Integrating Gender and Emotions Into Issues Management: The Case of Campus Sexual Assault

• In Event: ICA Plenary Interactive Paper/Poster Session II
  In Paper Session: Public Relations Interactive Poster Session

Abstract

While universities continue to grow increasingly sophisticated in their public relations function, issues such as sexual assault continue to pose such a challenge for university communicators and officials. Taking an issues management perspective, I argue that one of the reasons that universities have struggled with addressing issues of like sexual assault is because conceptualizations of emotion and gender within issues management, as with public relations more broadly, are largely currently absent. Because of this, although the management function of public relations can be enacted at universities around rational issues, emotional, often gendered, issues are poorly conceived and haphazardly dealt with to avoid media scrutiny rather than appropriately managing the root causes. Using dialogue as a launching point, this essay offers suggestions of how to re-conceptualize issues management to more fully consider emotions and gendered issues within this approach as a way to add more flexibility and utility to the concept.

Author

• Stephanie Madden, University of Maryland