The Handbook of Communication Engagement

Kim A. Johnston, Maureen Taylor, Kim A. Johnston, Maureen Taylor

• Editorial: Wiley-Blackwell
• Año: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781119167525
• Edición: 1
• Categoría: Commerce
• Categoría: Relations publiques

A comprehensive volume that offers the most current thinking on the practice and theory of engagement

With contributions from an international panel of leaders representing diverse academic and professional fields The Handbook of Communication Engagement brings together in one volume writings on both the theory and practice of engagementin today's organizations and societies. The expert contributors explore the philosophical, theoretical, and applied concepts of communication engagement as it pertains to building interaction and connections in a globalized, networked society.

The Handbook of Communication Engagement is comprehensive in scope with case studies of engagement from various disciplines including public relations, marketing, advertising, employee relations, education, public diplomacy, and politics. The authors advance the current thinking in engagement theory, strategy, and practice and provide a review of foundational and emerging research in engagement topics. The Handbook of Communication Engagement is an important text that:

• Provides an overview of the foundations and philosophies of engagement
• Identifies the contexts of engagement relating to specific areas across government and corporations, including CSR, consumer, activism, diplomacy, digital, and social impact
• Includes examples of contemporary engagement practice
• Presents applications of engagement and technology
• Offers insights on the future directions of engagement

The Handbook of Communication Engagement offers an essential reference for advanced undergraduate, graduate students, practitioners and scholars from communication, media, advertising, public relations, public policy, and public diplomacy areas. The volume contains a compendium of the writings on the most recent advances on the theory and practice of engagement. Winner of the 2018 PRIDE Award forInnovation, Development, and Educational Achievement from the Public Relations Division of the National Communication Association.

1
Engagement as Communication: Pathways, Possibilities, and Future Directions

Kim A. Johnston and Maureen Taylor

The term “engagement” is everywhere and has been used to describe just about every type of interaction. When the term engagement is everything, as a consequence, it is nothing. Engagement has become embedded within the discourse of many disciplines and practices, often as a placebo substituting a continuum of responses from complete ignorance to complete involvement. The enduring use and interest in engagement signifies its importance, yet theoretically, engagement remains undeveloped. This Handbook signals the beginning of a unified conceptualization of engagement as communication and provides a contemporary consideration of engagement in all its forms, functions, and frameworks across communication disciplines. Following Taylor and Kent (2014), it is through engagement that organizations and publics can make decisions that contribute to interpersonal, organizational, community, and civic social capital. Engagement will continue to evolve and be influenced by diverse contexts such as culture, technology and world events, and public expectations. Through its evolution, engagement offers a relevant, conceptual, and applied framework to understand and respond in meaningful ways to real-world problems.

The journey for this book started with an acknowledgment that everyone used the term but it was misunderstood. In 2011, after talking with Karen Russell, then editor of Journal of Public Relations Research, she was open to the vision of considering engagement within the communication fields, specifically public relations, offering the first special issue on Engagement and Public Relations in 2014. The interest in the special issue laid the foundation for a preconference at the 2014 International Communication Association conference in Seattle, where scholars came together to conceptualize and operationalize engagement. This conference meeting set us on a path to formally conceptualize and complete this Handbook.

Our goal was to cast a wide net to represent the most up-to-date conceptualizations of engagement across a variety of communication-related disciplines. The response to the call for chapters was overwhelming and revealed the diverse perspectives that are drawing upon communication engagement in fields such as information sciences, architecture and design, neuroscience, social media, public diplomacy, media, and social impact.

This Handbook conceptualizes and operationalizes engagement advancing psychological and behavioral dimensions at the individual level and extrapolating these as group-level influences at social levels relevant to organizations and societies, to provide a comprehensive examination of engagement theory and research to advance current thinking in engagement theory, strategy, and practice.

Each author in this Handbook has made a contribution to further the conceptual, empirical, and theoretical development and the application of engagement. While discipline and contextual imperatives find unique applications and influences on the antecedents, processes, and outcomes of engagement, an inductive content analysis of the definitions presented in this Handbook reveals three key themes emerge. Strong connections and intersections are present between each theme (i.e., no theme operates exclusive to the other themes), identifying the dominance of these across conceptualizations of engagement works to advance future research to understand this complex and multidimensional concept. These themes are illustrated in Figure 1.1.

