Erica Ciszek

This study examines LGBTQ-inclusive corporate communication in India through a postcolonial lens, analyzing how LGBTQ individuals perceive and interpret corporate messaging within the context of colonial legacies, global influences and sociocultural complexities to inform more authentic and equitable communication strategies. This study employs in-depth interviews with LGBTQ individuals in India (n = 14), analyzed through thematic analysis and framed within postcolonial theory to explore perceptions of LGBTQ-inclusive corporate communication and its sociocultural implications. The findings reveal that LGBTQ-inclusive corporate communication in India is shaped by colonial legacies, global LGBTQ advocacy influences and local cultural resistance, with participants critiquing corporate efforts as often superficial, profit-driven and disconnected from meaningful structural change. This study highlights the need for LGBTQ-inclusive corporate communication strategies in India to move beyond tokenism by integrating postcolonial perspectives, fostering authentic engagement with LGBTQ stakeholders and addressing systemic inequalities through culturally nuanced and structurally transformative initiatives. This study underscores the necessity for corporations operating in India to adopt LGBTQ-inclusive communication strategies that go beyond performative allyship, prioritizing genuine stakeholder engagement, structural workplace inclusion and culturally sensitive advocacy to build credibility and drive meaningful social change. This study offers a novel postcolonial perspective on LGBTQ-inclusive corporate communication in India, enriching communication management research by highlighting the interplay between cultural context and corporate practices.

This study utilizes the National Financial Well-Being Survey (NFWS) from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) to investigate the profiles of Ame

Marginalized communities have been disproportionately affected by COVID-19, including both racial/ethnic minority and sexual minority populations. To date, there has been little research examining the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic at the intersections of marginalized identities. Furthermore, available national data on COVID-19 outcomes may obscure our understanding of region-specific outcomes, particularly in the U.S. South. Using an intersectional approach, we explore differences in worries over COVID-19, preventative behaviors, and COVID-19 outcomes in the early months of the pandemic in a diverse sample of LGBTQ people (N = 1076) living in Texas. Our findings indicated that LGBTQ Latinx people in Texas reported more COVID-19 related worries and adverse outcomes than non-Latinx LGBTQ people. These findings are in line with previous research that found that the increased risk to Latinx and LGBTQ populations in public health crises is often overlooked and can be attributed to many factors such as socioeconomic status, occupational propensity, disparities in physical health, and barriers to healthcare access. Furthermore, our findings suggest the necessity of utilizing an intersectional approach when examining the disproportionate burden marginalized communities face in public health crises.

Organizations have become more in tune with LGBTQ publics over the past several decades, through responding to LGBTQ activist groups, creating employee resource groups, and investing money in campaigns to reach external LGBTQ stakeholders. As organizational LGBTQ efforts are increasingly more common, organizations are experiencing pressure for more tangible commitments to LGBTQ communities. This chapter explores what extent PR research on LGBTQ publics tell us about organizational listening and the gaps that exist in research and practice. Organizational listening is a significant practice for organizations wanting to move away from performative support to organizational allyship. We put forth an organizational listening scale and explore how LGBTQ and non-LGBTQ publics perceive organizational listening within the context of an LGBTQ campaign. We consider how sexual orientation, gender identity, race, and ethnicity affect perceptions of organizational listening.

This research seeks to shed light on perceived brand authenticity as it relates to LGBTQ stakeholders. Through in-depth interviews, this study centers the voices of LGBTQ practitioners to explore perceived brand authenticity. The empirical purpose of this study is exploratory: to gain a better understanding of perceived brand authenticity of LGBTQ marketing, as well as its drivers and consequences. The practical purpose of this study provides insights for both scholars and practitioners, suggesting methods for engaging in meaningful LGBTQ brand communication. Drawing from extant research, this article grounds its exploration in four dimensions of perceived brand authenticity: credibility, integrity, symbolism, and continuity. The article then identifies the prominence of skepticism in working with historically marginalized groups and proposes adding a fifth dimension: representativeness.

In this article, we explore how the concepts of listening and voice influence trans communication and how communicators give voice to their identities and lived experiences through the communication work they perform. We examine amplification as a strategy for elevating historically marginalized voices within institutional and mediated spaces. Through interviews with trans communicators, findings reveal gaps that strategies of visibility leave unfilled, drawing attention to symbolic and material resources that are needed for generating effective change. We find that visibility-based strategies, such as amplification, can be instrumental in producing an inequitable distribution of power and exacerbating the burden of representation that complicates transgender communicators’ ability to navigate organizational politics.

Pushing the bounds of public relations theory and research, we explore how institutional texts have produced and reified stigmas around gender transgression and how these texts are bound up in moments of activism and resistance. We considered how different discursive and material functions get “stuck” together by way of texts and how this sticking depends on a history of association and institutionalization. Activism presents opportunities to challenge institutional and structural stickiness, and we argue that public relations can challenge the affective assemblages that comprise and perpetuate these systems, unsettling the historical discourses that have governed institutions by establishing new communicative possibilities.

Since the early 20th century, public relations has been implicated in the production and sustainment of celebrity. Celebrities rely on the work of publicists to strategically cast, produce, and place discourses within spheres of popular culture. Through an extended interview with Alan Nierob, publicist of transgender celebrity Caitlyn Jenner, this article is an analysis of celebrity public relations as a site of cultural intermediation. Drawing on Bourdieu’s notions of habitus, capital, and fields, this article sheds light on the practice of celebrity public relations to understand how publicists leverage cultural and social capital to construct legitimacy for their clients. This study contributes to a broader sociological understanding of celebrity public relations and opens new avenues for research in considering how publicity might translate into broader socio-political impacts.