The School of Communications professor shared the first part of a co-authored study that analyzes communications efforts of the United States, Mexico and Canada targeted to their diaspora communities in the other two countries.
Her paper, “Communicating with and about the Diaspora: A Three-Country Comparison,” is the first part of a study that analyzes government-diaspora communications in North America. Bravo co-authored the paper with Maria DeMoya, assistant professor of public relations at DePaul University.
The study examines how the governments of the United States, Mexico and Canada – all members of the North American Free Trade Agreement – communicate with their diaspora communities in the other two countries.
As part of the study, Bravo and DeMoya analyzed news releases, speeches, reports and other official information subsidies published by these governments on their embassies’ websites between July 1, 2015, and January 31, 2016. In total, this research analyzed about 7,500 words published by Canada, nearly 60,000 words published by Mexico, and approximately 11,200 words published by the United States.
The study found strong differences in the intensity of the communication for each country, and also in the strategic frames used by each of these governments.
The theme of this year’s conference was “The Public Relations of Public Diplomacy and Nation Building/Branding.”
Bravo joined the School of Communications in fall 2011. Since then, she has published seven peer-reviewed journal articles and two peer-reviewed book chapters in her discipline.