Wal-Mart's presentation to the community: discursive practices in mitigating risk, limiting public discussion, and developing a relationship (original) (raw)
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Society's attempt to understand and communicate about risk is perhaps the world's oldest topic − the rationale for human existence and survival (Douglas, 1992). This paper takes critical stock of public relations scholarship and practices in the daunting complex that has become known as the infrastructural approach to risk communication. This approach blends critical judgment of the community structures where risk is discussed and the discourse in which it is analyzed as the foundation for risk governance needed for fully functioning societies. The critical lens of hegemony and postmodernism reveals how an increasing amount of risk communication scholarship and practice has evolved into a new professional, industrial, and societal hegemony that often marginalizes risk bearers and risk arbiters as a nuisance in an otherwise modern and elitist approach to risk control through which risk communication becomes a "priced commodity." Such commodification can empower organizations to take further risks because of the perceived confidence that its robust risk management programs and risk communication teams, including public relations, can control the dialogue and thereby help protect it from business continuity failure. The great challenge is whether risk communication and management ultimately favors the interests of elites over, and even to the marginalization and subjugation of, the interests of risk bearers and arbiters, ignoring the experiences of inequalities over the life span.
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Russian Journal of Linguistics, 2017
Nowadays, companies who want to engage environment-friendly consumers increasingly rely on green-economy oriented campaigns. Such categories of (ethical) consumers are numerically increasing, and expressions evoking environmental friendliness are becoming particularly trendy. In this vein, words such as 'sustainability' have been variously recontextualized/reframed and have become an 'ought to' for media-savvy companies 'with a vision'-Walmart, the American multinational retail corporation, being a relevant case in point. It is no accident that, on the first Google page for 'sustainability', 'Walmart' proudly surfaces:http://corporate.walmart.com/global-responsibility/sustainability. The company has made an explicit commitment not just to expand the business but also to improve communities and enhance the sustainability of the products they sell, by encouraging more responsible production practices, while at the same time making product choices more affordable for customers, as reported on its website. However, as the world's largest company, Walmart is an easy target for attack mainly by environmentalists. Sometimes, Walmart gives its critics grounds for some legitimate criticism in a variety of fields ranging from the supply chain emissions to renewable energy and preserving habitat. Such criticism resonates across the media, owing to their 'lack of closure' (Laclau and Mouffe 1985), finalized to offer an unbiased perspective. Against this 'complexified' (Macgilchrist 2007) background, our study aims to examine, from a broadly Multimodal and Positive Discourse Analysis perspective, the Walmart website 'sustainability' pages with their variety of communicative strategies, advertising 'responsible' Walmart positive attitudes to fundamental issues like Energy, Waste, Products and Responsible Sourcing.
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We content analyze the text of Wal-Mart annual reports (1972–2006), both for what is said and in antenarrative fashion what is left out. We find that the specter of Samuel Walton, dead since 1992, dwells in stories told. We intend a critical discourse analysis of the narrative ways in which Wal-Mart translates and crystallizes its version of hyperglobalization by rearticulating its dead leader. Our analysis uses the three-step specter arrival described by Derrida. We also investigate the Weberian routinization of Mr.
Climate change poses a significant threat to future social and economic activities. This article seeks to understand how corporations respond to climate uncertainties and threats through the performance of different ‘risks’, including market, reputational, regulatory and physical risks. In doing this, we demonstrate how these risks are performative and political. Based on interviews and document analysis, we show how climate change risks are naturalized within market conventions through processes of reiterating climate change as risk, codifying the risk in monetary value, entangling the risk in market conventions and cementing the frame through political activities. We also show how these risk frames have political effects in that they fail to fully account for, or represent, the complexities of climate change. Indeed, the social and natural consequences of climate change undermine the risk models that seek to explain and predict these events. The consequences of these ‘misfires’ highlight the political nature of risk frames in that their effects are unequally distributed among less powerful actors. Importantly, however, these misfires also have the potential to provide space for new interventions in responding to climate change.