expect organizations to focus on problem-solving behaviors and eventual restoration of relationships....

This study examined the roles of normative and epistemic factors in influencing individuals' reluctance to be vaccinated during the COVID-19 pandemic. Individuals' ethical orientations (IEO; teleology vs. deontology) were introduced as normative characteristics, while COVID-19 vaccine conspiracy beliefs and vaccine knowledge were addressed as issue...

The multifaceted roles of public relations are not well-understood in strategic management. Thus, this study reviews strategic management literature and presents empirical evidence on the relevance of public relations to strategic management. Using data collected from public relations practitioners and organizational leaders in the Generally Accept...

Accepted to "Dewey Studies" Special Issues -- "After the insurrection: Addressing the crisis in liberal democracy"

With the increase of individuals’ global mobility and diversified migration patterns, research on sociological public diplomacy has highlighted the importance of the interpersonal communication of within-border foreign publics (WBFPs) for public diplomacy. The present study aims to help move the research in public diplomacy forward and contribute t...

The purpose of this study is to conceptualize allegiant communication behavior (ACB), which is employees’ loyal and faithful communicative actions for their organizations. Using the analogy of a choir, we identify three types of allegiant communicative behaviors that employees may use to create a harmonious sound requiring efforts of voicing and de...

This study applies Tam and Kim's 2019 taxonomy to alumni data for the Global Korea Scholarship in order to segment key foreign publics and understand their communication behaviors toward South Korea in the context of public diplomacy. In this study, key foreign publics refer to groups of foreign publics who are positioned to impact the public diplo...

Although existing public relations research has explored self-efficacy as a psychological factor that predicts behaviors, the construct has been loosely conceptualized and operationalized mainly as an all-purpose measure that has been examined and valued for its predictive but not its operational power. It is rarely tailored to the specific domains...

Purpose This study explores the interaction effects of organizational conflict history and employees' situational perceptions of COVID-19 on negative megaphoning and turnover intention. Design/methodology/approach Survey data ( N = 476) were collected from US citizens, who self-identified as full-time employees, through Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTu...

This study presents an empirical test and a conceptual account of the role of within-border foreign publics (WBFPs) as important communicative influencers, explicating how shared experiences shape the ideas and opinions of a foreign country. The study focuses on two communicative concepts, megaphoning and echoing, and finds they explicate network i...

The situational theory of problem solving (STOPS) was constructed with the premise that communicative behaviors are purposive and epiphenomenal to problem solving. It inherits from the situational theory of publics (STP) the assumption that communication is not just what senders do to change receivers’ attitudes and behaviors – rather, communicatio...

This study investigates the role of individuals’ accidental, contextual talking – rather than planned, goal-oriented conversation – about tourism to illuminate its influences on touristic motivation and communicative behaviors. Contextual talking in daily life can trigger internalized and situational motivation toward information behaviors regardin...

The number of people living with dementia increases almost every year, and the majority of the care system for these individuals is often made up of close family members. This study investigates the relationship between family caregivers' cross-checking of information with healthcare providers and patient health outcomes. Specifically, we examined...

The explosive usage in recent years of the terms “fake news” and “posttruth” reflects worldwide frustration and concern about rampant social problems created by pseudo-information. Our digital networked society and newly emerging media platforms foster public misunderstanding of social affairs, which affects almost all aspects of individual life. T...

To address conceptual and methodological issues regarding the exchange–communal relationship typology in public relations scholarship, this study reconceptualizes and validates three relationship types—egoistic, provident, and communal relationships. Two distinct relationship perspectives, organization-oriented and public-oriented, are also explore...

Voluntary citizen attention and actions are key to successful public-sector communication. We investigated the conditions which increase such attention and actions using the situational theory of problem solving (STOPS) and government-citizen relationships (GCRs). Using three national issues consisting of an environmental issue, a social issue, and...

The present study theorizes ways in which foreign publics' different relationship building patterns are associated with the reputation of a host country and with the outcomes of those patterns, which yield positive behavioral intentions. The study first distinguished the reputational relationship group (i.e., those who lack firsthand experience wit...

The present study theorizes ways in which foreign publics’ different relationship building patterns are associated with the reputation of a host country and with the outcomes of those patterns, which yield positive behavioral intentions. The study first distinguished the reputational relationship group (i.e., those who lack firsthand experience wit...

