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LGBT Individuals’ Meaning Making Process of Marriage Equality

Messages in the Context of Corporate Social Advocacy Communication

Master’s Thesis

Graduate School of Communication Master’s programme Communication Science

By:

Maria Andreea Ungureanu 11108029

Supervisor: Anke Wonneberger Submission date: 30.01.2017

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Statement of originality

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Abstract

Companies’ involvement in controversial societal issues has been identified as corporate social advocacy (CSA). Moreover, intersectionality represents a concept which proposes that multiple identities converge and shape distinct individual experiences This paper investigates how lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) individuals from different racial and ethnic backgrounds make meaning of corporate social advocacy campaigns that support same-sex marriage and LGBT equality. Ten self-identified LGBT individuals were interviewed to reveal their interpretations of CSA communication delivered by organizations. Results showed that the participants related to the messages through their communicative power, as well as through their legitimacy, which was dictated by the company’s additional efforts and actions towards the same cause. This present study also provides insight into developing more appropriate campaigns for publics, according to each group’s lived realities and interests. To this end, communication professionals are encouraged to integrate the voices of less privileged individuals in the process of campaign creation, to reduce the bias and assumptions they may hold, and generate more intersectional representations of their publics.

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Introduction

The strategies used by public relations practitioners to segment their publics have been labeled as too oversimplified to account for all the nuances that now define “the increasing mobility, diaspora and multicultural mix of global public relations audiences” (Sison, 2009, p. 1). The main argument thus becomes shifting from treating a group of people as homogenous based on a single characteristic shared by the individuals comprising that group, to a more inclusive and refined approach to communicating to target publics (Sison, 2009). In the case of LGBT individuals, communication campaigns addressing to this category were also described as perpetuating a reductionist perspective (Tuten, 2006), meaning that, even when companies aim to convey a gay-friendly message, this can still be constructed using “a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach to the LGBT consumer market segment that may overlook meaningful segmentation variables” (Oakenfull, 2013, p. 80).

Therefore, it can be claimed that, by failing to bring together individuals’ simultaneous identities into coherent, representative communication campaigns, practitioners can develop a tendency where “decontextualizing publics out of their real-life communicative environments” (Vardeman-Winter, Tindall, & Jiang, 2013, p. 298) further accentuates differences in power relations between hegemonic and marginalized groups. According to the literature, this outcome can be counteracted by applying a more participatory approach to communication, where members of the public become active actors in the production of knowledge, due to their direct contact with the issues assimilated by public relations campaigns (Hodges & McGrath, 2011). Within this framework, marginalized communities voice their personal issues and experiences through a “co-constructive dialogue” with public relations practitioners, that seeks to subvert normative discourses in mainstream media (Dutta, Ban, & Pal, 2012).

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One example of a historically stigmatized group is represented by LGBT individuals. Exploring how minority groups perceive they are depicted in the media was previously employed to expose the dominant meanings perpetuated by the industry, and encourage campaign designers to deliver messages that reflect publics’ realities and experiences (Tindall & Vardeman-Winter, 2011). Similarly, this paper will investigate how LGBT individuals construct their readings of corporate campaigns supporting gay marriage and LGBT equality, which can help organizations implement appropriate communication strategies to represent the needs of this group.

The campaigns will be positioned into a context of corporate social advocacy and post-reflective communication, marking the active involvement of organizations in social-political issues, where the focus on financial interests is surpassed by the fight for the well-being of society (Johansen & Valentini, 2013). Previous literature offers limited insights into CSA communication, as opposed to the field of corporate social responsibility (CSR), where the former can be conceptualized as deriving from the latter (Weinzimmer & Esken, 2016). Therefore, this paper aims to contribute to this emerging area of research by theorizing the public’s meaning making patterns of CSA communication campaigns on gay marriage and LGBT equality. This exploration will be completed by also incorporating the role of intersectionality in generating responses to corporate messages. The term intersectionality suggests that different identities converge and generate distinct interpretations and experiences (Weber, 2001). However, previous studies concluded that this approach is still underrepresented in the literature (Vardeman-Winter & Tindall, 2010), and this is even more relevant in the context of CSA communication, where the effect of intersecting identities of has not yet been conceptualized. Consequently, the aim of this thesis is to address this gap in the literature, by investigating how intersectionality impacts LGBT individuals’ readings of corporate campaigns. Moreover, since the current project proposes a

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qualitative insight into this process, participants’ perceptions were uncovered using in-depth interviews, while the subjects were selected using snowball sampling, allowing the finding of participants through referrals.

Theoretical background

From Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) to Corporate Social Advocacy (CSA)

The implementation of CSR communication is defined as an organization’s involvement in social or environmental issues, and this can have both intrinsic and extrinsic reasons (Du, Bhattacharya & Sen, 2010), where the latter encompasses the ways in which CSR activities can benefit the company, such as leading to increased sales or attracting more potential employees (Sen, Bhattacharya, & Korschun, 2006). On the other hand, intrinsic reasons entail altruistic motivation and unconditional commitment to the cause. Previous literature suggested finding a balance between these two types of motives, since consumers can now grasp that the company's involvement in social causes can have benefits on both society and the organization itself (Kramer & Porter, 2007). Another key concept is represented by the CSR fit, which assumes a compatibility between the business of the company and the chosen cause, and this can impact stakeholder reactions to the CSR activities, such as increasing their skepticism when the fit is low (Du et al., 2010).

On the other hand, corporate social advocacy represents a term introduced by Dodd and Supa (2013), referring to companies taking a stance on social-political issues, such as marriage equality or gun control. To separate this concept from CSR activities, the authors argued that the issues included under the umbrella of CSA are not only unrelated to the business of the organization, but they are also associated with controversial areas or fields (Dodd & Supa, 2014).

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Promoting these principles thus involves an acknowledgement of “their own inherent and intrinsic merit” (Wettstein & Baur, 2016, p. 200), regardless of the business area in which the company operates. Moreover, in contrast to the definition of CSR as a “forum for exchange, dissent, and challenge of organizational and societal values” (Schultz, Castelló, & Morsing, 2013, p. 689), where the organization and its stakeholders are brought together in a context of collaboration, the company’s engagement in CSA issues can determine the alienation of certain stakeholder groups, which ultimately can impact the financial performance of that organization (Dodd & Supa, 2014).

