In collaboration with UNC professor Lucinda Austin, the School of Communications faculty member and strategic communications major examined corporate social advocacy and political activism through the case of DICK’s Sporting Goods and the company’s recent stance on gun control reform.
Barbara Miller Gaither, professor of communications, and Morgan Collins ’20, a strategic communications major, recently published a research paper examining corporate social advocacy and political activism through DICK’s Sporting Goods decision to stop selling assault-style rifles and to raise the minimum age for gun sales to 21.
Gaither and Collins collaborated with former Elon faculty member Lucinda Austin, now an assistant professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The trio’s research paper is titled “Examining the Case of DICK’s Sporting Goods: Realignment of Stakeholders through Corporate Social Advocacy.”
According to the paper’s abstract, the authors conducted an interview with DICK’s president, gathered documentation that included an interview with DICK’s CEO and statements from the company, and compiled a social media content analysis of 3,000 public tweets to DICK’s in the wake of the announcement.
The paper’s findings revealed that DICK’s actions extended beyond corporate social advocacy into political activism, partly driven by secondary stakeholders. “This action created an opportunity for DICK’s to redefine and realign stakeholders while making corporate values clearer to these stakeholder groups,” the abstract reads.
JPIC is an open-access, interdisciplinary journal that publishes peer-reviewed research in the emerging field of public interest communications. It is a quarterly publication published by the University of Florida College of Journalism and Communications.
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