This study tested the manner in which attitude toward an object of rumor affects people’s epistemic motivation to solve a problem and to share a rumor, specifically on social media, using two rumors regarding food safety issues including McDonald’s and genetically modified food. An online survey administered to 184 undergraduate students who use Tw...

The purpose of this study is to identify activists, their communicative behaviors, and the effects of these behaviors on crisis communication in the new media landscape. Adopting a new theoretical framework based on problem-solving characteristics, openness, activeness, and time or history, in the situational theory of problem solving, the current...

Using 2010 dataset from Investigation of Consumers’ Risk Perception on Novel Foods on the issue of genetically modified (GM) foods in South Korea, the study explores the roles of situational motivation and perceived opinion climate on willingness to express an opinion in the context of the spiral of silence and group size effect hypothesis. The stu...

We conceptualize two cognitive modi operandi by which lay individuals (cf. experts) solve everyday life problems: cognitive retrogression and cognitive progression. The key demarcation between these two strategies is when a conclusion is finalized and how one’s cognitive and communicative efforts are expended in a problematic situation. Using these...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of different types of corporate issues and employee–organization relationships (EORs) on employees’ perceptions of the issues and on their communicative actions. Specifically, this study investigates how employees who have experienced an internal or an external issue within their organizati...

Adopting the conservation of resources (COR) theory, the study empirically examined how employees’ emotional exhaustion in the workplace affects their external communicative behavior toward an organization. Moreover, the study explored how the effects of emotional exhaustion on employee’s external communication can be controlled or managed under a...

Existing literature on public diplomacy has generally defined foreign publics as the global constituents with whom a country builds relationships through its public diplomacy efforts. However, not all foreign publics are the same; they represent a collection of separate public opinions. As such, foreign publics need to be segmented and differentiat...

Purpose In the midst of practitioners’ increasing use of social media analytics (SMA) in guiding public relations (PR) strategy, this paper aims to present the capabilities and limitations of these tools and offers suggestions on how to best use them to gain research-based insights. Design/methodology/approach This review assesses the capabilities...

The purpose of this study is to examine the impacts of employees' job and organizational engagement on their scouting behavior, which refers to employees' voluntary communicative efforts to acquire and circulate task and managerial information. The study investigates the causal networks between employees' creative work engagement, intrinsic motivat...

The findings from this research extend the study of information behaviors in tourism research using the communicative action in problem solving (CAPS) framework. Data collected from a survey (n=510) of mainland Chinese tourists in Macao show the effects of tourism stage (i.e., pre-trip and post-trip), visiting history (i.e., first-time visit or rep...

Extant literature has discussed the similarities between public relations and public diplomacy. This study seeks to contribute to existing research on the application of organization–public relationships (OPR) to public diplomacy by further exploring relational dimensions in public diplomacy and empirically testing them based on a model consisting...

This study proposes the idea of justificatory information forefending, a cognitive process by which individuals accept information that confirms their preexisting health beliefs, and reject information that is dissonant with their attitudes. In light of the sheer volume of often contradictory information related to health that is frequently highlig...

This study investigates how perceptions of corporate hypocrisy from corporate social responsibility activities connect the public’s ethical philosophy to subsequent positive/negative opinion-sharing intention. With special attention to deontology and consequentialism in normative ethics of philosophy, the current study empirically tests a theoretic...

This study applied a situational approach to understanding an environmental problem: PM2.5 (its resulted haze and smog air pollution) in China. Based on a national sample of 374 citizens living in China, it tested a situational model of problem solving and extended it by adding citizens’ environmental engagement behaviour as an immediate consequenc...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to identify associations amongst organizational justice, supervisory justice, authoritarian culture, organization-employee relationship quality and employee turnover intention. Design/methodology/approach An online survey ( n =300) was conducted in South Korea. Findings Organizational justice and supervisory j...

In response to calls for developing an instrument to measure public diplomacy outcomes, this paper introduces the Relationship Assessment of Diplomatic Interaction Outcome (RADIO) scale. Developed based on the Organisation–Public Relationship Assessment (OPRA) scale in public relations, the RADIO scale measures relationship between a country and it...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the impacts of perceived authenticity of organizational behaviors and types of organization-employee relationship (i.e. communal and exchange relationship) on intangible assets of organizations generated by employees’ communicative behaviors (ECBs) (e.g. megaphoning, scouting). Design/methodology/app...