Previous literature also identified the notion of corporate sociopolitical involvement, which addresses organizations’ engagement with divisive societal topics, “on which opinion is split between ‘for’ and ‘against’ camps. Such issues are controversial as they involve stances on sensitive topics that challenge established norms” (Nalick, Josefy, Zardkoohi, & Bierman, 2016, p. 385). Wettstein and Baur (2016) take this discussion one step forward, by theorizing around the notion of corporate political advocacy, which also requires a vocal and public support of certain groups or values, that have no compatibility to the business of the company in question. This estrangement from the organization’s core business also takes place at the expense of certain stakeholders’ involvement and approval (Wettstein & Baur, 2016), strengthening the idea that the company’s promotion of those values is located outside financial interest. This positioning outside stakeholder dialogue can lead to a phenomenon also identified in the theory on CSA, namely the separation from certain stakeholder groups that do not share the same values appropriated and promoted by the company (Wettstein & Baur, 2016). Similarly, sociopolitical involvement can also affect potential stakeholders that disagree with the stance taken by the company, leading to their separation from the organization in question (Nalick et al., 2016).

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Considering this challenge to doing corporate political advocacy, it becomes vital that companies convey a message that is in accordance to the realities of the individuals they are willing to portray, and this is especially relevant for the representation of minority groups, such as the LGBT community. The discussion around corporate social or political advocacy is also closely related to notions of ethics. To this end, it can be argued that the moral approach to engaging in CSA communication “implies a (positive) responsibility of the agent to voice the position of those whose voices otherwise remain unheard. Both the legitimacy and the desirability of political advocacy would thus depend on whether what is being advocated represents a particularly fundamental interest of otherwise marginalized groups” (Baur & Wettstein, 2016, p. 181). Therefore, this thesis’ aim is to investigate whether and to what extent LGBT individuals perceive certain CSA campaigns that focus on the support of gay marriage and LGBT equality, as accurately representing their realities and experiences.

Post-reflective communication

The involvement in CSR activities corresponds to a reflective approach to communication, which allows the organization to position and perceive itself as constituent of a larger societal context (Holmström, 2004). This allows the company to relate to the outside environment and absorb societal values into the micro-universe of the organization, which takes place through a process of counselling, as defined by Van Ruler and Verčič (2005). During this stage, the company identifies and examines the relevant “values, norms, and issues in society and discuss these with members of the organization in order to adjust values, norms, and issue-related points of view in the organization” (Van Ruler & Verčič, 2005, p. 265). This immersion into the outside world, to align the set of norms shared by society and those in the organization, emphasizes a corporate

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approach marked by “multistakeholder dialogue (…) and symmetrical communication” (Holmström, 2004, p. 125). Therefore, CSR becomes a key outcome of reflective communication management, since “themes that were conventionally understood as extra-economic – such as nature, human rights, animal welfare – are now seen as core issues on the corporate agenda” (Holmström, 2004, p. 130).

On the other hand, a post-reflective approach to communication is established when the company moves beyond simply associating itself with societal values, but also redirects its influence and power towards alleviating the conditions of marginalized communities: “The moral expectations of authorities are not merely passive, but transformational. We are not merely expecting them not to harm anyone, but to use their authority for the benefit of the disadvantaged” (Wettstein, 2010, p. 41). According to Scherer and Palazzo (2007), this transition from passive spectators to active contributors to the improvement of social-political issues is materialized through companies’ involvement into “an ongoing process of observing and participating in public discourses’’ (Scherer & Palazzo, 2007, p. 1110). In this sense, a post-reflective approach matches the theory on CSA, since both emphasize a focus on doing the right thing, and taking a moral path to act in the interest of an underrepresented group. Within the post-reflective paradigm, the counselling act becomes only the starting point in the reinterpretation and fulfilment of the company’s role in society. This means that, the mere compliance to societal norms that defines the reflective approach, is now replaced by the process of taking a public stance to define and defend those values, as an ethical actor in society (Johansen & Valentini, 2013).

At the same time, addressing social issues that concern a public which is “growing more culturally integrated, geographically dispersed, and informed via a variety of information sources” (Tindall & Vardeman-Winter, 2011, p. 284) can complicate the process of corporate political

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advocacy communication, since these messages need to acknowledge how intersecting identities contribute to the way people relate to a certain issue. Consequently, the next part of this paper will argue that companies’ support of gay marriage and LGBT equality, cannot be separated from an intersectional approach applied to post-reflective communication.

Intersectionality

Adding to the strategies that incorporate minority voices in the production of communication campaigns, intersectionality represents “a liberation strategy designed to expose and thereby challenge the multiple marginalization of groups whose realities and contributions had been effectively erased in social movement activity and scholarship” (Wadsworth, 2011, p. 202). Since this erasure is dictated by a system that ascribes uneven levels of privilege and subordination to different groups, the role of intersectionality becomes “rooted in a historical legacy of struggle against hegemonic, normative structures” (Perry, 2009, p. 229). The notion of hegemony is positioned at the core of a culture where dominant stances are internalized as the natural ordering of things (Acosta-Alzuru, 2003). For this reason, communication campaigns are often conceptualized in relation to the notion of hegemony, which strives to establish and perpetuate an “authoritative set of meanings and practices – an ideology” (Acosta-Alzuru, 2003, p. 287).

Analyzing media campaigns with reference to hegemony’s role of rooting privileged meanings into the status quo entails shifting the focus to consumers’ perspectives and insights into the messages presented by organizations. This becomes a necessary step, since the interpretations provided by members of the public that face the experiences depicted in the campaigns, often serve to expose and challenge the bias held by practitioners, that stems from their hegemonic understanding of less privileged groups (Tindall & Vardeman-Winter, 2011). Investigating how

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viewers relate to these messages through an intersectional lens, can uncover a series of injustices derived from the division of power between producers and the public: for example, the meaning-making process of non-White girls in Vardeman-Winter’s (2010) study about a HPV vaccine campaign revealed an incompatibility between producers’ beliefs and the realities of African American respondents in terms of the latter’s health risks, which ultimately determined this racial groups’ exclusion from the target audience of the campaign. As mentioned in the introduction, a more participatory approach to public relations involves a collaboration between professionals in the industry and members of the public to generate messages that accurately portray the complexities of the latter’s lived experiences. This determines a process where public relations practitioners begin by investigating “how a group collectively gives meaning to objects, symbols, languages, icons, relationships, and events” (Tindall &Vardeman-Winter, 2011, p. 283), and then proceed to instill that knowledge into more relevant, culturally-sensitive communication campaigns. This is also in accordance with a “cocreational approach” to public relations, where communication is “best understood as a meaning making process that brings both the organization and publics together” (Kent & Taylor, 2011, p. 60). Therefore, this process can occur both at the level of practitioners, as well as at the level of the viewers, or readers of the messages, resulting in the construction of “shared meanings, interpretations, and goals” (Botan & Taylor, 2004, p. 652).

