Newswise — The Arthur W. Page Center for Integrity in Public Communication at Penn State University has awarded ten grants worth $55,600 and named 16 communication researchers from around the nation to be Page and Johnson Legacy Scholars for 2011-12. Eight of the grants focus on the Center’s research theme for this year: the ethics of social media in public relations. “We are excited at the quality of the proposals we received this year,” says Marie Hardin, director of the Page Center, a research unit of Penn State’s College of Communications. “The highly interactive nature of social media raises new ethical concerns for communicators. Practitioners and scholars are looking for information to understand social media’s impact on audiences and organizations.” The Page and Johnson Legacy Scholars who received grants and the titles for their 2011-2012 projects are:• Kati Tusinski Berg (Marquette University), and Kim Bartel Sheehan (University of Oregon) “Social media as a CSR communication channel: Understanding firms’ decision processes.”• Tina McCorkindale (Appalachian State University),“Clouded transparency: An analysis of the perspectives and policies of social media in organizations.”• Kirsten A. Johnson and Tamara L. Gillis (Elizabethtown College), “Markers of credibility and mainstream representatives: Developing a social media credibility inventory.”• Thomas Bivins, Tiffany Derville Gallicano, and Yoon Cho, (University of Oregon), “A survey of readers to determine ethical guidelines regarding ghost blogging.”• Homero Gil de Zuniga, Renita Coleman, and Tom Johnson (University of Texas), “The dialogic potential of Social Media: Assessing the ethical reasoning of companies’ public relations on Twiitter and Facebook.”• Marcus Messner (Virginia Commonwealth University), “To tweet or not to tweet? An analysis of ethical considerations in social media campaigns of non-profit organizations.”• Richard D. Waters (North Carolina State University), “The impact of organizational disclosure in social media success: Building the framework of the theory of engaged communication.”• Marcia DiStaso and Denise Bortree (Penn State University), “The ethics of social media measurement on Facebook and Twitter.”
The other researchers who received Legacy Scholar grants this year and the titles of their projects are:• Renita Coleman (University of Texas), “How many words is a picture worth? The effects of photos vs. vivid writing on ethical reasoning.”• George Anghelchev (Penn State University), “Implicit ethics and cultural differences in public evaluation of corporate responsibility: The case of environmental accidents.” “We hope that the contributions of the eight social media grants can be compiled into a book useful for public relations and communications practitioners,” says Hardin. This marked the seventh year of grant proposals awarded by the Page Center. Since its founding, The Page Center has funded 87 scholars and awarded more than $370,000 in grants. The deadline for the next round of grant proposals is January __, 2012, according to Cinda Kostyak, the Center’s associate director. The Page Center was created in 2004 through a leadership gift by Lawrence G. Foster, a distinguished Penn State alumnus and retired corporate vice president for public relations at Johnson & Johnson. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation also supports the Center through a major grant awarded in 2006 to establish and endow a research and education program in ethical leadership – including support for the legacy scholar program. The Robert Wood Johnson 1962 Charitable Trust, a private philanthropy of Johnson’s heirs, also has made a significant contribution to support the Center’s work in ethics in public communication and the role of public relations in advancing corporate responsibility. Arthur W. Page, the longtime vice president for public relations at AT&T, is often regarded as the founder of the modern practice of corporate public relations. He also was a noted educator, publisher and adviser to U.S. presidents. Page was the first person in a public relations position to serve as an officer and director of a major corporation and, in that capacity, was widely known for management according to the Page Principles, his guidelines for ethical and effective communication with the public and for responsible corporate behavior. The Center seeks to foster a modern understanding and application of the Page Principles and Robert Wood Johnson’s business philosophy by supporting innovative research, educational or public service projects in a wide variety of academic disciplines and professional fields. For further information on the Center and the Page or Johnson Legacy Scholar Grants, see its website at http://thepagecenter.comm.psu.edu/.
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