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- Local governments facebook pages: do they provide a public-service?Publication . Eiró-Gomes, Mafalda; Rodrigues, Maria de JesusPURPOSE The research aimed at a better understanding of how municipalities in Portugal (with between 20 and 30 thousand inhabitants), used their official Facebook pages, between the 1st January and the 30th April, 2024. Are they being used as a public service belonging to the realm of Public Communication? METHODOLOGY / RESEARCH DESIGN In the frame of a pragmatist world view and in order to answer the research questions both quantitative and qualitative methods have been developed. A software programme has been used to recollect and analyse the structural facebook quantitative metrics followed by a two level content analysis process (qualitative content analysis to analyse the manifest messages). FINDINGS The data showed that the research questions (derived from an international literature review) were not even the most relevant ones as, in general, the 31 facebook pages analysed could not be considered as providing a service or belonging to either public communication nor political communication categories. They seem to be used as the old placards outside the town halls where different associations, or even private companies, could display information concerning their cultural or sporting events. RESEARCH LIMITATIONS / IMPLICATIONS The research being presented here is just a small part of a bigger project that hopes to understand, in general, how municipalities use their facebook pages in Portugal as well as promoting a better understanding of Public Communication in general and the interest in seeing it as a service. ORIGINALITY / VALUE None is known about the way local governments use social media, as a service, in Portugal, in the framework of public communication studies.
- Comunicação, indústria e mercados globais: um olhar disruptivo sobre o paradigma dominantePublication . Raposo, Ana Luísa Canelas Rasquilho; Eiró-Gomes, Mafalda; Gonçalves, MartaCom a declaração da pandemia de SARS-CoV-2 em março de 2020 pela Organização Mundial de Saúde (OMS), as empresas foram surpreendidas por um cenário que poucas, ou nenhumas, tinham considerado nos seus planeamentos estratégicos. Pese embora as empresas Business-to-Business (B2B) funcionem no backstage do processo de criação de valor, estas são uma peça-chave dando um contributo essencial para o mesmo. Perante este cenário, surgiu a necessidade de compreender como é entendido o papel da Comunicação na gestão da relação com os stakeholders das empresas nacionais B2B com foco na exportação, que se viram forçadas a repensar um conjunto de pressupostos assumidos até então como válidos. No estudo desenvolvido entre setembro de 2020 e janeiro de 2021, optou-se pelo recurso a métodos mistos, conjugando uma abordagem quantitativa e qualitativa para recolha (inquérito por questionário - 124 empresas, inquérito por entrevista - 33 empresas, análise documental) e tratamento dos dados (análise estatística descritiva e análise de conteúdo categorial temática). Assim, foi possível realizar uma triangulação de dados de diferentes fontes primárias e secundárias. Nesta investigação de carácter exploratório, foram analisadas empresas com exportações em 2019 de valor igual ou superior a um milhão de euros e com destino a três ou mais mercados externos, associadas da aicep Portugal Global. Simultaneamente, foram ainda contactadas pela SayU Consulting empresas com um volume de exportações de valor igual ou superior a 500 mil euros e com destino a pelo menos um mercado externo. As conclusões do estudo apontam para o facto de que, se é certo que as empresas B2B vendem produtos/serviços únicos e diremos melhor "conhecimento" na cadeia de valor, é a Comunicação institucional / Corporativa, a confiança e a unicidade da empresa, que permite fechar os negócios e contribuir para o sucesso da mesma. Não só as empresas B2B exportadoras individualmente, mas todas as organizações, como associações empresariais e sectoriais, que em cada um dos setores de atividade operam com a missão de promover e posicionar cada uma das indústrias, terão de olhar de uma forma diferente para a "comunicação", não se resumindo esta à componente comercial de divulgação de produtos e/ou serviços. O mundo pós-pandemia irá exigir maior transparência e mais confiança. Será essencial às empresas em análise neste estudo, aumentar a sua reputação e construir e consolidar as suas relações com todos os agentes da cadeia de produção, desde o fornecedor de matéria-prima de base até ao último cliente (o comprador), passando por todas as outras partes interessadas, como colaboradores, parceiros, entidades reguladoras ou governo.
