Browsing by Person "Wood, Emma"

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Action Research and Public Relations: Dialogue, Peer Learning, and the Issue of Alcohol
(Sage, 2013-05-14) Pieczka, Magda; Wood, Emma
This paper presents an action research project, which transformed dialogic techniques used policy making and community development into an innovative approach to education about alcohol. The project was developed by a group of teenage volunteers, the AlcoLOLs, and two public relations researchers, tested in a local school, presented at the Scottish Parliament to policy stakeholders concerned with alcohol, and subsequently extended to a number of schools across the city of Edinburgh (Scotland). The paper makes a contribution to public relations by offering a detailed analytical account of dialogue as a method of inquiry and a mechanism for change. The paper also introduces the concept of extended epistemology as a fresh perspective on the phenomenon of relationship and on relationship management. Finally, the paper argues that action research has the transformative potential for the development of academic knowledge in the field and as an approach to education and training of practitioners.
AlcoLOLs Project: Final report, March 2016
(Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh, 2016-03-31) Pieczka, Magda; Wood, Emma; Casteltrione, Isidoropaolo
This report evaluates the AlcoLOLs project, funded by the Robertson Trust and conducted in Edinburgh 2013-2015. The project was designed to tackle the issues alcohol presents for young people and worked by combining insights from dialogue, peer education, and a harm reduction approach. The intervention was co-designed by young people and implemented by them in six secondary schools in the North East of Edinburgh, eventually reaching over 3000 young people. The AlcoLOLs, a name they chose for themselves, were volunteers who experienced dialogue at Queen Margaret University where they received training in facilitation and education about alcohol. Subsequently, the AlcoLOLs ran their own dialogue groups in schools, meeting each group of approximately 15 pupils twice and reaching on average 1000 pupils a year. School dialogue groups were designed to problematize alcohol, question participants’ attitudes and behaviours, offer useful knowledge, develop new communication skills to support learning, resilience, and, where appropriate, aspire to change behaviours. Our approach was: to treat alcohol consumption as a social, cultural practice; to acknowledge that persuasion and information-giving were insufficient communication methods to tackle the issue: and to adopt a harm reduction — pragmatic and non-judgmental — way of working. The AlcoLOLs project, consequently, was designed around dialogue and peer-learning and it demonstrably delivered a range of beneficial outcomes for participants: new skills and knowledge, change of attitudes and behaviours (effective self-regulation), and the promise of a potentially larger-scale cultural transformation.
Chapter 4: Using critical dialogue to address racism, humanise the 'other' and create solidarity and praxis in the classroom
(Critical Publishing, 2023-05-26) Wood, Emma; Marcus, Geetha; Van de Peer, Stefanie
Chapter 7: Challenging dominant narratives about the global south to address implicit bias and othering
(Critical Publishing, 2023-05-26) Salhab, Walid; Ndale, Sandra; Wood, Emma; Marcus, Geetha; Van de Peer, Stefanie
Corporate communication
(Pearson Education, 2017-04-20) Wood, Emma; Tench, Ralph; Yeomans, Liz
Dialogue about death
(Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh, 2018-01-26) Wood, Emma
Talking about death and dying is difficult within a Scottish culture. But not being able to talk about it makes coping with death, dying and bereavement difficult. Emma Wood was commissioned to use dialogic techniques to enable participants to engage in discussion about this difficult topic to inform the Scottish Partnership for Palliative Care strategy.
Dialogue in Scotland?: A forum with communication practitioners.
(Centre for Dialogue, Queen Margaret University, 2010) Pieczka, Magda; Wood, Emma; Escobar, Oliver
On the 2nd of June 2009 a group of 30 communication practitioners, organisational leaders, academics and policy makers met at Queen Margaret University (Edinburgh) to explore the role of dialogue in Scotland. What follows is a review and commentary of the practical and theoretical issues that emerged during the Forum.
