POLITICAL ADVOCACY BY FOR-PROFIT ENTERPRISES: ACTIONS AND GOVERNANCE IMPLICATIONS

For profit companies can exercise influence over public politics: Advertisers withdraw funds from media programs and media outlets, companies move service centres and offices, companies stop providing services to certain clients. This research will perform a series of comparative case studies, using publicly available commercial communication and interviews with industry professionals to understand how for-profit enterprise involve themselves in public politics. Using a theoretical perspective drawn from the political economy of communication and a methodological approach drawn from organisational and strategic communication research, this project hopes to examine the practical elements of how companies involve themselves in politics, as well as the impact of their involvement on normative concepts of representation and democracy. This project attempts to answer four research questions: 1) What are the representational strategies taken by companies severing economic relationships on political grounds? 2) What is the flow of information in these situations and to whom is communication directed? 3) Which issues are compatible with corporations’ public intervention and why? And 4) What potential do these behaviours have as a tool for governance?

Faculty Supervisor:

Jeremy Shtern

Student:

Partner:

London School of Economics

Discipline:

Sociology

Sector:

Information and Communications Technology; New and Digital Media; Public Service, Policy, and Governance

University:

Toronto Metropolitan University

Program: