Can Public Relations Help Bridge Our Partisan Divide?

How Twitter replies can interrupt America39s echo chamberIn the wake of the 2020 presidential election I spoke with Dr WanHsiu Sunny Tsai pictured at top associate professor in the Department of Strategic Communication at the University of Miami to discuss her timely study on public advocacy issue networks While it should come as no surprise that politically motivated consumer advocacy on Twitter tends to exacerbate partisan divides as people fall into feedback loops that echo their own views back to them Dr Tsai is more interested in how some social mediators act as bridges between different perspectives and thus foster the kind of public deliberation necessary for active citizen participation in our democratic form of selfgovernmentDr Tsai and her PR colleagues are interested in how corporations negotiate controversial issues and consumer opinion And while early forms of corporate social responsibility CSR quotstancesquot could be quite benign and noncontroversial such as promoting recycling or supporting breast cancer research more recently CSR is becoming more politicized and more reflective of and responsive to consumers39 frustration with the status quo But what happens when consumers who agree or oppose a company39s social issue position interact on social media Will they always retreat to their own silos or is there space for conversation among those with differing opinionsTo find out Dr Tsai and her coauthors identified a list of companies including Under Armour LLBean Nordstrom and Starbucks that have been criticized over Twitter because of their leaders39 decisions to support or oppose the Trump administration andor carry or not carry Trump branded products For instance scraping data from Twitter in September of 2017 the researchers found that corporate leaders objecting to President Trump39s response to the violent white supremacist rally in Charlottesville resulted in trending political consumer advocacy campaigns calling for Trump supporters to boycott those companiesAs might be expected those boycott campaigns which often also included damaging misinformation tended to echo exponentially through retweet and mention networks that can demand attention and mobilize collective actions amongst largely homogenous political perspectives This dynamic was driven by quotechoerquot social mediators that used their influence to communicate controversial divisive issues such as politically motivated boycotts as personal endorsements for selfaamp64259rming content within their partisan homogeneous and likeminded network of ingroup membersBut the researchers also found that Twitter39s reply function though less common was much more likely to be used by quotbridgerquot social mediators to facilitate intergroup communication between publics of politicallyopposed stances Bridgers reach across the structural holes the gap between unlinked networks to initiate intergroup communication with ideologically opposite others In this way bridgers can play an essential role in extending the reach beyond established network boundaries and thereby assist in the diamp64256usion and contestation of ideas and perspectives essential to a balanced and wellinformed public discourse in civil societyTo be clear as important as their role might be bridgers are dwarfed by echoers Indeed in Dr Tsai and her coauthors39 sample echoers outnumbered bridges by 7754 to 194 or a ratio of approximately 401 This is why the echo chamber continues to dominate social media discourse and where public relations comes inThe researchers recommend that PR professionals help companies to identify and cultivate relationships with bridger social mediators in order to cultivate mutual understanding between opposing parties foster a more balanced and heterogenous public discourse on social media and pursue intergroup communication campaigns that can be implemented by strategically replying to echoers39 posts with content of contrasting views They also recommend tagging bridgers in these replies in order to invite them to join the conversation not only with the organization but also with those with opposing views on contentious public issues As Dr Tsai puts it such efforts will benefit both the company and society as a wholequotWhile you are taking a side or making a stand it39s also important to understand if there is any harm Does it make some people feel like you39re abandoning them Or will they ask 39How dare you disagree with me39 So the most important thing is to empower your stakeholders to reach into the echo chamber to help facilitate mutual understanding not just in terms of the consequences for your corporate reputation but also making a meaningful contribution to enhancing the kind of social trust in democracy that we need now more than everquotABOUT DR TSAIOriginally from Taiwan Dr WanHsiu Sunny Tsai received her PhD in Advertising from the University of Texas at Austin Her research examines the influence of advertising and marketing communication as a powerful cultural institution in capitalistic societies Specifically she has investigated topics such as multicultural advertising political consumption quotglocalizationquot of brand meanings consumer ethnocentrism social media engagement and recently emerging technologies in advertising such as chatbot and augmented realityClick the social buttons to share this story with colleagues and friendsThe opinions expressed here are the author39s views and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaVillagecomMyersBizNetamp160

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Can Public Relations Help Bridge Our Partisan Divide?

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Christopher Boulton

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