Academic Skills: Portfolio Resit

Student: Krzysztof Bąba

Student Number: s1115492

Academic Skills: Article analysis

Article: Christian von Sikorski & Laetitia Müller (2018) When Corporate Social
Responsibility Messages Enter the News: Examining the Effects of CSR-Framed News
on Product Purchasing Intentions and the Mediating Role of Company and Product
Attitudes, Communication Research Reports, 35:4, 335-345, DOI:
10.1080/08824096.2018.1506757

Introduction

This text will analyze the content, structure, and significance of research article by Christian
von Sikorski & Laetitia Müller (2018).

Literature review

This article is focused on examining the effect that CSR (standing for Corporate Social
Responsibility) instilled media have on readers/customers perception on company image.
According to previous research, using CSR media is a often used strategy performed
by many big brands to improve their recognition, organizations image, reputation and
credibility (Kim, 2017; Lin-Hi & Blumberg, 2018). Von Sikorski & Müller state that it is hard
to define precisely what CSR really is and that there are many various definitions. But the
way they understand it is that it’s a “commitment to improve well-being through
discretionary business practices and contributions of corporate resources” (Christian von
Sikorski & Laetitia Müller, 2018).

Effects of CSR-Framed News

In this section the authors describe a technique of “Preferred framing” which is regularly used
by journalists to form a instil an opinion or evoke certain emotion in the reader’s mind. It is
often used on behalf of big companies who want to have a credible (compared to traditional
advertising) and indirect influence on stakeholders. The previous research in this domain

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shows clearly that customers are much more likely to believe in responsibleness of a brand
the message is conveyed through CSR instead of regular advertising pathways (Vercic &
Vercic, 2016). But there were a lot of gaps, hence they formed:

Hypothesis 1: “Exposure to a CSR-framed news article will positively affect participants’

company attitudes compared with the identical news article without a CSR frame (control
condition).” (Christian von Sikorski & Laetitia Müller, 2018)

and

Research Question: “What type of CSR message will affect participants’ company attitudes in
the most positive way?” (Christian von Sikorski & Laetitia Müller, 2018).

In order to further broaden the understanding of CSR use in the media domain.

Method

In the method section they describe how they conducted the experiment showing all of the
necessary data such as location (Germany), student sample(N=127), etc. And described that
group 1 was exposed to non-CSR media (as a control group), and that the group 2 was
exposed CSR instilled ones.

Results

The results they obtained stated that “In total, the predictors explained 16% of the variance of
company attitudes, 42% of the variance of product attitudes, and 29% of the variance on
purchasing intentions (Christian von Sikorski & Laetitia Müller, 2018).

Task 24(p.49):

1. To me, it seems like the CEOs of international companies are not particularly
concerned about the law.
2. Certain countries business ethics are not of the best quality.
3. Those individuals should refrain from breaking the law as they may get caught.
4. Sorrow should be expressed for the workers in the German coal mines as they will
probably get terminated.
5. The bank’s customer service is not what it used to be, as several essential issues must
be addressed.

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 6. Researchers discovered that prices had skyrocketed after a few months of adapting to
euro.
7. The IT Department presented several possible solutions for our administrative
problem, but they could not succeed.

8. The warehouse team was hurt by the fire.

9. Climate change will have an impact on Californian crops because insects will appear
earlier in the spring.
10. It would be reasonable to eliminate restrictions that do not bring any value.

Task 25(p.50):

1. Our bank informed us. that you have not yet made this month’s payment.
2. We are so busy nowadays, that we do not spend enough time with the kids, what
makes it more likely that they will become young criminals.
3. The laws are made as they are thought to be necessary.
4. University students cannot find enough time to study.
5. We could not have known ahead of time that economic disaster is coming.
6. I am of an opinion that each person that is getting paid for work is getting overtaxed.
7. Although the idea sounds appealing, Murphy’s argument is not realistic.
8. The technician working at the helpdesk could not figure out why the battery had died.
9. In the new law it is stated that while driving you cannot have things in your hands that
may distract you.
10. After supplying the company with many seat covers, he was granted a promotion.

Exercise in PowerPoint: Find examples of the following characteristics

of formal writing and an academic style in the text of the first page of the
introduction (p. 336) of the article by Von Sikorski and Müller (2018). Indicate
the line number and quote several instances of each characteristic.
a) Depersonalized language

1.There are several limitations to this study

2. No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

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b) Cautious, tentative language

1. Broadly defined, CSR can be understood as a “commitment to improve well-being through

discretionary business practices and contributions of corporate resources”.

