32 pages., via online journal., Following the March 2017 wildfire devastation in Texas, Oklahoma, and
Kansas, local chapters of the National FFA Organization actively engaged
on social media to advocate for public response to the crisis. Twenty-three
public Facebook posts from FFA chapters and affiliates demonstrate members’
engagement with agricultural issues in the United States, disrupting the
generalization that young adults are disconnected from civic affairs.
However, while Facebook served as an important platform for members’
ag-vocacy in the wake of the crisis, FFA chapter posts contain embedded
traditional rural literacies, which are reflected in members’ collective
identification with existing supporters of agricultural communities. While
FFA chapters had the potential to advocate to a broad readership, the
posts reveal the chapters’ way of reading the crisis and writing a response
to it with an insular narrative. As a result, Facebook posts that target
only limited audiences and/or appeal to readers with exclusionary collective
identification result in the failure of entities, such as local FFA chapters,
to capitalize on Facebook’s full potential as an advocacy tool to inform and
engage large public audiences.
23 pages, via online journal., Organizational scholarship has rarely considered various hidden organizations in our society. Thus, little is known about how organizations and their members conceal their identity from others and how outsiders might evaluate the appropriateness of, effectiveness of, and motivations for organizational concealment. Our study reports survey data assessing 14 different hidden organizations and their perceived concealment efforts. Additionally, we examine the appropriateness of three motivations for concealment and three attitudes related to concealment. Results suggest similarities and differences in the effectiveness and appropriateness of concealment efforts by various organizations. Additionally, perceived motivations for concealment explain concealment efforts for some types of organizations, but not others. We draw several conclusions from our findings, discuss scholarly and practical implications of this research, and suggest directions for future scholarship related to organizational concealment.