Social Identity Signaling in Public Relations: Job Pursuit Intention among Students With Marginalized Racial and Ethnic Identities and Queer Identities

ABSTRACT

This study is one of the first research investigations that examined the effectiveness of DEI cues on a fictitious public relations agency’s website in attracting early-career practitioners with marginalized racial and ethnic identities and queer identities by conducting a 2 (identify as marginalized or not) x 2 (high or low DEI cues) between-subject online experiment. By integrating social identity theory, intergroup emotions theory, and signaling theory, the present study provides an overview of the cognitive and affective process underlying how public relations students perceive DEI cues and evaluate a workplace. This study highlights the importance of DEI efforts and communication of such efforts and provides critical social-psychological insights for public relations research.

KEYWORDS:

• DEI
• public relations
• public relations agency
• recruitment
• social identity

Acknowledgments

The author wishes to thank Drs. María E. Len-Ríos, Karen Miller Russell, Glenna Read, and Bart Wojdynski for their guidance on this study.

Disclosure statement

The author reports there are no completing interests to declare.

Notes

1. By queer identities, I refer to “the umbrella term for nonheterosexual and/or nongender-normative identities” (Ciszek, 2018, p. 135)

2. This term refers to those groups in the United States that are and have been historically targeted by racism, including people of African, Asian, and Latin American descents and indigenous peoples (Native Americans or American Indians) (Tatum, 2017). For more terminology and definitions, see Appendix B.

3. This term is used to group various sexual and gender minorities, including Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer/Questioning, Intersex, Asexual and beyond (Gold, 2018). For more terminology and definitions, see Appendix B.

4. “Cisheteronormativity refers to the systemic normalization and material privileging of bodies, identities, and subjectivities that most closely align with white cisgender and heterosexual cultural expectancies” (LeMaster et al., 2019)

5. “A term used by some to describe people who are not transgender. ‘Cis-’ is a Latin prefix meaning ‘on the same side as,’ and is therefore an antonym of ‘trans-.’ A more widely understood way to describe people who are not transgender is simply to say non-transgender people” (GLAAD Media Reference Guide, 2016).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the College of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Georgia under the Paul C. and Margaret B. Broun Student Support Scholarship.