- Europe: an invisible princess?Publication . Ferreira, João Pedro; Eiró-Gomes, Mafalda; Shumskaya, DariaIntroduction: For 75 years, Europe has been a land of freedom, democracy and hope. However, as Steiner (2004) has put it, Europe is above all an idea that many Europeans tend to not acknowledge. According to the author, memory, culture, or the landscape are some of the elements of a European identity always in need of reinventing itself. Riemen (2016) has even called Europe a princess and many of those that try to reach our continent – sometimes, in very tragic ways – tend to highlight another one of its features: human solidarity. Nevertheless, the lack of understanding of and interest in ”Europe” has come to light in recent years. In the same vein, the European Union has been inherently perceived as a mere ”political” or ”economic” forum that is very distant from the citizens. More than echoing the pessimism in this research, the authors have tried to understand the role of the press as a medium to bring these two groups – the citizens and the institution — closer. Even in the social media era, the Portuguese population tends to turn to the press (we will consider here only the digital press) to understand what is going on in the world and they refer to it as the main source of credible information (Reuters Institute, 2023). The main purpose of the research as being introduced here is to understand how present the European Union was in the Portuguese press during the Portuguese Presidency of the Council of the European Union – PPEU (first semester of 2021). Which of the Portuguese Presidency’s priorities (e.g., Resilient Europe, Green Europe, Digital, Global, Social), were brought up in the press? Are there significant differences among newspapers and/or topics? These are some of the questions that guide this research. Research design: To address these research questions, a content analysis of the five main digital newspapers (on the basis of the number of its readers) was developed. In each newspaper, a search with keywords or cronyms as “EU”, “European Union”, “Portuguese Presidency of the Council of the European Union” was done. Following this kind of classical procedure in content analysis, traditionally a quantitative method to organize a great volume of data, a second procedure was applied concerning the five themes acknowledged as priorities by the PPEU. In a second moment, formal analysis and textual analysis enabled some other findings concerning the importance given by the newspaper to the theme or what kind of article we are analyzing. Results and interpretation: Almost four hundred pieces related to the European Union during the Portuguese Presidency were found in the Correio da Manhã, Diária de Notícias/Jornal de Notícias, Expresso, Observador e Público newspapers. Two journals emerged as having dealt with the subject in a much more detailed way. It can also be asserted that two of the subjects were prioritized: resilience and global Europe. From an interpretative point of view, it is quite interesting to note that many of the articles were clearly from the Portuguese news agency, LUSA, and replicated in many of the newspapers.
- Environmental sustainability: the role of communication in organizational responsibilityPublication . Eiró-Gomes, Mafalda; Raposo, Ana Luísa Canelas Rasquilho; Nunes, Tatiana Filipa GomesIntroduction and purpose of the study Sustainability, the concept that has arrived maybe with 50 years of delay, is the new buzzword all over the globe. From greenwashing to becoming a real worry, and for some a new business purpose built in the DNA of their organizations, this concept seems to be an unavoidable one in the context of the actual organizations communication departments. The research question that formed the skeleton of the research here being presented even if it has everything to do with sustainability did not use this broader concept in the formulation of the research question or in the analysis but a very concrete aspect of the "sustainability" worries. How do the organizations belonging to the Global Compact Network Portugal with 2020 reports publicly accessible online express in their sustainability reports, or in their absence, in their activity reports, sustainability issues and in particular the organization's concerns with the "climate"? What use do they make of the concepts of "climate change" and "climate crisis"? Literature review The concept of Corporate Social Responsibility is understood in a very broad sense and in a formulation indistinguishable from another notion, Corporate Citizenship. If we use these concepts without the search - which is certainly too complex for the purposes of this work - for a full definition, and therefore much more in the sense so dear to Wittgenstein (1953) of family resemblances, we cannot help but focus on their dimension (we know that it is artificially cut) of environmental responsibility. The notion of 'sustainability' has increasingly been employed with a very broad focus. Although internationally and in the reports of the most important organizations, or even as defined already in 2019 by "The Guardian", "It's a crisis, not a change. (...) Climate change is no longer considered to accurately reflect the seriousness of the overall situation". Methodology This research is focused on the 84 Portuguese organizations that are part of the UN Global Compact, an initiative in the area of corporate citizenship, which originated from a proposal by the former UN Secretary General in 2000. It is based on ten principles, in the areas of human rights, labor practices, environmental protection and anti-corruption, and aims to promote the public and voluntary commitment