The concept of publics and related notions such as receivers, audiences, stakeholders, mass, markets, target groups, and the public sphere are central to any discussion of formal communication programs between organizations or other strategic communicators and the individuals or groups with which they strive to communicate. The concept explains why...

This study examines relationships among health information orientation, situational perceptual frames, and active information behaviors pertinent to the safety controversy of genetically-modified (GM) food technology. A web survey was conducted in the US (N = 393). Based on our findings, an integrative model of Kim and Grunig's (2011) Situational T...

This special issue of Health Communication compiles 10 articles to laud the promise and yet confront the problems in the digital networked information society related to public health. We present this anthology of symphony and cacophony of lay individuals’ communicative actions in a digital networked information society. The collection of problems...

Current literature has identified many different definitions for the concept of corporate social responsibility (CSR). As a result, many organizations fail to implement and measure CSR strategically. This study reviews the different theories and concepts within CSR and suggests that the current scope of CSR activities is too large that organization...

This study used the situational theory of problem solving (STOPS) to investigate communication behaviors of publics formed around an intensively publicized policy issue. Results of surveying 748 participants online support the utility of STOPS to segment the hot-issue public with active communication from the general population in a Chinese context...

This study aims to understand different publics' communicative behaviors for problem solving surrounding an oil spill issue in Korea. Specifically, it explores the differences between chronic activists and other types of publics who were affected by this chronic environmental issue. A total of 24 interviews were conducted, from which five different...

The emergence of relationship management as a paradigm for public relations scholarship and practice necessitates an examination of precisely what public relations achieves -- its definition, function and value, and the benefits it generates. Promoting the view that public relations provides value to organizations, publics, and societies through re...

This study identifies organizational factors that influence corporatate governance and formulation of public relations strategies for public enagement. This study explores intertwined relationships between public relations strategies and organizational factors. A total of 22 qualitative interviews were conducted with a diverse pool of communication...

Analyzing survey data on the issue of genetically modified foods in South Korea, this study explores the role of news media in facilitating informed issue evaluation. Respondents who read a newspaper more often were more knowledgeable about the issue. Also, heavy newspaper readers were more able than light readers to hold consistent views on differ...

This article proposes a theoretical model to understand the ways in which organizations can increase employees’ voluntary intrapreneurship and motivated business information seeking and sharing, scouting, via relationship building. Three management strategies—managerial receptiveness to innovative effort, employee empowerment, and communication sym...

Overcoming geographic, cultural, and linguistic differences, the second phase of the Korean wave Hallyu made its mark in Latin America. From the results of the field research conducted in two Latin American countries Brazil and Peru during the summer of 2012, this study examines the effects of the second wave of Hallyu on Peruvian society. In doing...

Lay Consumer Informatics and Fast-choicism. This article introduced a new theory of "information" (manifest versus interpretive information) and 'consumer megaphoning' and 'consumer scouting', and authentic branding principles based on Grunig and Kim's 'Strategic Behavioral Paradigm' in communication management. It explains how digital networked so...

A Korean review article on the evolution of situational theory.

The situational theory of publics (STP), one of the most popular public relations theories, provides a mechanism for the identification of publics and their information behaviors. The situational theory of problem solving (STOPS), an extension of the STP, is a more general theory of communication that looks at antecedents of individuals’ communicat...

Segmentation is a conceptual and operational effort to identify a group of individuals who are necessary to communicate, or motivated themselves to communicate, about a health problem and solutions of interest. Conceptually, segmentation of health campaigns should be approached from theoretical explications and understanding of the nature of human...

The Excellence theory developed from a program of research conducted from 1985 to 2002 on 327 organizations in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. Today, Excellence theory has evolved into a strategic management theory of public relations, which contrasts to the symbolic–interpretive paradigm that characterizes many theories of reput...

Analyzing survey data on the issue of GM foods in South Korea, this study examines two competing routes - deliberate reasoning versus information shortcuts - to forming opinions on controversial science. Findings indicated that both deliberate reasoning and information shortcuts were in play; but the process was moderated by a person's education le...

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This study contributes to relationship management research by introducing a new construct—authenticity—as the mediating variable between symmetrical communication and relationship quality, and investigating the behavioral outcomes of perceived organization–public relationship quality. We propose a structural model of symmetrical communication, auth...