Spiro Kiousis

Spiro Kiousis
University of Florida | UF · College of Journalism and Communications

About

101
Publications
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Publications

Publications (101)
Article
Full-text available
This study evaluates the effectiveness of the Chinese government's state-led social mobilization during the early stage of the COVID-19 pandemic through the lens of agenda setting and agenda building. Using quantitative content analysis of a sample of online discussions on Weibo, this research explores how different social actor groups responded to...
Article
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This study examines the association between the engagement of a U.S.-based PR firm by the Kenyan government and subsequent shifts in the tone of news coverage in four major U.S. media outlets. Through quantitative content analysis, the study identifies discernible shifts toward more positive reporting about Kenya during the period of PR firm involv...
Chapter
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Scholars tout today as the “age of populism” (Ricci, D.M., Cambridge University Press., 2020) following worldwide electoral success for populist politicians. Populist politicians seem to utilize an atypical formula for managing relationships with media, public, and other relevant stakeholders. Notably, they are more digitally savvy than their non-p...
Article
This study aims to investigate the impact of gamification as applied to public relations, specifically its ability to engage the public with social issues. Using a survey of users on a corporate-sponsored sustainability-themed gamification platform (N = 417), the study examines the effects of two gamified two-way communication strategies—feedback a...
Article
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Purpose While morality is ever-present in elections, scholars have yet to merge political public relations and Moral Foundations Theory. It is crucial to assess the complex morality present not only in social deduction, but also in political strategic communication. The current work aims to analyze the issue agendas and their relationships in the 2...
Chapter
Rapid changes in the media landscape due to the emergence of social media and mobile technology have challenged public relations scholars to advance theory and research on media relations—a function of public relations traditionally considered to exist between public relations practitioners and journalists. In the new media ecosystem, media relatio...
Article
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In response to Perloff's (this issue) essay examining the development and future of agenda setting, a series of scholars offer their own reactions to the essay and the broader issues it raises. © 2022 Mass Communication & Society Division of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication.
Article
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This study investigates how the electoral campaigns in Florida’s 2018 gubernatorial and Senate races used information subsidies to influence each other’s integrated marketing communications. Informed by agenda-building theory, the study probes which campaign and which party had the strongest transfer of issue and stakeholder salience (first-level)...
Article
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With John Bel Edwards as the only Democratic governor in the Deep South, President Trump supported Republican Eddie Rispone in Louisiana's 2019 gubernatorial election. This study uses a computational content analysis to understand the roles Edwards, Rispone, and Trump played in influencing press and public agendas during the runoff election, and ho...
Article
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Care is not a word generally associated with political crises. However, following the mosques massacre in New Zealand, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern was found to have used care and a feminist approach to political communication that served to unite rather than divide her country following this racially motivated terrorist attack. There is much lite...
Article
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Drawing on the theories of mediated public diplomacy, intermedia agenda-building, and homophily, this study aims to compare the effectiveness of the public diplomacy efforts made by the Saudi and Qatari governments during the Gulf diplomatic crisis. The study examines the respective international agenda-building influence of the state-sponsored med...
Article
The purpose of this study was to compare the agenda-building influence of President Trump and CEOs in communicating about a number of political and social issues. Through a content analysis of the president’s (N = 63) and business leaders’ (N = 234) information subsidies and news coverage (N = 270), evidence was found repeatedly supporting the pres...
Article
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The study explores Polish and Russian governments’ communication efforts to shape international news coverage of the 2010 airplane crash near Smolensk, Russia, which killed the Polish President Lech Kaczynski and most of his Cabinet. More specifically, the study attempts to assess the role of government communication in shaping the international ag...
Book
This is an edited volume focusing on political public relations, seeking to bridge the gap between theory and research in public relations, political communication, and political science.
Article
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This study aims to advance the theoretical and practical knowledge of political public relations, and influence that political profile of the media can have on the agenda-building process. The influences of agenda indexing are also discussed with regard to different media profiles. A quantitative content analysis was conducted to examine the influe...
Article
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This study explores relationships between agenda building, agenda indexing (reflected through share of voice as the key variable), and agenda-setting effects, measured through the combination of public opinion survey data and quantitative content analysis. It conceptually distinguishes between the three metrics often used interchangeably in the pro...