For this reason, this thesis argues that, since CSA communication on the support of gay marriage and LGBT equality can pose significant influence on the financial performance of that organization (Dodd & Supa, 2014), it becomes imperative that the realities of LGBT individuals are described in an appropriate manner. Using an intersectional approach “requires researchers and practitioners to unlearn their ‘normal’ position and privilege” (Vardeman-Winter et al., 2013, p. 289) that may “essentialise groups based on one or two markers of identity” (Khakimova, Briones,

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Madden, & Campbell, 2011, p. 2). In this way, intersectionality shapes the meaning making process by emphasizing how LGBT individuals’ experiences of oppression originate from more than their sexual orientation, and are compounded by aspects such as their race, gender, or age. Consequently, in light of these theories, the following research question is proposed:

RQ: How do LGBT individuals of different racial and ethnic backgrounds make meaning of corporate social advocacy (CSA) communication delivered by organizations on the topic of same-sex marriage?

Method Sensitizing concepts

In a study by Grier and Brumbaugh (1999), the authors concluded that, for target consumers, namely black and gay individuals, concepts of “distinctiveness, power, and stigma of the viewer” contributed to the meaning making process applied to targeted ads, and this was also confirmed for participants reading HIV/AIDS-related campaigns (Curry, 2007, Vardeman-Winter & Tindall, 2010). Considering the traditional deviant status attached to LGBT individuals in relation to the normative role of heterosexuality (Herek & Capitanio, 1999), it is expected that, for the present study, hegemony represents a key sensitizing concept, which accentuates the gap between the universal knowledge embedded in communication messages by producers holding a position of power, and the tacit knowledge that consumers directly draw from their real-life experiences with the issue depicted in the campaigns (Moffitt,1994).

On the other hand, while hegemony can activate stigma and accentuate everyday struggles for subordinate groups, the same concept can also become cancelled out by the activation of certain

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identities. For example, the role of age was found to prevail over the one of sexuality for the younger generation of LGBT subjects, who receive more support from family and peers compared to older groups, and thus begin to contextualize their identity outsidethe influence of social stigma: “Queer-Ys seem less aware of and convinced by explicit queer-inclusive ad imagery. As stigma loses relevance for them, they feel more empowered and assert their identity as distinct from their sexuality” (Nölke, 2015). Therefore, the notion of hegemony, as a sensitizing concept for this thesis, can dictate how participants make reference to their multiple identities and filter their personal experiences to read and process CSA communication materials.

Research design

In a qualitative study on how women of color read heart disease messages from health organizations, the authors employed in-depth interviews, as suitable “to discover the meanings that women of color held regarding heart disease and to uncover the cultural factors that influence how women of color make meaning of health decisions” (Tindall & Vardeman-Winter, 2011, p. 285). Similarly, for this thesis, the chosen research method was represented by in-depth interviews with self-identified LGBT individuals, designed to reveal the meanings triggered after viewing three selected CSA campaigns on the topic of same-sex marriage. This decision was also motivated by the appropriateness of qualitative methodology to capture the complexity and nuances of LGBT realities, as opposed to “quantitative approaches that depend upon restrictive and inflexible identity categories” (Campisi, 2013, p. 16).

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Sample

This study employed snowball sampling, as a common form of recruitment for qualitative research (Braun & Clarke, 2013). To this end, individuals from the researcher’s personal network of friends acted as contacts between the researcher and the participants, where the latter category was represented by self-identified LGBT individuals. The 10 interviewees had an average age of 27 (M= 27.2), and reflected a diversity of racial backgrounds and gender identities (Appendix A). These included white (50%), Asian (20%), and Hispanic (20%) subjects, who self-described as either male (70%), female (10%), genderqueer (10%), or transgender (10%). According to Gair (2012), am insider/outsider dichotomy highlights whether the researcher acts as a member of the group they are studying. For the present study, giving the researcher’s outsider status as heterosexual, the choice of a snowball sampling was justified by the validation provided from finding certain contact persons from the researcher’s circle of friends or acquaintances: “Recommendations from existing participants promote trust in the researcher and enable potential participants to ‘check out’ the outsider researcher through an intermediary” (Hayfield & Huxley, 2015, p. 97).

Procedure and data collection

This research used an interview guide (Appendix B), as a tool that “helps the interviewer through the discussion and generally outlines the main points the interviewer would like to explore” (Vardeman, 2005, p. 35). The interviews, which lasted around 40 minutes, took place throughout October 2016, in Amsterdam and Bucharest. Nine of the interviews were conducted in English, while one was conducted in Romanian, and later translated by the researcher during the transcribing process. The locations, such as the University of Amsterdam or local cafés, were

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chosen to provide privacy, and avoid external interruptions. Before starting the interviews, participants also had to sign an informed consent form, and complete a short questionnaire with essential demographic questions (Appendix C) regarding age, gender identity, or level of education.

Similar to Terzi’s (2010) study, this paper proposed a “general-to-particular” approach to interviewing participants, where the researcher starts “with generic and biographic-based questions to end with more emotional and sensitive ones” (Terzi, 2010, p. 21). For example, the interview started with a general question about the meanings that the interviewees attached to the word “marriage”, which led to more concrete questions later in the interview, about the feelings and emotions evoked by the shown campaigns. The questions included in this guide were adapted from Vardeman’s (2005) research on women’s meaning making process of cervical cancer campaigns. As mentioned, the first part of the interview focused on positioning subjects’ definitions of the word “marriage”, as well as their previous encounters with marriage equality messages from companies. The next step consisted of showing participants CSA materials on LGBT equality to capture their real-time reactions. To this end, the second part of the interview addressed questions about how LGBT respondents interpret the campaigns, focusing on whether they perceived the messages as accurately representing the community, and on their feelings towards the campaigns. The third part of the interview focused on getting respondents’ own input into how future CSA campaign on LGBT equality can be developed.

The CSA materials used in this study were represented by Airbnb’s “Love is Welcome Here: Our #HostWithPride Film” (2015), Youtube’s “#ProudToLove - Celebrating Marriage Equality and LGBT Pride Month” (2015), and Bud Light’s “The Bud Light Party: Weddings” (2016). These messages were chosen because they reflect the trajectory of LGBT imagery in

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mainstream media, from privileging the “dominance of whiteness and maleness” (Tsai, 2014, p. 13), like in the case of Bud Light (2016), to more nuanced and intersectional insights into LGBT realities, like the ones highlighted in Airbnb’s (2015) advert on the meanings of traveling for LGBT individuals. To better emphasize the intersectional approach employed in this thesis, the interview included the following question: “After viewing these pieces, how do you feel about LGBT equality as a(n) Caucasian/Hispanic/Asian man/woman/other gender identity that may be different or unique from other groups of LGBT individuals?”, which was adapted from Vardeman-Winter and Tindall’s (2010) research on women’s interpretations of the Heart Truth media campaign. This reflects the concept of intersectionality because it rejects the idea of separating subjects’ identities into different questions through an “additive approach”, which “occurs when participants are asked how their identity affects their perceptions of a topic, such as, ‘how do you see yourself as a [gender of participant] represented in this piece?’ and ‘how do you see yourself as [race of participant] represented in this piece?” (Vardeman-Winter et al., 2013, p. 292). Instead, by incorporating subjects’ identities into a single question, individuals are no longer primed with the idea of a ranking of their identities (Vardeman-Winter et al., 2013).