2.Thus, it remains unclear if the effects of CSR messages embedded in the news can be
generalized to other cultural contexts.
c) Formal style of language

1. However, news framing is not only relevant from a journalism perspective but also from a
public relations perspective.

2. Yet, they did not account for individuals’ product attitudes as a potentially important
mediator.

Task 25(p.84):

1. Excellent, fine, exceptional, proper, outstanding, great, marvellous

2. Atrocious, awful, appalling, terrible, dreadful, inadequate, inferior
3. Absolutely, certainly, honestly, undoubtedly, fairly, highly, significantly
4. Insignificantly, a few, an insufficient amount
5. Of great size, immense, vast, great, enormous, significant, momentous
6. Tiny, small, not much, meagre, miniature, petite, small-sized, miniscule
7. Much, many, substantially, totally, entirely, numerous amounts, immense amounts
8. Extremely, truly, highly, intensely, profoundly, remarkably, exceedingly

Task 26(p84-85):

1. There was a particularly enormous gap in sales in the past two years, until last March
when sales increased hastily and then slightly declined and remained steady until the
present.
2. The new censorship law is damaging because it takes away parents’ right to decide
what to allow their children to watch on television.
3. While on the one hand, this constant stream of movies and news reports is a beneficial
thing that informs people of what is happening in the world, it also raises some big
questions.

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 4. A considerable difference between Asia and Western nations is the method in which
they think.

5. The economic forecast for the coming year is relatively positive, besides the
assumption that this company will have a significant amount of job turnovers.

Task 5A

Task 6: I am of an opinion that the topic number 5 is the best one for the scope of 1000 to
1500 words, because it is intuitive and not endlessly broad.

Task 1(p.91)

1. The topic of the essay is child labour in fashion industry.

2. The thesis of the essay is “The imposition of sanctions on states in which child labor is
practiced is not the most practical way to end child labor” and its main premise is to bring
attention to the effects of imposing sanctions, and how it will influence the complicated
problem of child labour.

3. Structure
Introduction- Providing background information to the topic.
First argument-Impacts of child labour on poor countries.
Second argument-Impact of sanctions.

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 Conclusion
4. I. ‘is not the most practical way to end child labor”- statement against
II "The child labor problem would simply be moved to another country"- statement against

III "Will prove to be impractical'-statement against

Task 11:

1. Debatable- In order to decide whether the implementation of micromanagement can

greatly increase job satisfaction you have to check that with research.
2. Non-debatable
3. Non-debatable
4. Debatable- History shows that making the law more doesn't always solve the issue.
And sometimes makes it even worse.
5. Non-debatable

Task 12:

1. Universities should use entrance exams to select best students who passed high school
testing to achieve better programme reputation.
2. Lawyers taking part in speech training are likely to have career advancements, be
more successful, have better daily life, improve their legal terminology, and provide
better arguments in the courtroom.
3. Some people think that in order not to be a burden to society you should work up until
you are 70, but it is not very pragmatic due to health problems and being just too old
to work at that age. It is true that older workers have much broader knowledge, but it
is also true that they are oftentimes behind the times.

Library follow up:

Database used- ReQuest

Articles:

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Nancie, H. (2016). Communication and power in the job interview: using a ventriloqual
approach to analyse moral accounts. Text & Talk, 36(3), 319–340.
https://doi.org/10.1515/text-2016-0015

Patell, R., Gutierrez, A., Lee, N., & Neuendorf, K. (2018). Practicing communication skills
for responding to emotionally charged questions. Journal of Palliative
Care, 33(4), 209–214. https://doi.org/10.1177/0825859718777319

Ellison, D. (2015). Communication skills. The Nursing Clinics of North America, 50(1), 45–
57. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cnur.2014.10.004

1.It is published

2. No

3. All of them focus on communication skills

Session 6: APA exercise in PowerPoint

When the same speakers face new addresses, they must establish new conceptual pacts that
may differ from those found with previous addresses (Brennan, S. & Clark, H., 1996).

Brennan, S. & Clark, H. (1996). Conceptual pacts and lexical choice in conversation. Journal
of Experimental Psychology, 22(6), 1482–1493.

