This study aims to examine the impact of empathetic leadership in corporate communication, focusing on its role in enhancing employee well-being and fostering a positive workplace culture. It explores how empathetic communication contributes to trust, engagement, and long-term organizational success. Based on an international survey conducted among communication professionals in Canada and the United States (n = 1055), our analyses revealed significant gender disparities in the perception of empathy among senior communication leaders, with male professionals reporting higher perceived empathy compared to female professionals. Additionally, hierarchical position influenced perceptions, with higher-ranking employees reporting stronger empathic leadership. Perceptions of increased empathic communication over the past year were notably higher among men, older employees, and those with more experience. Empathetic leadership demonstrated a strong positive correlation with employee engagement and organizational commitment but did not significantly impact burnout. Findings from this study contribute to a broader understanding of how leadership empathy varies across professional environments and demographic groups, underscoring the complex dynamics of gender and organizational structure in shaping workplace experiences. Findings in our study contribute to both the advancement of leadership theory and the improvement of corporate communication practice.

The present study empirically tests video production tactics for TikTok- and Instagram-like videos that can be employed to achieve specific, short-term communication objectives. Using the Strategic (Science) Communication as Planned Behavior (SCPB) model as a framework, a between-subjects experiment varies the race/ethnicity of the speaker, the tone of the video, and the inclusion of references to pop culture to examine how these tactics are related to curiosity, enjoyment, and motivations to follow similar content online. We use a representative sample of U.S. adults with oversampling of underrepresented STEM groups. Findings and implications are discussed.

While confidence in science is high compared to other institutions, many Americans question whether scientists share their values, including religious ones. Narratives surrounding science and religion often focus on a conflict between the two, but religious people, especially, tend to see their religious views as in line with science. Using survey data of two probability samples representative of U.S. adults, we examine how religious views, including perceptions of conflict and harmony between science and religion, predict confidence in science. We found that while general perceptions of religion and science as conflicting negatively predicted confidence in science, when individuals think religion endorses protecting the planet, their confidence in science was higher. The results suggest that attitudes toward religion and science are more nuanced than is often acknowledged and that audiences can be confident in science while holding strong religious beliefs. Further, the work suggests that finding and highlighting common ground between religion and science is a potentially promising avenue for cultivating confidence in science.

We conducted an experiment examining public response to scientists' use of different types of humor (satire, anthropomorphism, and a combination of the two) to communicate about AI on Twitter/X. We found that humor led to increased perceptions of humor, measured as increased mirth. Specifically, we found that combining anthropomorphism and satire elicited the highest levels of mirth. Further, reported mirth was positively associated with the perceived likability of the scientist who posted the content. Our findings indicate that mirth mediated the effects of the humor types on publics' perceptions that the scientist on social media was communicating information in an appropriate and legitimate way. Overall, this suggests that scientists can elicit mirth by using combining satire and anthropomorphic humor, which can enhance publics' perceptions of scientists. Importantly, publics' responses to harsh satire were not examined. Caution should be exercised when using satire due to potential backfire effects.

Enhanced geothermal systems (EGS) are a new technology with the potential to expand renewable energy generation. Understanding how information about EGS affects people’s opinions and support for its development is critical for its implementation. The present study examines how social endorsement cues (SEC; e.g., number of likes and shares) and perceived familiarity with EGS might influence audience considerations. We found that SEC significantly influenced perceived credibility of a blog post. Perceived familiarity with EGS moderated the relationship between perceived credibility and support for regulation of academic and commercial EGS research. However, there were differences in the mediating effect of perceived credibility for support for regulation of commercial, compared to academic, research. If producers of commercial EGS want greater public support, engaging SEC on public platforms could be a promising path forward.

Less than half of American adults comply with annual influenza vaccination recommendations. Stagnating flu vaccination rates suggest new approaches, particularly ones using theory-based approaches, are needed to better understand influenza vaccination beliefs, behaviors, and intentions. Health decision-making preferences are an important consideration rarely accounted for in understanding vaccination behavior and thus may provide further insight into stagnating vaccination rates. Building on the work of Groopman and Hartzband (2012), this study considers health decision-making preferences as a determinant of vaccination attitudes and behavior and introduces an instrument for measuring them. We constructed a measure of health decision-making preferences using population representative surveys of U.S. adults 18 years old and older, drawn from the National Opinion Research Center's (NORC) AmeriSpeak® Panel. We used ordinary least squares (OLS) regression to determine the relative explanatory power of health decision-making preferences in predicting vaccine confidence, vaccine hesitancy, recent vaccination behavior and future vaccination intention. In an initial assessment, our health decision-making preferences measure was significantly correlated with measures of vaccine confidence and vaccine hesitancy, prior flu vaccination and flu vaccination intentions.

