The mass media, press and television have always been central in the formation of corporate identity and the promotion of business image and reputation. This volume provides a new perspective into the interrelationships between media and organizations across three dimensions: Media as Business, Media in business and Business in the media.

This volume fills a significant gap in the current understanding of the relationship between media and organizations, by looking at three dimensions of their interplay: (1) how the media industry changes through the use of new technologies (Media as Business), (2) how organizational identity is re-shaped by the media (Media in business) and (3) how business logic penetrates broader socio-cultural identities through press, television and new technologies (Business in the media). Drawing on a variety of disciplines, from organizational theory and corporate communication to branding, sociology and cultural studies, the volume proposes a novel, interdisciplinary approach to the media-business interplay and offers a much-needed account on the contemporary configurations of organizational identity under conditions of mediated visibility.

Public relations has been swift to grasp social media, yet its impact on public relations practice remains relatively unexplored. This book focusses on a way of understanding organizational identity construction in a virtual context, developing scholarship on the importance of a virtual presence in PR management, and further, to make sense of these identities as authentic, legitimate or plausible. Through a diverse group of empirical case studies, this book explores the global perspective on organizational identities which transcend global boundaries via the internet including Volkswagen’s emissions scandal and Monsanto and organized social media protests. It also explores crowdfunding – an emerging form of capitalist development constructed through sensemaking in social media. By looking at the emergence of organization in today’s social media environment, it identifies how the interactive is created on a digitally mediated platform, sharing knowledge and engaging individuals in organizational identity construction. Viewing the social construction of organizational identities through this lens, this innovative book locates how identities are plausible, authentic and legitimate - or not – through their ongoing communication via social media. It will be of great interest to academics teaching and researching in public relations, organisational communication and social media.

Public policy thinking and implementation is both a process of intellectual thought and rationale for governing. This book examines public policy and the influence news media organizations have in the production and implementation of public policy. Part I assesses the impact of political philosophy on public policy thinking and further discusses the meaning of public policy in social democratic systems. It uses the riots that occurred across England in the summer of 2011 as a case-study to focus on how the idea of the ’Big Society’ was regenerated by government and used as a basis for public policy thinking. Finally, it investigates how media organizations form news representations of public policy issues that seek to contextualize and reshape policy manufactured for public consumption. Part II provides a psychological exploration of the processes which explain the connection between the media, the public and policy-makers. Does the ’common good’ really drive public policy-making, or can group processes better explain what policy-makers decide? This second part of the book explores how media workers’ professional identities and practices shape their decisions about how to represent policy news. It also shows how the public identities and corporate interests of media organizations shape their role as referees of public policy-making and how all this culminates in faulty decision-making about how to represent policy news, polarization in public opinion about particular policies, and shifts in policy-makers’ decisions.

Ranging from theoretical contributions to empirical studies, the readings in this volume address key issues of organizational identity, e.g. multiple identities and change in identity. These issues are addressed by writers working in diverse fields of study.

Studies of the media in Africa, incorporating both African and international perspectives, are few. The thirty papers collected here were presented at a seminar organised and hosted by the Kenya-based Twaweza Communications and the International African Institute in Nairobi in 2004. They demonstrate how media outlets are used to perpetuate, question or modify the unequal power relations between the North and the South. Focusing on east Africa, the papers include discussions of the construction of old and new social entities, as defined by class, gender, ethnicity, political and economic differences, wealth, poverty, cultural behaviour, language and religion. The authors illustrate how there is increasing control by local people of traditional and modern forms of media. Globalization is being countered by local responses, within the context of social and cultural identities. Essentially, the book describes the tensions between the global and the local, tensions not often discussed in media studies, thus pioneering new debates.

This volume addresses the transformative power of tourism social media and offers novel theoretical and methodological approaches to its academic investigation. Acknowledging the collective value creation mechanisms of new media, the authors explore how technology nurtures, augments and modifies social or commercial interactions in tourism.

A Companion to New Media Dynamics presents a state-of-the-art collection of multidisciplinary readings that examine the origins, evolution, and cultural underpinnings of the media of the digital age in terms of dynamic change Presents a state-of-the-art collection of original readings relating to new media in terms of dynamic change Features interdisciplinary contributions encompassing the sciences, social sciences, humanities and creative arts Addresses a wide range of issues from the ownership and regulation of new media to their form and cultural uses Provides readers with a glimpse of new media dynamics at three levels of scale: the 'macro' or system level; the 'meso' or institutional level; and 'micro' or agency level

How are different groups of people such as sex workers, migrant workers, rural cadres and homosexuals represented in China’s media? How accurately do representations created by the media reflect the lived experiences of Chinese people? Do Chinese people accept the representations and messages disseminated by the media? Can they use the media to portray their own interests? How are media practices in China changing? Have new technologies and increased access to international media opened up new spaces for struggle in China? The essays in this volume address these questions by using a combination of ethnography and textual analysis and by exploring representation in and usage of a range of media including instant messaging, the internet, television, films, magazines and newspapers. The essays highlight highlights the richness, diversity, and sometimes contradictory tendencies of the meanings and consequences of media representations in China. The volume cautions against approaches that take the representations created by the media in China at face value and against oversimplified assumptions about the motivations and agency of players in the complex struggles that occur between the media, the Chinese state, and Chinese citizens.

The Social Organization sheds light on how social media usage is transforming the way organizations make sense of their identity and processes. By adopting a human capital perspective and merging research from communication studies and management, it argues that social media could be fruitfully exploited by organizations as a competitive advantage.