Data analysis

Data analysis was preceded by the process of transcribing all the interviews, a task which was entirely completed by the researcher. The first stage of the analysis involved transferring the transcribed interviews into the program ATLAS.ti, followed by the implementation of open-coding. During this step, a list of 1366 codes emerged (Appendix D), with concepts such as “support”, “inclusion”, but also “hiding”, “outsider”, or “double standard”, that highlighted the coexisting sides in the discussion on LGBT equality. A more in-depth processing of this list,

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through selective coding, generated the themes and dimensions presented in the results section. This step was carried out according to a process described by Bogdan and Biklen (1998), where the data is organized by themes. This involved identifying a prevalent theme corresponding to various general concepts from the compiled list of codes. Finally, the transcripts were double-checked to ensure that all the relevant dimensions were determined to answer the research question of the study.

Ethical considerations

An informed consent form was provided to the participants, which checked whether participants were aware of the purpose of the study, and of the research procedures (including the audio taping of the interview). Moreover, an overview of confidentiality issues was also included, as well as mentioning the voluntary dimension of their participation and the possibility of their withdrawal at any time and without any consequences. Finally, interviewees were encouraged to address any potential questions about the research, both during and after the completion of the study. Another ethical consideration refers to disclosing the outsider status of the researcher to the group of people being interviewed. This represents an ethical step in the process because revealing the outsider position of the researcher can ensure that the subjects make “a fully informed choice about whether to participate” (Hayfield & Huxley, 2015, p. 96). For this research, the step of disclosing the heterosexuality of the researcher was only applied if the interviewees specifically inquired into this aspect.

Validity and reliability

One technique that ensures validity is getting feedback from informants (Kvale, 1995), a method that was also employed in this current research. Member checks, which entail obtaining

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respondent’ accounts of the researcher’s end analysis (Lindlof & Taylor, 2002), were also applied to this study. In this way, the researcher could eliminate any ambiguity derived from the subjects’ answers, and ensure that all the information conveyed during the interviews is accurately understood (Vardeman, 2005). Finally, to tackle any reliability concerns, the interview guide was pre-tested on a few personal contacts before the official data collection, which allowed making the necessary adjustments to guarantee that the questions are clearly formulated and easy to process by the participants (Vardeman, 2005).

Results

The interviewees presented their readings of the CSA messages disseminated by organizations, by appealing to the campaigns’ potential to reach and make an impact on certain groups of individuals, and to their legitimacy in relation to the company’s concrete efforts towards the same cause. Moreover, participants also discussed the shortcomings of the campaigns in framing the issue of LGBT equality, and offered alternatives to the messages, that better resonated with the realities of the community.

Transformative power of CSA messages

One of the themes emerging from the interviews was represented by the impact that the CSA messages could potentially have on certain groups in the society. To this end, the subjects made meaning of the campaigns in terms of their communicative power, identifying three categories that can be influenced by the presence of these messages: LGBT individuals that are struggling with accepting and revealing their identity, homophobic audiences opposed to LGBT

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equality, but also a more general, universal group, where anyone can relate to the stories in the advertisements.

CSA messages as a reference point for closeted individuals

One participant emphasized the necessity of showing these types of messages as a strategy to reach closeted individuals, not yet accepting themselves:

AR: “I mean, especially with the first two, I would have a feeling that they’re especially targeted of – to - people who are sort of still struggling with a lot of problems, when you realize you are gay (…). Because I, I don’t have an issue, I accept myself, like…so the first ad doesn’t really speak to me anymore, which doesn’t mean it’s not important, on the contrary, it’s very important, especially for people who are still struggling with that”.

This idea is also reflected in a research by Nölke (2015), where respondents also referred to the empowering nature of LGBT-related advertising, that can alleviate the doubts of closeted individuals. To this end, one interviewee also expressed how the campaign can construct “fantasies of an out future” (Nölke, 2015):

IO: “I’ve already decided what my identity is, so I’m not struggling, but if I would have seen this video, like, 11-12 years ago, maybe I would have asked myself, yeah, I think they’re targeting me…but not now. So I think they’re more towards the people who are really struggling with coming out, with finding their own identity, with daring to speak openly with someone about their sexuality”.

In this context, the act of speaking openly about one’s sexuality becomes an essential outcome for struggling LGBT individuals because it “refers to an ontological recognition of the self by the self” (Blasius, 1992, p. 655). The conceptualization of the coming out experience as a speech act is thus justified by the positioning of gay identity “as the outsider to the silent norm”, namely heterosexuality, where the former becomes “forced to speak its name” (Hines, 2006, p. 363). Some of the reasons for finding comfort in the messages, as a gay individual, are proposed by another participant, who associates the prevalence of these images with a growing acceptance of the LGBT community:

DJ: “Of course, it is like if you see more and more acceptance of gay now by companies, and, uh…uh…also government, of course that gets more feeling of safety also”.

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CSA messages as a reference point for homophobic or less accepting individuals

The respondents also highlighted the role of these messages for homophobic audiences, in addition to their impact on closeted individuals. Some respondents presented the messages as a form of middle ground between the community and those who do not accept LGBT people, while also pointing out a lack of understanding between the two groups:

DD: “Well, I, guess they’re also kind of targeted towards people who aren’t as accepting as…to gay people…and, um, I mean it’s hard to, hard, obviously to understand how they feel about you because you’re not in their shoes and you don’t understand how they…yeah, what they really feel about it, and whatever, and sometimes you really get the idea that they think about you as some deviant being, or whatever”.

AR: “Because again, a commercial showing that a gay couple is not some sort of, uh, promiscuous, two people who are promiscuous and have sex with everyone on the street, and that is just a normal couple that has to pay bills, do the groceries, nowadays, quite often raise a kid, and, you know, deal with the same problems, then maybe something will change, because, yeah, for a lot of people, gay people are some sort of sexual deviants (…). And maybe if they really, really, opened their minds for 5 minutes and saw that the majority of gay couples are exactly the same as straight couples, then maybe that would, yeah, make them more sympathetic to the cause”.