Chapter
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The growing prominence of country images in public discourse has given rise to a burgeoning of attention in academic scholarship. Country image and related constructs such as country reputation, brand, and identity have been an object of debate in fields such as marketing, psychology, sociology, communication studies, and political science. However...
Article
This entry introduces agenda‐setting and agenda‐building theory, its historic roots, developments, methods, and applications. The agenda‐setting and agenda‐building perspective describes the transmission of object, attribute, and network salience among different social actors' agendas. It started as a theory describing the mass media's effect on so...
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Purpose This article examines how varying degrees of media constructed associations between organizations and their home countries affect audience perceptions of such associations and, subsequently, how recipients attribute crisis responsibility and reputational damage to the home country. Additionally, the article investigates if pre-crisis count...
Article
This empirical study is in the field of mediated public diplomacy. It examines the role of state-sponsored media in international agenda-building during the 2014 Hong Kong Protest. In this study, state-sponsored media are conceptualized as tools used in international political public relations to influence international media coverage. A quantitati...
Article
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Introduction: This study investigated chikungunya disease awareness and its predictors, the level of adoption of recommended personal protective behaviors against chikungunya, and the health information-seeking behavior of U.S. travelers to Caribbean destinations. Methods: A cross-sectional retrospective online survey of 653 adult U.S. internationa...
Article
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Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore the linkages between public relations efforts and policymaking activity during a non-election setting. Design/methodology/approach Using a time-lag design, this study used content analysis to examine public relations materials and policymaking activity during the first six months of US President Bara...
Article
Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, is the process of extracting reserves of natural gas and oil from shale formations deep underground. This process, initially met with public support in the United Kingdom, has since become a highly contentious issue primarily debated between government, industry, and anti-fracking advocacy groups. Through the empl...
Article
To investigate the role of strategic political communication in governing, this study comprehensively examined presidential agenda-building associations at three levels during the first six months of U.S. president Barack Obama’s second term. Multiple presidential information subsidies, national news content, and policymaking activity were monitore...
Article
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This study introduces issue decision salience as a mechanism for understanding how issue ownership processes impact vote choice, using panel data from the 2006 Swedish national elections. A model is developed probing the multiple influences of news attention and discussion on issue decision salience, party evaluation, candidate evaluation, and vote...
Article
Grounded in first- and second-level agenda building, this study examined the role of political public relations in contributing to the news media agenda during the 2010 Florida Senate Election involving three major candidates. The findings offered support for agenda building at both the object (issues and stakeholders) and attribute levels of salie...
Article
The purpose of this study was to test the compelling-arguments hypothesis in an agenda-building framework, focusing on the role of affect in blog communication. Conducting a 3 × 3 factorial experiment with two manipulated independent variables (valence and arousal), this investigation examined the influences of these variables on public relations o...
Chapter
Issue management in politics refers to the process by which politicians, campaigns, parties, and other groups identify, prioritize, develop, and convey positions on key political issues. A fundamental early step in effective political issue management involves formative research where groups investigate the perceptions, attitudes, and behaviors of...
Article
Risk belief positively affects information seeking regarding hurricane evacuation. Hurricane knowledge negatively affects information seeking regarding hurricane evacuation. Past experience with hurricane impacts negatively affects information seeking regarding hurricane evacuation. a b s t r a c t The study examined the roles of tourists' risk bel...
Article
Grounded in an agenda-building and agenda-setting framework, the current study explored the transfer of salience relationships among public relations materials, news media coverage and online public communications in a business communication context. A total of 2,576 communication messages were analyzed in terms of the dominant business corporation...
Chapter
This chapter reviews research on strategic political communication in election campaigns, which still is a rather fragmented field despite its long tradition. To structure this area of study, the authors propose a descriptive model integrating different types of actors, modes, goals and arenas of political campaigning and campaign communication. Th...
Article
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Mediated public diplomacy scholarship investigates the manner in which governments attempt to shape the framing of its leaders, people, and foreign policy in other nations' media outlets. A growing body of literature identifies agenda-building efforts by these governments who often use state-sponsored media platforms to promote some issues and attr...