We examined the effects of gentle and harsh satire on perceived trustworthiness of a scientist in an audio clip. Using a three-condition between-subjects survey experiment (N = 723), we found that respondents in the experimental (vs. control) conditions reported greater perceived aggression, which was negatively associated with perceived trustworthiness of the scientist. The negative effects of the audio clips with satire on perceived trustworthiness were mediated by experienced mirth. Our results offer evidence that scientists who use satire may be seen as less trustworthy than those who do not, likely because of the aggression perceived in the jokes.

The use of humor as a tactic for engaging audiences is a promising avenue for effective science communication and outreach. More recently, work has started to consider what happens when scientists use humor to connect with audiences and how contextual factors moderate such effects. Our work tests humor effects in the context of an environmental science stand-up comedy routine. Using data from an experiment embedded in an online survey, we focus on the demographic characteristics (male vs. female; Black vs. White) and credentials of the speaker (scientist vs. comedian), the mirth experienced by participants after viewing the video, and the trust that audience members have in both scientists and comedic media personalities. This project, which involves a partnership with working comics, explores how communicator characteristics impact audience reception of funny science content as part of an effort to identify effective strategies for using humor to expand the audience for science content.

This study aims to understand the influence of mirth, anger, and hope, as elicited by messages with different humor types, on support for global warming action, and the potential moderating role of individual climate concern. Although mirth did not significantly vary across the different stimuli, the analysis found that climate concern moderated the influence of hope on support for global warming actions. The implications of these findings, especially for respondents who were least supportive of actions to combat global warming, are discussed.

Many scientists make use of social media and take various approaches to humor in their posts to encourage online public engagement, yet little is known about how publics respond to particular types of online science humor. This study investigates the behavioral effects of the presence of different types of science humor, specifically anthropomorphism, wordplay, and the two combined, shared by a scientist on Twitter. Individuals who experienced higher levels of mirth after exposure to humorous science content were more likely to leave a comment on the social media post. Additionally, individuals' need for cognition moderated the relationship between humor exposure and mirth, as well as the relationship between mirth and leaving a comment. These results and future research are discussed.

Satire is often used in science communication, but it is unclear how it influences perceptions of message credibility and reliance on the information. We examine how two satire types (gentle, harsh) influence perceived message credibility and information reliance, which we define as using the information in discussions or for attitudinal and behavioral changes. Using a partial mediation model, we found no effects of gentle satire, but harsh satire negatively influenced message credibility, which was positively linked to information reliance. Contrary to previous research, we found that the satire type matters. Practical implications include being cautious when using harsh satire.

There is a normative assumption that a knowledgeable populace can make informed civic decisions that are central to the well-being of society. Yet, access to knowledge is not equitable. Using the context of science information, the present work is a step toward understanding inequities in knowledge and addressing this challenge among underserved groups. A paucity of data presents a critical challenge in studying and understanding underserved communities' access to knowledge. Here, we rely on a probability sample of American adults that includes oversampling of two hardly reached populations, Black and Hispanic Americans, to examine socioeconomic inequalities in science knowledge and the contributions of media attention on these gaps in knowledge. We found that SES positively predicted factual knowledge among all the groups in our sample but was only positively associated with perceived knowledge among White respondents. Significant interactions were found primarily among Hispanic respondents in both models; these results show several differences in which media attention was associated with larger or narrower knowledge gaps highlighting the need to utilize samples that allow researchers to better understand media use dynamics among underserved groups.

Purpose The COVID-19 pandemic has generated a significant impact on several aspects of public relations practice. By adopting the theoretical framework of adaptive leadership, this research is designed to explore how an organization’s top leadership can support related adaptive action in strategic communication. Particularly, we hope to explore whether the application of adaptive leadership could facilitate a higher level of communication transparency as well as deliver a sense of caring and empathy in COVID-19 communication. Design/methodology/approach An international online survey was designed and conducted for this study. The first sample consists of 776 full-time communication professionals in the United States of America with 435 women (56.1%) and 341 men (43.9%). The second sample consists of 268 full-time communication professionals in Canada, with 110 women (41.0%) and 158 men (59.0%). The two samples were merged into the final sample of 1,044 for the data analysis. Findings Results confirmed that the perceived impact of the COVID-19 pandemic increased communication professionals’ challenges in building trust. It also drives adaptive changes in their coping actions in strategic communication. More importantly, the top leadership within the organization played a key role in this adaptive leadership environment by demonstrating commitment to transparency in COVID-19 communication and delivering a sense of empathy during the pandemic. Originality/value This study contributes to our understanding of strategic communication in times of crisis, such as the COVID-19 global pandemic, by focusing on the adaptive nature of communication leadership. More importantly, our study confirms the important roles of two leadership attributes (i.e. the sense of empathy and the commitment to communication transparency) in supporting adaptive leadership, which eventually influences trust building.