While this was expected to “open their eyes more” (DD), respondents were also aware that certain messages or statements can become distorted by the media within countries that do not show a lot of support for the LGBT community, such as the case of Romania:

IO: “It’s just like…have you seen what the president of Romania said a few days ago? People start being tolerant towards each other, that’s what I mean, and all the media, they took it so wrongly, they were like (…), the president agrees with gay marriage. He only said to be tolerant, he didn’t even say the word gay or homosexual, you know, he just said be tolerant. That’s it. So that’s why (…) the media is a very important factor in countries that are not very open towards gay”.

In this context, the respondents emphasized the need for communication practitioners to capitalize on their role as “power agents” in society (Vardeman-Winter et al., 2013, p. 297), to shift the focus from appealing to the LGBT community (“it doesn’t really give you any information, or anything that you didn’t already know” – DD), to addressing less accepting individuals and challenging their perspectives:

AZ: “The second one, I just feel when watching it that it’s targeted to the LGBT community and not to other people. It’s presenting problems that we already know we have, but it’s not like, I don’t know, exemplifying them, or something like that, to people who don’t understand what those problems are, why you can’t travel to a country with your spouse of the same sex (…). I feel like, lately, I don’t know, in the past 5-6 years, worldwide, LGBT…well, not worldwide, but most of the world has become a target for companies, but also for like, celebrities who come and say that they support the LGBT community…I feel like the message should be not towards us, that they support us…yeah, we need that, but we need them to tell other people, to talk about why they support us , to tell them what the problems are, because as hard as we try, we will never have the possibility of getting to people like they have”.

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CSA messages as a reference point for anyone

Some respondents also detached themselves from the strict homosexual-heterosexual dichotomy as a reference point for identification, and instead focused on the emotional capabilities of the messages to reach a wider audience, no matter the sexual orientation:

AE: “Anyone can empathize with a character from those messages. I mean, I don’t think it’s relevant…I think anyone could relate to, see themselves to a certain degree in the messages there. And I say this because I don’t think there should be…I only refer to emotions, not to the stories, which were short…I don’t think you need to be in a certain way to empathize, to recognize a situation, an emotion (…). I don’t think there should be a target audience precisely because I think these messages are for everyone, for any type of person, heterosexual, any type of individual, homosexual, lesbians, whatever. It is a universal message, a message for everyone. I didn’t think there should be a target audience”.

However, the participants also identified a potential barrier to appealing to a broader audience, namely a lack of education that divides the society into “us-versus-them – or other – groupings” (Vardeman-Winter, 2013, p. 286).

DL: “Change all the people’s minds, so…educate young people, start from very young…understand, respect each other, doesn’t matter gay or straight, so what is young people most crazy about, who’s young people’s idol, what do young people like to watch…media nowadays I think it’s the most important”.

AE: “Although, at the same time, no matter how fine a message is, or no matter how simple and accessible it is for everyone, there is still the danger of not being properly understood (…). This misunderstanding I think is generated, first of all, by the level of education (…), there should be more work invested in the level of education and into the way these messages are perceived, not only by companies, but also by the ones that see these messages about LGBT issues”.

Legitimacy of the CSA messages

During the interviews, the participants placed the CSA messages in a context of power and legitimacy. According to Johansen & Valentini (2013, p. 3), “organizations are not independent entities. They are part of a society that bestows them with legitimacy and license to operate”. Similarly, the campaigns proposed by the companies were not conceptualized as independent texts by the interviewees, who referred to the ways in which the messages translate into corresponding actions, the motives that shape them, as well as the lack of a diverse coalition of communication practitioners.

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Compatibility between CSA messages and companies’ actions

Overall, the communication campaigns had a positive impact on the interviewees, who often described them as interesting, realistic, and even brave. However, participants were generally aware of the issues described by the videos, and felt that these messages lack a more nuanced framing, that goes beyond simply stating the problem. For example, one transgender participant acknowledged the existence of a problem associated with travelling as an LGBT individual, but emphasized the need to be informed about the countries that pose a risk, instead of just hearing about a general danger. Moreover, for some of the participants, these messages were perceived as valuable only when they were also accompanied by concrete actions from the company, meaning that there was a need for a match between what organizations say and what they actually do for the LGBT community, whether externally or internally:

DM: “In the second one, I would tell more about the countries we have to avoid, so that we are well-informed: where to go and where to not go. So that’s what I would change”.

DJ: “I think because you expect of course that the message of the company also reflects the company itself, so if, if you find out that for example one company is always very positive about gays and then somehow later you work here, that internally it all sucks…then I think (???)”.

PR: “The Airbnb, I would definitely make it shorter, and I will add something that is very specific for gay people, for instance, this is a gay friendly house, like, I will show that there is a function or something that actually creates value for gay people (…), something that would actually show me how Airbnb does something different for the gay community”.

Reconciling intrinsic and extrinsic reasons behind CSA messages

It was also common for the participants to invoke the reasons why companies choose to release messages or campaigns that support the LGBT community:

SL: “Once when you realize it’s a commercial and then you question the motive behind them…are they really just being supportive or they’re just trying to, like bonding a connection with you, and, by doing that, trying to earn you as a consumer, and then that’s… that’s nothing wrong about that…that’s fine… it’s just, personally, the more I study about communication, and then the more I feel like, yeah, there’s a trick behind it, and I can see that, and that’s why I don’t get touched”.

For SL, the idea of coexisting motives behind the campaigns, referring to financial gains, as well as to a genuine interest for the well-being of minority groups, was not seen as a pretext to reject the messages. In this way, he acknowledged a reality of producing corporate campaigns,

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where, “similar to their engagement for CSR in general, most companies engaging in political advocacy may do so based on mixed motives” (Wettstein & Baur, 2016, p. 209). Moreover, SL also associated his increased awareness for these types of motives with the growing knowledge of the field of communication. Similarly, Du, Bhattacharya, and Sen (2010, p. 10) also observed the existence of a more informed audience, suggesting that, “as consumers learn more about CSR and companies’ motivations, they are increasingly willing to adopt a ‘win–win’ perspective, believing that CSR initiatives can and should serve both the needs of society and the bottom lines of business”.

In some cases, merely the existence of a communication campaign in favor of the LGBT community was in itself a step towards visibility and equality, meaning that the participants were willing to overlook extrinsic reasons, as long as these messages could contribute to a positive shift in society, where supporting the LGBT community becomes normalized:

AR: “Although, the fact that motives behind it are not really good, it’s good that companies feel forced to show support, you know? Because if society comes to the point where a corporation or company which doesn’t…it’s not outspoken and protecting rights of LGBT people, for example, or any other minority, when it comes to that, and when they don’t do it, society or a lot of people start calling them homophobic, racist (…), that they discriminate by not showing support, it’s, it’s a sign of a shift in the society that people, um, start looking but not upon those minorities - look down upon them - but look down upon people who discriminate against them. And even, I would prefer if everyone stopped discriminating because they believe in it, but it’s also good when there starts to be a pressure on people, and on companies, to, to, to, to show their support for, for example, LGBT minority”.

