Eunyoung Kim’s research while affiliated with Auburn University at Montgomery and other places

Cultural diversity is a topic that has been taught across disciplines, but the pandemic has made it more difficult for universities and colleges to teach and discuss it when active interaction is limited in the classroom setting. The difficulties and challenges observed in communication courses, including advertising and public relations, brought this interdisciplinary talk with three professors. In the reflective essay, the faculties discuss the importance of teaching and discussing cultural diversity in the disciplines and how to incorporate the topic into the curriculum while acknowledging the challenges during the pandemic. Finally, the observations from teaching the courses last two years and analysis of theories and literature offered some guidelines and recommendations to help students and faculties move forward in the post-pandemic

Various social media platforms allow people to participate in activities on social causes, including donating money online. We have sought to clarify internal (attitudes toward online donation, social identification, cause involvement, relationships with SNS connectors) and external factors (perception of SNS features) that predict the publics’ behavioral intentions, such as online donation and sharing words via SNS. This study conducted an online survey to examine the proposed hypotheses based on the literature review. The results of regressions show that social identification, cause involvement, and relationships with SNS connectors predict the intention to donate via SNS, while social identification, cause involvement, relationships with SNS connectors, and perception of SNS features affect the intention of Word-of-Mouth. Theoretical and practical implications are presented in the discussion and conclusion.

This study examines the internal and external factors affecting behavioral intention of online donation and word-of-mouth via crowdfunding sites. The conflicting findings from the literature provided rationales and several key variables for this study. To investigate the key variables, the authors conducted an online survey. The result confirmed that social identification, involvement, credibility of platforms, and attitudes toward online donation positively predict intention to donate online. In addition, social identification, involvement, and crowdfunding site features had predictive power on the intention of word-of-mouth. Theoretical and practical implications for public relations and communication practitioners are provided in the discussion.

This study seeks which antecedents affect YouTube followers’ intention to purchase products mentioned in YouTube videos posted by the influencers. We conducted an online survey after reviewing the concept of social media influencer marketing and the theoretical framework of the persuasive knowledge model. The results confirmed that followers’ various evaluations on contributions of YouTube influencers and the platform and their persuasive knowledge affect their attitudes and the behavioral intention on the persuasive content posted by YouTube influencers. Source attractiveness, trustworthiness, evaluation of video qualities, awareness of paid endorsement, and advertising recognition were influential to the attitudes and intentions of the followers. In addition, the suggested model confirmed the mediating effect of attitudes among antecedents and purchase intention. Theoretical and practical implications are presented in the discussion and conclusion.

This study presents a structured model to investigate whether sports fans’ team identification and organization-public relations (OPR) directly affect their attitudes toward their favorite teams or related behavioral intentions. In addition, it examines which antecedents, such as sports media consumption or duration of being a fan, affect team identification and OPR, and investigates whether gender works as a moderator in the model. An online survey was used and a total of 673 responses of the National Football League (NFL) fans were analyzed. The results of path analyses show that sports media consumption directly affects team identification and OPR, while the duration of being a fan did not significantly influence OPR and had only a small effect on team identification. Moreover, the degree of identification and relational perception of an NFL fan directly affect attitudes toward his or her favorite team. Finally, a person’s attitudes toward the favorite team directly affect his or her purchase intention of team-related products and attendance intention. Among paths in the proposed model, only one path, from attitude to attendance intention, was significantly different between the male and female groups.