of companies to comply with them. 48 out of these 84 organizations had available online or sent to the researchers after being contacted, their sustainability or activity reports. Therefore, 26 sustainability reports and 22 activity reports were analyzed. A thematic categorical analysis of manifest messages was performed. NVivo software was used to support data collection and analysis. The categories were defined in a concept-driven strategy and coincide with the major themes under analysis based on the Global Compact proposal, regarding Goal 13: Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts. Results and conclusions As argued above, the concept of climate 'crisis' should be preferred to that of climate 'change' to refer to the challenges the world faces. However, in Portugal, little or nothing has been developed from the point of view of communication, and more particularly, of Corporate Communication / Public Relations to understand all these issues. Only 5 out of the 48 reports analyzed present the expression "climate crisis" throughout their pages to refer to the current situation of humanity. It is also curious to note that of the 5 organizations, we could only consider that 4 assume that we are effectively living a climate crisis, because in one of the reports, the sentence is built in the future, as if it were something still hypothetical, that we can prevent, and not yet a reality. If we look at the expression "climate emergency", it only appears in 4 of the reports. Moreover, the term "climate change" is used by 33 out of 48 organizations. And we found "Environmental Sustainability" in 27 documents analyzed. Practical and social implications We intend to present a reflection on how organizations communicate their Corporate Social Responsibility practices in aspects more directly related to climate change or the climate crisis. At the same time, it is the authors' intention to promote recognition of the importance of communication for social and behavioral change in the area of climate, as well as its importance in combating the climate emergency. In this way, we hope to contribute to the ethical accountability of communication professionals when working on the topic of climate change / climate crisis from now on. The CSR reports represent in our neo-liberal societies one of the most relevant aspects of the expression (so many times in figures) not only of the financial health of the organizations but especially of the real worries that have underlined all the CEOs in a certain year.
- Europe: an invisible princess?Publication . Ferreira, João Pedro; Eiró-Gomes, Mafalda; Shumskaya, DariaIntroduction: For 75 years, Europe has been a land of freedom, democracy and hope. However, as Steiner (2004) has put it, Europe is above all an idea that many Europeans tend to not acknowledge. According to the author, memory, culture, or the landscape are some of the elements of a European identity always in need of reinventing itself. Riemen (2016) has even called Europe a princess and many of those that try to reach our continent – sometimes, in very tragic ways – tend to highlight another one of its features: human solidarity. Nevertheless, the lack of understanding of and interest in ”Europe” has come to light in recent years. In the same vein, the European Union has been inherently perceived as a mere ”political” or ”economic” forum that is very distant from the citizens. More than echoing the pessimism in this research, the authors have tried to understand the role of the press as a medium to bring these two groups – the citizens and the institution — closer. Even in the social media era, the Portuguese population tends to turn to the press (we will consider here only the digital press) to understand what is going on in the world and they refer to it as the main source of credible information (Reuters Institute, 2023). The main purpose of the research as being introduced here is to understand how present the European Union was in the Portuguese press during the Portuguese Presidency of the Council of the European Union – PPEU (first semester of 2021). Which of the Portuguese Presidency’s priorities (e.g., Resilient Europe, Green Europe, Digital, Global, Social), were brought up in the press? Are there significant differences among newspapers and/or topics? These are some of the questions that guide this research. Research design: To address these research questions, a content analysis of the five main digital newspapers (on the basis of the number of its readers) was developed. In each newspaper, a search with keywords or cronyms as “EU”, “European Union”, “Portuguese Presidency of the Council of the European Union” was done. Following this kind of classical procedure in content analysis, traditionally a quantitative method to organize a great volume of data, a second procedure was applied concerning the five themes acknowledged as priorities by the PPEU. In a second moment, formal analysis and textual analysis enabled some other findings concerning the importance given by the newspaper to the theme or what kind of article we are analyzing. Results and interpretation: Almost four hundred pieces related to the European Union during the Portuguese Presidency were found in the Correio da Manhã, Diária de Notícias/Jornal de Notícias, Expresso, Observador e Público newspapers. Two journals emerged as having dealt with the subject in a much more detailed way. It can also be asserted that two of the subjects were prioritized: resilience and global Europe. From an interpretative point of view, it is quite interesting to note that many of the articles were clearly from the Portuguese news agency, LUSA, and replicated in many of the newspapers.