Phonological encoding’s function is to retrieve or build a phonetic or articulatory plan for

each lemma (Levelt, W. J. M., 1989)

Levelt, W. J. M. (1989). Speaking: From intention to articulation. Cambridge: MIT Press.

Handout exercises about APA citation format

Research on the effects of media violence has a long tradition. Studies that address
unspecific physiological arousal effects, now considered a somewhat simplistic
conceptualization of emotional effects, have come under heavy criticism (Reisenzein, 1983;
Cacioppo et al., 1996). Most studies also address the behavioral effects of media violence,

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especially the effects on aggressive behavior (Murray, 2003). In contrast, emotional effects
(other than effects on fear) have not been systematically addressed thus far (Wirth &
Schramm, 2005).
Most research on media violence has been on fictional media, such as action movies
or computer games, for example, that of Bryant and Vorderer (2006,) whose primary goals
are to entertain the audience and spark our emotions. According to Frijda’s (2007) “law of
apparent reality,” emotions are primarily triggered by events that are evaluated as real, which
is why one expects that emotional effects should be stronger when watching non-fictional
genres such as TV news. However, it has been shown that watching the news can be, in and
of itself, an entertainment and social activity (McQuail, 2001). Furthermore, content analysis
shows violence to be an important issue in TV news (Winterhoff-Spurk et al., 2005,
Winterhoff-Spurk, 1998). Thus, it seems reasonable to pay closer attention to the emotional
effects of violent TV news.

Beehr, T. A., & Franz, T. M. (1987). The current debate about the meaning of stress. In J. M.
Ivancevich & D.C. Ganster (Eds.), Job stress: From theory to suggestion (pp. 5–36).

Beehr, T. A., & Bennett, M. M. (2007). Examining retirement from a multi-level

perspective.
In K. S. Schultz & G. A. Adams (Eds.), Applied Psychology Series: Aging and work
in the 21st century (pp. 277-302).

De Croon, E. M., Blonk, R. W. B., Van der Bleek, A. J., Frings-Dresen, M. H. W. (2001).
The trucker strain monitor: An occupation-specific questionnaire measuring
psychological job strain. International Archives of Occupational and Environmental
Health, 74, 429-436. https://doi.org/10.1007/s004200100247

Deery, S. J. Erwin, P. J., Iverson, R. D., Ambrose M. L. (1995). The Determinants of

Absenteeism: Evidence From Australian Blue-Collar Employees. International
Journal of Human Resource Management, 6, 825-848.

De Jonge, J., Reuvers, M. M. E. N., Houtman, I. L. D., Kompier, M. A. J. (2000). Linear and

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 nonlinear relations between psychosocial job characteristics, subjective outcomes, and
sickness absence: Baseline results from SMASH. Journal of Occupational Health
Psychology, 5, 256-268. 10.1037/xlm00005346

PITCH IDEA FOR ASSIGNMENT 2

Research Idea: The impact of language proficiency on income of post graduate students.

Research Question: How does various language proficiency influence post graduate
students’ income.

Relevance: Given that the Bachelor study of International Business Communication relies
heavily on becoming proficient in a chosen language, I have decided that it would be relevant
and interesting to find out how acquiring ability to use foreign language influences one’s
prosperity in job market.

Feedback received: The feedback I received was overall positive. However, my groupmates
suggested that I should narrow down to “certain languages in certain groups of post-graduate
students”.

Communication and Information Studies - Bachelor Programme IBC

Statement of Own Work

Student name: _________________________________

Student number: __________________________________

Course code and name: Academic Skills LET-CIWB156-IBC-2023-PER_1-V 9

Lecturer: Jane Dela Cruz

Number course group:

PLAGIARISM is the presentation by a student of an assignment or piece of work which has

in fact been copied in whole or in part from another student’s work, or from any other source

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(e.g. published books or periodicals or material from Internet sites), without due
acknowledgement in the text.

DECLARATION:

I certify that this assignment/report is my own individual work, based on my personal study
and/or research and that I have acknowledged all material and sources used in its preparation,
whether they be books, articles, reports, lecture notes, and any other kind of document,
electronic or personal communication. I also acknowledge that any written work that I have
submitted for assessment is my own and has been written by me individually, without the use
of AI (such as ChatGPT).

Signed: __________________________________

Date: __________________________________

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