Public relations and corporate communication
(Routledge, 2016-05-20) Wood, Emma; Theaker, Alison
Public relations and corporate identity
(Routledge, 2016-05-20) Wood, Emma; Somerville, Ian; Theaker, Alison
Public relations and corporate social responsibility
(Routledge, 2016-05-20) Somerville, Ian; Wood, Emma; Theaker, Alison
Public relations and the free organizational publication : practitioner perspectives on the brave new (media) world
(Emerald, 2007) Gillham, Mark; Wood, Emma; Somerville, Ian
Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to present and discuss the results of research conducted among Scottish communication professionals, which investigated their perception of and attitudes toward recent trends and future developments with respect to the free organisational publication. Design/methodology/approach - The mainly qualitative data presented in this paper were gathered using an in-depth self-completion questionnaire. Findings - The paper finds that first, there have been significant changes in purpose, content, design and distribution of free organisational publications in recent years, but for the foreseeable future communication professionals envisage important roles for both print and electronic organisational publications. Second, practitioners tend to adopt the rhetoric and language of technological determinism- when discussing new media technologies. That is, they tend to see themselves as relatively powerless in the face of technological advances- and see their role as simply adopting what is given to them. This article argues that viewing the technology/society relationship from a more social shaping- perspective will allow practitioners to utilise new media technologies in ways which will benefit them and their stakeholders. Research limitations/implications - The paper provides a more complete picture of the value- of free organisational publications. Future research must necessarily investigate the viewpoint of the audiences. Practical implications - The paper draws lessons for practitioners on how best to employ print and electronic publications and how they should respond to current claims made about new media technologies. Originality/value - This paper investigates what is, in many ways, a quite different new media environment from that analysed by previously published UK research in this area. This study also theorises practitioner discourses in a more comprehensive way than many earlier studies by examining them in the context of the theoretical debates surrounding the relationship between technology and society.
Using dialogue to reduce the turbulence: focussing on building social capital to encourage more sustainable PR goals and outcomes
(2011) Wood, Emma
Today's 'turbulent times' can be blamed on a lack of social capital. In the UK, the chair of the Financial Services Authority (FSA) believes that the financial sector 'has swollen beyond its socially useful size-_I think some of it is socially useless activity' (Turner, 2009:1). And leading economist, Will Hutton (2009), blames the financial turbulence on the 'intellectual and moral failure' not just of financial institutions - but also of legislators, regulators, business leaders and academics basing their ideas on a 'narrow ideological theory and consumer culture' with a business mantra deemed 'a short termist philosophy and amoral way of doing capitalism'. A number of key thinkers have noted an erosion of social capital in contemporary cultures - notably, Putnam (1993, 1996, 2000) in the United States. And in the UK the ideas inherent in the theory of social capital - building trust and connections between individuals and social networks - clearly resonate with David Cameron's rhetoric in relation to 'Broken Britain' and his ambitions for a 'Big Society'. At an organizational level, social capital can refer to the impact that organizations can have on sustaining cohesive societies (through employment creation, community relations and corporate social responsibility activities and so on) , but also in a more commercially strategic sense, it refers to the value accrued by an organization being deemed a trustworthy, productive actor in society and part of a network: 'the type of connections that an organisation has with competitors, politicians, journalists, bureaucrats, researchers and other relevant groups' (Ihlen 2009 ). Thus, public relations practice can be conceptualised as a means of building social capital through communication with a range of stakeholders. In recognition of the difficulties (both practical and ethical) of managing stakeholders (or even relationships) the concept of stakeholder management is being increasingly replaced by the notion of stakeholder engagement premised on a dialogical approach (de Bussey 2010, Heath 2007) although the abilty to achieve real engagement is highly contested. A body of knowledge points to dialogue theory and dialogic and deliberative approaches (see Anderson et al. 2004, Deetz and Simpson, 2004, Kapein and van Tulder 2003) as being the best way to achieve engagement, and views are emerging which point to the importance of this approach to public relations (Kent and Taylor 2002, Heath et al . 2006, Dials and Shirka 2008, de Bussy 2010, Pieczka 2011).
Young people, alcohol, dialogical methods
(Bristol University Press, 2020-09-14) Wood, Emma; Scandrett, Eurig
This chapter explores the efficacy of using Freire’s pedagogy of the oppressed as a way of understanding how young people co-produced the ‘AlcoLOLs’ intervention aimed at encouraging young people to challenge social norms associated with what we call Scotland’s drinking culture and make confident, informed decisions about the amount of alcoholic drink they consume. It attempts to show how using "reflection and action directed at the structures to be transformed…oppressed people can acquire a critical awareness of their own condition, and, with their allies, struggle for liberation’ (Freire 2017 p.36). Specific challenges focus on the extent to which young Scots can be seen as oppressed (so in Freirian terms are ‘doers’ rather than ‘thinkers’) and whether the dialogical intervention that transforms them can be explained as the young participants’ developing praxis.