1. The first theme highlights the social and relational focus of engagement and recognizes the socially situated nature of communication engagement within a social setting. Much of engagement is situated within a relational setting—with actors represented by their interests, motivations, world views, and power characteristics. Within engagement definitions, key actors in the relationship are recognized as organizations, stakeholders, consumers, employees, community, users, partners, parties, social institutions, and so on; each operating within a distinct or discrete social setting. The potential influences from social setting and group level outcomes suggest the nature of engagement is responsive to a context, setting, or discipline lens. Engagement as a social and relational activity therefore becomes about facilitating diverse relationships for engagement outcomes.
2. The second theme that emerged from the definitions presented in the Handbook focuses on engagement as interaction and exchange. Engagement is conceptualized as an iterative, dynamic process, where participation, experience, and shared action emerge as central components of engagement. It is through interaction and exchange that meaning is cocreated, such as described in the dialogic nature of engagement, to achieve understanding. The focus on interaction and exchange also highlights strong connections to the relational and social nature of engagement, for example, relationships emerge as an outcome to, or part of, an interaction. Engagement is also conceptualized as a discourse or discourses, reflecting the exchange of narratives about how and why engagement is undertaken and the outcomes of engagement for individual and social benefits. It is these social benefits, and the opportunity to build better societies and remind organizations that they operate as an instrument or reflection of a social entity, that make engagement so important to fully functioning societies (Heath, 2006). Engagement in this sense contributes to the building of social capital, cocreation of meaning and enhanced outcomes. Lest we be naïve, it is important to acknowledge that while engagement has been generally aligned with positive affectivity and outcomes, we believe challenging overly positive framings of engagement outcomes is a necessary part of scholarship and practice. Just as scholars look to understand how it contributes to individuals, groups, organizations, and societies, we must also look at the negative side of engagement as well as explore unintended consequences from engagement processes.
3. The third theme present in the authors’ definitions of engagement highlights the dynamic and multidimensional nature of engagement and acknowledges the historical legacy of engagement's psychological foundations as cognitive, affective, and behavioral dimensions. The significance of the psychological foundations emphasizes a process orientation to engagement, for example, as a state, process, orientation, or strategy and signal the relevance for a range of settings and contexts, and the complexity of engagement as a human communication phenomena. The dynamic nature of engagement opens up new opportunities for further research to understand the role of communication and experience in influencing each of these.

Figure 1.1 Inductive themes—select engagement definitions presented by authors in the Handbook of Communication Engagement (Johnston & Taylor, 2018).

Underpinning all of these themes is the central role of communication in engagement—to create, nurture, and influence outcomes. Table 1.1 presents select definitions that reflect the three themes presented earlier found within the contributing definitions toward advancing engagement.

Table 1.1 Definitions of engagement—by theme

Social and relational: Engagement definition themes	Author/page
Engagement is defined as a dynamic multidimensional relational concept featuring psychological and behavioral attributes of connection, interaction, participation, and involvement, designed to achieve or elicit an outcome at individual, organization, or social levels.	Johnston, Chapter 2, p. 18
Social level engagement is defined as a collective state of engagement that can be represented in behavioral forms (collective action, group participation), cognitive (shared knowledge) and affective forms (orientation, intention, and experience) and is an outcome of a dynamic, socially situated system. The notion of social level engagement is derived from the idea of collective action and outcomes.	Johnston, Chapter 2, p. 26
Engagement is the ultimate relational decision-making tension between individuals of all types and levels of generality (whether human or artificial, organizations, groups, associations, businesses/industries, communities, and societies).	Heath, Chapter 3, p. 33
Community engagement is defined as a relational process that facilitates understanding and evaluation, involvement, exchange of information and opinions, about a concept, issue or project, with the aim to build social capital and enhance social outcomes through decision making.	Johnston, Lane, Hurst, and Beatson, Chapter 12, p. 173
A participatory process that is led with a bottom up approach and that is distinguished by the sharing of knowledge as an indispensable component for community participation in social innovation projects. This process is stimulated by the coproduction of knowledge among all participants, and where the forms of community engagement and of community participation is determined and shaped by its context.	Chamorro-Koc and Caldwell, Chapter 20, p. 301
Engagement in the individual logic rests on the relational premise that individual entities are separate and autonomous and, therefore must initiate the process of creating and building relations with others…. Engagement in the relational logic is based on the relational premise that individuals are inherently bound to others. Engagement focuses on de...