Article
Grounded in an agenda-building theoretical perspective, this study explored in depth the relationships between political campaign information subsidies and elite national news media coverage. Specifically, this investigation examined three levels of agenda-building linkages (object, attribute, and network connections) simultaneously during the 2012...
Article
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Objective The etiology of active parenting remains almost entirely unexplored in political socialization. Applying ecological and dialectic perspectives, we propose a model of developmental provocation to capture contributions of youth to a politicization of parenting during campaigns.Methods Parent-youth dyads in Arizona, Colorado, and Florida wer...
Article
Grounded in first- and second-level agenda building, this study explored the role of the U.S. Senate Majority Leader in shaping the salience of issues and issue attributes in news media coverage and policymaking in 2011. A total of 358 public relations messages, 164 newspaper articles, and 83 policymaking documents were analyzed. Significant correl...
Chapter
Full-text available
This chapter reviews research on strategic political communication in election campaigns, which still is a rather fragmented field despite its long tradition. To structure this area of study, the authors propose a descriptive model integrating different types of actors, modes, goals and arenas of political campaigning and campaign communication. Th...
Chapter
Full-text available
This chapter reflects on political public relations. It first characterizes political public relations as a central component of political communication by political actors. Moreover, the chapter argues that political public relations are not only about communication and involve a wider group of stakeholders such as lobby groups, think tanks, and p...
Article
Purpose – This paper aims to explore the links among health authorities’ public relations efforts, news media coverage, and public perceptions of risk during the H1N1 pandemic outbreak. Design/methodology/approach – This study used a triangulation of research methods by comparing public relations materials, media coverage, and public opinion. The...
Article
This investigation explores the relationships among information subsidies, news media coverage, and policymaking activities regarding healthcare reform during the first year of the Obama presidential administration. Specifically, a comparison of information subsidies (from the president, federal government offices, Congress, and healthcare-related...
Article
Tourists are vulnerable in the event of a crisis. This article is focused on examining aspects of tourists that potentially influence whether or not they evacuate in the event of a hurricane. In general the results of this study suggest that individual characteristics (risk belief, connectedness, knowledge, and past experience with hurricanes), tra...
Article
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The role of social media in crisis communications is an embryonic area of research in tourism, thus the purpose of this study was to examine drivers of social media use during crises. An online survey of 2,416 tourists from Australia, Brazil, China, India, and Korea was conducted. Hierarchical regression revealed that the drivers were risk percepti...
Article
Grounded in an agenda-building framework, this experiment manipulated two dimensions of affective attributes—valence and arousal—from a corporate blog message to examine their influence on corporate reputation and stakeholder engagement. Overall, the findings showed significant valence effects on reputation and engagement, while arousal effects wer...
Article
This study further extends agenda-building theory into the corporate sphere. This investigation tested for agenda-building relationships between the issues emphasized in corporate candidate-controlled information subsidies and financial news media coverage during the 2008 Yahoo! Inc.–Carl Icahn proxy contest for control of Yahoo!’s board of directo...
Article
This study examined the relationships between media salience of presidential candidate images, perceived candidate salience, and public attitude strength using media and public opinion data from six US presidential elections. The results indicate that media salience is positively related to both public salience and attitude strength. In addition, t...
Chapter
This chapter reflects on political public relations. It first characterizes political public relations as a central component of political communication by political actors. Moreover, the chapter argues that political public relations are not only about communication and involve a wider group of stakeholders such as lobby groups, think tanks, and p...
Article
Grounded in first and second level agenda building and agenda setting, the relationships among public relations, global media, and public opinion were explored in the context of the 2008 United States presidential election. Two candidates’ speeches, press releases, and foreign media coverage were analyzed and compared with global public opinion. Th...
Article
This study tested for intermedia agenda-setting effects among explicitly partisan news media coverage and political activist group, citizen activist, and official campaign advertisements on YouTube—all in support of the same candidate. The setting for this investigation was the political activist organization MoveOn.org's “Obama in 30 Seconds” onli...
Article
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The purpose of this study was to compare the predictive power of overall political news consumption and media-specific news consumption, on perceived issue salience across different media channels and media types in the context of the 2006 Swedish parliamentary election. Findings suggest that overall consumption of political news is significantly m...