Lack of diversity within the industry

In some cases, even if the campaigns were conceived to represent and support the LGBT community, the participants were aware of the contrast between the homogeneity established within the industry that produces CSA messages, and the diversity of the publics receiving these texts. In this context, the respondents articulated the idea that “public relations practitioners should know how power operates in their relationships with publics, particularly regarding socially sensitive issues when publics may feel their interests need to be represented delicately by organizational spokespeople who know them well and possibly are ‘like’ them”

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(Vardeman-Winter et al., 2013, p. 281). To this end, one of the subjects emphasized the need to connect the two sides through a process of dialogue and negotiation, where members of the represented group also become a key asset in the production of the campaigns:

PR: “And the last one is the…the beer one...I think it was a straight guy trying to make a gay advertising…maybe, like, maybe they could ask a gay person, maybe they could have done a bit of a better job, but I can appreciate the effort (…). I think, I think, they, yeah…at least should ask…it’s like, yeah, it’s like, if you’re going to make an advertising for cat food, you should at least ask a cat owner (chuckles). If he or she feels addressed, because otherwise they have it completely wrong”.

Recommendations for CSA messages to achieve LGBT equality

During the interviews, the respondents also visualized themselves in the position of communication practitioners to construct their own versions of the proposed messages. This allowed them to take part in a “counterhegemonic practice” (Vardeman-Winter & Tindall, 2010, p. 8) of envisioning a more personalized message, that better reflects the LGBT community. These responses were focused on individuals’ aspiration to the mainstream, through a discourse of sameness in CSA materials, on a desire for simplification of the messages, as well as on a tendency to overlook or reinforce hegemony as a compromise to achieve important goals.

Discourse of sameness in CSA messages

Some participants reported a tension between a minority consciousness and an aspiration to the mainstream. In this context, they emphasized elements of a collective identity and struggle of the community, referring to key moments with relevance at a collective level for LGBT individuals, that surpasses a positioning in time or space:

SL: “I will say that the first one is quite relevant because of the passing of the law (…), yeah, although I don’t live in the United States”.

DL: “Because gays (…) are all different, but coming out of the closet, for all gays is the same…same, same difficulty, and very rarely some people are very well-blessed and have open minded parents, but most, most gay or lesbians’ coming out is very difficult”.

However, for most participants, the reference to this subcultural identity, to a “consciousness of themselves as a people as the result of history of common interests and

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experiences, particularly their exclusion, mobilization, and struggle in response to how they have been treated by others” (Peñaloza, 1996, p. 22) was replaced by a desire to see LGBT individuals deemed as “the same” as everyone else, resulting in a discourse where “equality requires sameness” (Richardson, 2005, p. 519). This outcome was also echoed in a research by Dhoest and Simons (2012), where interviews with LGB individuals revealed an aspiration to see representations of the community that would allow them to blend into the mainstream, and be perceived as normal:

AR: “The third one makes me feel that slowly people start to see that, um, exactly, gay relationships are normal, there is nothing special, it’s not like some sort of special thing that was created in the last 5 or 10 years…it’s just normal”. IO: “It’s just showing that a gay couple is just a normal couple, there’s nothing abnormal in a gay couple, you know? (…) They’re just a couple who are being a couple, sharing their home, you know, sharing stuff, living together, fighting together, and that’s it. It’s just…I think people need to understand that we’re normal...a gay couple is just a normal couple, you know, it’s nothing unusual”.

AE: “There is no such thing, being different. Homosexuality was never being different (…). It’s as normal and as banal as it can be. It worries me that it is not seen as a commonplace, and normal thing”.

Moreover, the desire to see the mundane side of being LGBT in corporate messages was reinforced by respondents’ relation with discrimination, as a less relevant benchmark for their identity. The interviewees justified this aspect by appealing to age, which resulted in a contrast between the stigma faced by older individuals and the normalization encountered by their generation. This contrast was achieved by hinting at the influence of AIDS in the lives of older individuals, an idea that is also strengthened by Russell and Bohan (2005), who conceptualize a generational gap between these two groups, proposing the influence of AIDS as one of the main aspects reinforcing it: “Youths’ relative naiveté about these matters may seem irreverent to adults, just as older LGBT people’s intense feelings about HIV/AIDS and its impacts on the community may seem overblown to youth who were not witness to the worst of the pandemic” (Russell & Bohan, 2005, p. 3).In addition, the videos depicting forms of discrimination were perceived as less relevant for the participants, when considering their racial or ethnic background: for example,

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a Hispanic male acknowledged a lack of identification with the Airbnb advert due to his resistance and indifference to homophobia that he acquired from growing up in a Latin American country:

SL: “Because for me more of the time I just have a normal life and never really think about it… like I never really come across, like… (struggling noise) I really need to fight for it because I seldom feel that I’m discriminated…so I really don’t have this kind of…a touching point shared with them”.

PR: “I think, for other people it was much more of a struggle…like I know for older people, who were born, for instance, in the AIDS (???) in the 80s and so on, it’s like a big issue because there was like a stigma around being gay, around having AIDS, and…also from people from small villages, I was born in a city, so, it’s a little bit less of an issue than for people from a village”.

PR: “Oh, I’ve been traveling a lot, um, I came from Argentina, which is, I think, yeah, (pause)…yeah I think if you survive a more hostile environment, the other environments, you just do not care so much”.

By putting forward the notion of sameness, the participants also often rejected the appropriation of diversity in the advertisements. To this end, although participants acknowledged the benefits of depicting diverse characters to “break the stereotype” (SL), they also traded this aspect in favor of conveying emotions through the campaigns:

DL: “I mean…yeah, diversity is important, but because showing so many different people, then everyone just talks a second, and (pause), makes it a bit too fast (…), if it’s less diversity, then each role, each character in the clip has more time to show their emotions, and I think that’s better”.

AE: “The idea was to convey a certain emotion, and this is what I think it’s essential in the messages, this is what I’m looking for…not necessarily what happens, it doesn’t matter if you’re a woman or a man, if you have a woman-woman or man-man relationship, whatsoever, do whatever you want…what is essential is the emotion, and the way you manage to empathize, and how sincere you are, and how real everything is”.