Humor is widespread in communication and its use in the context of science is no exception. Although science jokes are pervasive on sodas media, we are only beginning to understand the mechanisms through which humor affects people's attitudes, opinions, and perceptions of scientific topics. Here, we add to our understanding of how funny science content influences attitude formation and behavioral intentions; these results can help communicators make strategic decisions related to humor's use in real-world practice. Extending recent work in science communication, this study aims to understand the conditional nature of the mechanism by which funny images about three different scientific topics, combined with verbal humor, affects people's social media engagement intentions by eliciting mirth. Our results offer evidence that choices about which humor types to employ matter when it comes to communicating scientific topics. For two of the three topics, artificial intelligence and microbiomes, exposure to different humor types resulted in different levels of mirth and humor's effect on engagement intentions was moderated by respondents' need for humor. However, humor did not have the same effect on global warming engagement intentions. Our findings have implications for the practice of, training, and scholarship in science communication.

Although the term "vaccine hesitancy" has achieved great prominence, the extent to which US parents have reluctance, doubts, or indecision when it comes to vaccines recommended for children and how such hesitancy is manifest are unclear. A narrative review approach that placed emphasis on recent data and published work is used to surface evidence and insights into the current state of US parent vaccine hesitancy . The assessment finds evidence that ∼6% to 25% of parents may be vaccine hesitant, that hesitancy is higher for influenza and HPV vaccines , and there are indications that addressing parent hesitancy has become more challenging.

Across a wide range of issues and a variety of sources, scientific information often gets lost in translation, failing to properly inform, educate, and engage publics in a meaningful way. But science communication is like a wine—it is better when it is outside the box. One promising tactic for more effective scientific communication is the use of humor to both engage and educate less interested and knowledgeable citizens on important topics. Here, we investigate whether the identity of a speaker influences perceptions of their effectiveness at connecting with and engaging public audiences. We conducted a 2 (Gender: Female vs. Male) × 2 (Race: Black Speaker vs. White Speaker) × 2 (Credentials: Scientist vs. Comedian) between-subjects experiment and found that race and gender of the source, relative to their credentials, were not significant factors for predicting the perceptions of communicator effectiveness. We also found that experienced humor, or mirth, moderated the relationship between the speaker’s credentials and perceived effectiveness. We discuss the implications of our findings for science communication research and practice.

This research is motivated to advance our understanding of measurement challenges in communication practice and coping strategies from a global perspective. To do so, we relied on data from a global online survey of communication practitioners in more than 20 countries, which result in five country clusters for final analysis and comparisons. Communication practitioners across investigated country clusters shared different strategies used to cope with measurement challenges. Our results also confirmed that certain leadership qualities (i.e., strategic decision-making, possessing communication knowledge) are particularly important in managing measurement challenges. Our findings provide solutions, leadership skills, and prioritization to improve the measurement of communication effectiveness. Keywords: communication, public relations, measurement, coping strategies, global Survey

Widely accepted public health actions and recommendations, particularly those related to vaccines, are critical to U.S. and global responses to infectious disease pandemics, such as COVID-19. For vaccination-related efforts like those involving COVID-19 vaccines, high national compliance is needed. While initial COVID-19 vaccination uptake in the U.S. has been quite high, it quickly became apparent that demographic characteristics, political ideology, and potentially news/information sources used were associated with COVID-19 vaccination acceptance, hesitancy, and resistance. Drawing from nationally published COVID-19 public opinion polls as well as social and behavioral science related to vaccination acceptance, this study used a nationally representative sample of U.S. adults 18 years-old and older, undertaken in November-December 2020, to examine how four key demographic characteristics (sex, age, race/ethnicity, education), political ideology (liberal, moderate, conservative), and news/information source preference (liberal, conservative, balanced) were related to COVID-19 vaccination intentions, COVID-19 risk-benefit perceptions, interest and attention to COVID-19 information, self-reported level of being informed on key COVID-19 items, and trust and use of common COVID-19 information sources. Multiple associations were found, with most having important implications for strategic communication efforts related to COVID-19 vaccination and other preventive health recommendations.