Article
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Ever since the events of September 11, 2001 and the subsequent war in Iraq, the U.S. State Department has invested much effort into winning the hearts and minds of individuals around the Muslim world. Using secondary data from a large-scale public opinion survey of Arab youth in Egypt and Saudi Arabia, the current study presents a model that identi...
Article
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This study investigates the linkages between presidential public relations activities—speeches and press conferences—and public opinion towards the presidency from 1961 to 1997. The results show that there is a positive linkage between presidential news conferences and foreign policy job approval, and between presidential speeches and general as we...
Article
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The use of public relations strategies and tactics are ubiquitous in many areas of political communication. This is especially evident when considering the emerging field of political marketing. However, little application of public relations theory and research has been integrated into the study of political marketing processes. Thus, this work se...
Article
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Resumen El objetivo del artículo es explorar el papel de la comunicación estratégica política en el proceso de agenda-setting. Concretamente, se centra en el primer y segundo nivel de la agenda entre candidatos a través del análisis de contenido de los materiales de campaña de los dos partidos mayoritarios en las elecciones generales de 2004. La co...
Article
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This study adopts the agenda-building perspective to compare contributions of political news releases and advertisements on media content during political campaigns, scrutinizing their relative linkages with news content within a single analysis. Newspapers, news releases, and candidates' ads in nine 2006 statewide campaigns were analyzed. Findings...
Article
This study examined the role of political public relations in the process of intercandidate agenda-setting. Specifically, a content analysis of news releases, political speeches, and issue platform statements was conducted to assess the salience of issues and attributes in the 2004 presidential election from the Bush, Kerry, and Nader campaigns. Wh...
Chapter
Issue management in politics refers to the process by which politicians, campaigns, parties, and other political groups identify, prioritize, develop, and convey positions on key issues. A fundamental early step in effective political issue management involves formative research where groups investigate the perceptions, attitudes, and behaviors of...
Article
Full-text available
This study examines the role of agenda setting in affecting voter turnout using panel data of adolescents in Arizona, Florida, and Colorado from 2002 and 2004. Specifically, a model is developed probing the multiple influences of interactive civic instruction, media attention, and discussion on the following sequence of outcomes: perceived issue im...
Article
To explore the influence of international public relations on US news media and public perceptions of foreign nations, this study used a triangulation of methods by comparing public relations counsel for foreign nations, media content and public opinion data in 1998 and 2002. The results indicate that while the relationship between public relations...
Article
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This study examines the agenda-setting function of televised political advertisements during the 2004 US presidential election. Adding to the growing research on second-level agenda setting, we examined how the advertising agendas of the Bush and Kerry campaigns may have impacted the public evaluations of the two candidates. Our results provide sup...
Article
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An emergent culture of youth activism suggests the need to examine a fundamental question about political learning. Does formal education function primarily to engender compliance or does instruction foster differentiation, and perhaps defiance, in political identity construction? We draw on data from a 3-year panel study of high school students. R...
Article
Seeking to extend research on public relations evaluation, this study investigates the influence of public relations efforts and media coverage on corporate reputation and financial performance through the theoretical grounding of first- and second-level agenda-building and agenda-setting. A triangulation of research methods compared public relatio...
Article
This study explores the role of candidate news releases, media content, and public opinion in shaping the salience of political issues and candidate images during the 2002 Florida gubernatorial election. The study analyzed 77 news releases, 654 newspaper stories, and public opinion data from a statewide survey of 572 respondents. Significant correl...
Article
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This study incorporates the perspective of deliberative democracy in proposing a framework for evaluating relationships between civic education and political development. Findings support a conception of deliberative learning as a process in which interactive curricula result in the diffusion of discursive inclinations to families and peer groups....
Article
This experiment examined the impact of source, modality, and participation on perceptions of credibility, salience, attitudes, and general Web site evaluation. The data showed no significant differences between online stories coming from either public relations or news sources on any of the study's dependent variables. However, significant differen...
Article
The purpose of this experiment was to investigate the influence of website modality on people's perceptions of source and message credibility for an online news story. Findings indicated that increased modality in online news stories had no direct effect on perceived source or message credibility. However, a positive effect on perceived source cred...