Simplification of CSA messages

Respondents were also aware of communication campaigns’ tendency to perpetuate stereotypes about the LGBT community, that diverted the messages from the process of achieving the normalization of gay identity in mainstream media. Moreover, these stereotypes also triggered an awareness about only integrating the desirable aspects of gay identity in corporate messages, so the participants “were conscious of the ‘commodification’ of sexuality, commenting that only a glamourized form of gayness was used in popular media” (Nölke, 2015):

DJ: “If (…) you only have the commercials of a certain type, the stereotypic man-female for example, then of course you will feel more different, because indirectly that’s the message…like this product is only for those and those people”. DD: “I mean, you know what happens a lot of times, with gay campaigns and stuff, that there’s this huge focus on sex and sex appeal. And, in those campaigns that they did, they left that side, they left it out of it”.

AR: “The majority of films, for example, like, gay person is…loves shopping, wears pink all the time, hangs out with their lady friends all the time in shopping malls, and so on…all those stereotypes, and when you see it it’s really annoying”.

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For the interviewees, an estrangement from stereotypes translated into a more simplified approach to communicating about LGBT equality, one where the “spectacle of otherness” (Hall, 1997) is replaced by the assimilation into the ordinary:

AE: “Simplify as much as possible. Precisely to bring it to a raw, simple idea: hey, I am the same as you are…this is what is about”.

AR: “When you see all those gay couples who have been for, I don’t know, 30 years, and fighting for the equality, and they wanted it so much (…), I don’t know how to put it in words (hesitant), but basically (???) it puts marriage at such a high pedestal, like it’s such an important thing, while this shows it it’s like just…you know, it can be normal, it doesn’t have to be like an extremely important issue, it can be just a wedding, where exactly, a lady is trying to, to catch the flowers and, yeah, just like a normal wedding”.

Moreover, simplification was not only applied to the content of the messages, but it also involved creating a more strategic approach to reaching less accepting individuals, by starting with basic information, and then slowly tapping into the complexities of the issue, which ultimately determines a gradual exposure to the topic. Moreover, this reluctance to see more explicit imagery in the media was also motivated by participants’ reference to their racial and ethnic identity. In this context, SL, an Asian respondent made meaning of the communication process on the topic of LGBT equality by appealing to his race, resulting in his favoring of a form of “teasing” about this topic, over a more unrestrained approach to communicating about it:

SL: “Generally, in Asian countries, people don’t talk about sex in public. And then there’s also the idea about the same sex marriage topic…people just don’t really talk about it in public, and really discuss it in a serious way (…) I think maybe teasing about it it’s more like a gentle way for people to accept it gradually, rather than just brought it up all of a sudden, because if you brought it up all of a sudden, you probably will get a lot of objections from those people who don’t accept it, but if you create a media or a communication environment that these kind of things are teasing or accepting by people gradually, and I think at one point this will finally bring to…brought to the surface”.

IO: “I would start very soft, you know, just by trying and letting people know that everyone has the right to an opinion, and everyone has the right to be themselves, you know, and stop judging each other just because they’re homosexual (…). So that’s how I would start. Very low. Not just going there and… oh, you know what, gay or normal, that’s it, no. You (…) explain people, like, why are they gay, you know, and that it’s perfectly normal to be gay”.

PR: “If it’s too obvious, if it’s too obvious what they are trying to say, for me it’s just, yeah, they’re trying too hard to say something…I prefer when just somebody hold hands or something, that is very subtle, because you’re gay, you’re automatically noticed”.

Reinforcing hegemony in CSA campaigns

Respondents’ interpretations of the videos were also influenced by the role of privilege, which determined certain racial categories to be rendered invisible in the corporate messages. For

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example, one interviewee, an Asian man, indicated the campaigns’ erasure of the Asian community, emphasizing the social inequality that results from the clashing of both his sexual orientation and racial identity. In addition, other participants observed how marginalization also occurs at the level of gender identity, confirming that “identities are the socially constructed result of power relationships, and inside a matrix of domination, social relations that appear neutral are cloaked in oppression and privilege” (Vardeman-Winter et al., 2013, p. 285):

DL: “Yeah…as an Asian, gay man, I’m the minority of the minority because I’m colored, I’m gay, and I’m Asian, so you feel more, um, discriminated, than being White, blonde, gay. And (???) first film doesn’t matter, second film you see a lot of time they focus on Black people, White people, but there was no main role as Asian lesbian or Asian gay”. AR: Oh, of course, that’s a completely other issue, that…and that’s not only about Caucasian men against other races, it’s also about the fact that, you know, when you see commercials, you usually see a gay male couple, not so often do you see two girls…even less so transsexual people, right? And not even mentioning all the other, all the other minorities within the LGBT minority. That’s also, additionally, you know, that’s a completely different topic, where, you know, within LGBT community, you also have discrimination, right? Where certain groups deny, even for like smaller groups within the whole community, certain rights”.

DM: “Uh…it was always two men. From the beginning. If you talk about gay people, you automatically assume two men. Not women, not a transgender boy or girl, no. Two men. And that’s bothering me because the public opinion and two men…(sighs)..if you ask them, one word comes to mind: disgusting. Who wants to see two men make out? Not women, not men, not anyone”.

Looking at how LGB subjects perceive gay window advertising, Tsai (2012) concluded that participants were willing to accept certain hegemonic representations, as long as they were perceived as contributing to the visibility of the community: “Several participants articulated an optimistic and evolutionary view of gay window advertising, which was considered to be the groundwork and a preliminary effort toward (…) advancing social acceptance into the mainstream. Caught in the struggle of stereotype, invisibility, and stigmatization, these respondents focused on the often ignored sociopolitical meanings of niche-oriented advertising without invoking cynical or critical views that might undermine the perceived preliminary yet crucial progress” (Tsai, 2012, p. 54). Similarly, for the present study, respondents also internalized hegemonic images in CSA campaigns as a compromise in the process of reaching bigger goals, such as the legalization of same-sex marriage:

AR: So when you finally see a film or a commercial which doesn’t follow that, it’s 99% a Caucasian guy, or two Caucasian guys being a couple. So, yeah, this is certainly a big problem, one that should be solved immediately…but

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many people are, you know, what to reach the goal of marriage equality so quickly that they kind of, yeah, like we’ll deal with it later, we don’t see this as a problem.

Discussion

This study investigated how LGBT individuals from different racial and ethnic backgrounds make meaning of same-sex marriage campaigns delivered by companies, as part of their CSA strategy. The results emphasized that the participants interpreted the messages by making reference to their communicative power, as well as to their legitimacy in relation to the company’s concrete actions towards the same cause. Moreover, respondents also engaged in an exercise to help campaign designers with their future communication materials, by imagining alternative versions of the messages that better reflect the interests and lived experiences of the community.

Theoretical implications

This thesis revolved around the theory on corporate social advocacy and post-reflective communication, which highlighted the transition from neutrality in social-political debates to active involvement from the part of corporations. This shift challenges the focus on doing business as the sole role of a company, and instead positions the contribution to the wellbeing of society as a priority for organizations, especially in relation to human rights (Wettstein, 2009). This aspect becomes particularly relevant, since companies’ involvement in human rights violations, whether direct or indirect, has been labeled as “corporate complicity”, which accentuates the “growing expectations that corporations should do everything in their power to promote universal human rights standards, even in conflict situations where governance structures have broken down” (Clapham & Jerbi, 2001, p. 339). Indeed, during the interviews, one of the participants advanced a similar idea, stating that: “There is no question about it, (…) if someone is human and, like,

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supports human rights, it’s clear which side you should be on”. Although the quote encompasses the idea of individual responsibility, which endows each person with a moral responsibility, the literature also acknowledges the idea of a “collective responsibility” (Green, 2005) applied to authoritative bodies, such as corporations. In this view, companies act as responsible actors, making political decision that can lead to the alleviation and solving of large scale societal problems (Scherer & Palazzo, 2007).

Previous literature examined how CSA communication on the topic of same-sex marriage impacted purchase intention, by taking into account consumers’ attitudes towards the cause (Dodd & Supa, 2014). In this way, the authors concluded that CSA campaigns can influence consumers’ purchase intention, which can ultimately dictate the financial performance of the organization (Dodd & Supa, 2014). In addition, the current research showed that CSA messages on the support of same-sex marriage can also alienate LGBT members of the public, when these campaigns do not align with the realities and interests of the community. For this reason, a main theoretical implication involves taking the conceptualization of CSA communication one step further, by specifically making reference to the role of the group represented in the campaigns, in addition to other relevant stakeholders: “With a greater understanding of CSA, communicators and public relations professionals may now apply this model specifically to representative organizational publics in order to strategically implement the communication and promotion of organizational stances on social-political issues, knowing that financial objectives will be impacted” (Dodd & Supa, 2013, p. 243). Therefore, researchers can begin to theorize a more refined model on CSA communication, by considering a more nuanced categorization of stakeholders, based on their level of influence and legitimacy in relation to the CSA messages.

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As a sensitizing concept, hegemony represented one of the guiding principles of this research, which revealed a tension between acknowledging LGBT individuals’ specific struggle (“I guess that you should be on a more professional level with it, just focusing on the rights and those kind of things, because that’s the main, that’s the main issue” – DD) and a simultaneous estrangement from singling out LGBT people in mainstream media (“And it wasn’t limited to one idea, the one of being seen because I’m different. Which is a stupid thing” -AE). Placing hegemony in an intersectional framework also triggered a sense of marginalization due to the invisibility of LGBT characters from certain racial backgrounds in the videos. For example, the lack of Asian figures in the campaigns revealed the double discrimination faced by this group (“the minority of the minority” – DL), and this conclusion was also echoed by a study using lesbian women, where the author claimed that, due to this group’s status as a “minority within a minority”, the media representations depicting this community hold a “social validation of vast importance” (Granath, 2014, p. 11). At the same time, a main finding of this thesis was respondents’ desire to be deemed as normal in corporate campaigns. This result was also confirmed by Tsai’s (2012) insight into LGBT consumers’ interpretations of gay-window advertising: “Participants considered advertising images and narratives to be indicative of both who they are (closeted minorities with unique sensibility) and who they want to be (assimilated members of the wider society)”, leading to the idea that “their subcultural identities are reaffirmed and reconfigured from a distinctive subculture to normalized individuals belonging to the mainstream” (Tsai, 2012, p. 59). Similarly, for this research, respondents also embraced a discourse of normalization, which emphasized LGBT individuals’ need to feel valued for more than their sexuality (“I want them to love me and to like me and to take me seriously for the person who I am, not because I’m gay or heterosexual” – IO). One participant noticed the constant separation on the basis of gender (“this whole thing about

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how you gender everything, how you gender marriage, and people”), while another participant observed that, although one commercial expressed that all weddings are the same, this was still framed using the hegemonic discourse reinforced in mainstream commercials, where everything that does not conform to the norm must be named and singled out in language (“the gay wedding”). This means that, even when communication practitioners are trying to dismiss a system of inequality that hurts LGBT people, they can still apply their implicit bias to the messages they convey, which can ultimately perpetuate the same damaging and reductionist message. During the interviews, participants also revealed their concern for campaign designers’ tendency to reduce LGBT people’s identity mainly to their sexual orientation, an idea also confirmed by previous research (Nölke, 2015). Moreover, Tsai’s (2012) findings revealed that, due to the increased visibility and incorporation of queer characters in the media, LGBT individuals from younger generations no longer judge these representations according to a distinct system of cues that is only available to this group, so “the importance of gay sensibility and queer readings to their identification with the queer communities might be diminished” (Tsai, 2012, p. 59). As sexuality represents the main identifier for LGBT people in mainstream media, communication practitioners become more inclined to neglect the many other facets that construct the existence of these individuals. For this reason, intersectionality can help campaign designers to uncover the dimensions of identity that are important to the public they want to address, and naturalize sexuality within the content of their messages, rather than isolating it as the dominant feature for LGBT individuals.

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Practical implications

The results showed that messages of support for same-sex marriage can still be marked by practitioners’ unconscious bias, which can overshadow the realities of LGBT individuals. Therefore, a first suggestion for campaign designers that still adhere to hegemonic forms of knowledge is to “remove personal bias and understandings” (Tindall & Vardeman-Winter, 2011, p. 298), that position LGBT individuals as the “other” in relation to heterosexual publics: “This shift from opposition (us versus them) to inclusion (us and them) suggests that identity construction in a post-gay era is motivated less by drawing boundaries against the dominant group and more by building bridges toward it (and thus blurring the boundaries)” (Ghaziani, 2011, p. 117).

Eliminating these assumptions by “building bridges” towards minority groups, can begin to materialize through the direct contact between campaign designers and the individuals depicted in their communication materials, whether in the form of dialogue, as part of the production of the campaigns, or through the inclusion of more diverse characters within the field of public relations. The latter becomes of significant importance since the industry has been previously called out for being dominated by white leaders in the US and UK, while “practitioners from minority ethnic groups are underrepresented” (Edwards, 2010, p. 211). Participants also felt that the messages did not tell them anything new, and were only listing the problems that the community is facing. This is why, practitioners should engage in a process of understanding their public, and take into account its perspectives from the beginning of the development of the campaign, to better integrate the needs of that group into the messages. In this case, LGBT individuals expressed a desire to be addressed by being presented with actual solutions or concrete actions from the company, that make a difference into their lives. At the same time, respondents considered the importance of

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