Article
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Agenda-setting theory, a conceptual framework used to trace how issue salience is established among policy makers, media, and the public, has yet to be applied to political socialization. This study extends agenda-setting theory by conceptualizing it as a process of political development. In an analysis of adolescent involvement during the 2002 U.S...
Article
This study explores the relationship between attribute agenda setting and public opinion of political candidates. Specifically, media salience of presidential candidate attributes across five national elections is compared to public opinion data measuring perceived candidate salience and the strength of public attitudes regarding candidates. Findin...
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The main aims of this study were: (1) to examine how nonprofit organizations utilize their websites as a public relations tool, especially for media relations, donor relations, volunteer relations and their interactive communication features and (2) to ascertain whether nonprofit organizations' revenues are positively correlated with the presence a...
Article
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The agenda-setting role of the news media is a powerful influence on what we pay attention to and how we understand the vast world of public affairs that lies beyond our personal experien- ce. Subsequent to the seminal Chapel Hill study in 1972, agenda setting theory has expanded beyond the influence of the news media on the public to elaborate the...
Article
Media salience—the key independent variable in agenda-setting research—has traditionally been explicated as a singular construct. Nevertheless, scholars have defined and measured it using a number of different conceptualizations and empirical indicators. To address this limitation in research, this study introduced a conceptual model of media salie...
Article
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This study examined the consequences of agenda-setting effects for attitudes toward political figures during the 1996 presidential election. In particular, guided by the literature from agenda setting, attitude strength, and the hierarchy of effects, the analysis tested hypotheses about the relationships among media coverage, public salience, and t...
Article
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This progress report provides evidence for persistent influence of Kids Voting USA (KVUSA), an interactive civic curriculum taught during election campaigns. The entire research project consists of multiple waves of student and parent interviews, covering a three-year period. Respondents were recruited from families in Arizona, Colorado, and Florid...
Article
Drawing on priming and agenda-setting theories, this study explored the influence of news coverage of the Monica Lewinsky scandal on public opinion of President Bill Clinton. Unlike previous research in this area, this study examined such relations longitudinally using various time lags and probed multiple dimensions of public opinion, particularly...
Article
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The influence of Kids Voting USA, an interactive civics curriculum taught during election campaigns, is assessed in the context of three field experiments that took place during the fall of 2002. The research sites are Maricopa County, Arizona; El Paso County, Colorado; and Broward/Palm Beach counties, Florida. The authors present findings from the...
Article
The primary purpose of this study is to explore whether scrutiny of the president in quality US newspapers is related to people's perceptions of the press. It was predicted that two chief factors—in addition to other forces—are contributing to declining press performance ratings: (1) an increase in the number of total stories devoted to the preside...
Article
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The use of interactivity as a variable in empirical investigations has dramatically increased with the emergence of new communication channels such as the world wide web. Though many scholars have employed the concept in analyses, theoretical and operational definitions are exceedingly scattered and incoherent. Accordingly, the purpose of this proj...
Article
The primary theoretical research perspectives that have informed the field of mass communication over the past 70 years are examined with regard to what each perspective has explicitly stated or implied about whether audiences and audience members are active or passive. We see these audience conceptualizations as central to longstanding debates on...
Article
This article explores perceptions of news credibility for television, newspapers, and online news. A survey was administered to a randomly selected sample of residents in Austin, Texas, to assess people's attitudes toward these 3 media channels. Contingent factors that might influence news credibility perceptions, such as media use and interpersona...
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This study examined the role of attribute salience in the agenda setting process. Two experiments were conducted to investigate how media emphasis on certain political candidate attributes would influence public perceptions of those politicians. Specifically, media portrayals of candidate personality and qualification traits were explored. Findings...
Article
The mainstream press and politicians have highlighted the application of new communication technologies in educational domains for years. Although a myriad of literature has examined the philosophical or practical concerns behind the creation of such civic improvement programs as the "electronic town meeting" or the "televote," little research has...
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This study explored the role of the Speaker of the House in shaping the salience of political issues and attributes in news media coverage and policymaking in 2007. Specifically, it analyzed 533 press releases, 433 news articles, and 47 daily Congressional calendars of business. Significant correlations were found supporting traditional first-level...