Institute for Public Relations
IPR is featuring some of the many Hispanic pioneers who impacted the field of public relations in celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month.

Sergio Bendixen was a pioneer in multilingual opinion polling among Latinos and the first Hispanic person to run a U.S. presidential campaign. Born in Peru, Bendixen immigrated to the United States at age 12. He graduated from the University of Notre Dame in 1970 and started working in politics.

Bendixen’s career in political consulting took off quickly. He served as a national campaign manager for Democratic presidential hopeful Alan Cranston in 1984. He then became involved in polling, where he chronicled perhaps the most significant demographic change in Miami politics: the emergence of Cuban-American Republicans. He pioneered multilingual surveys and became well-known on Spanish-language television, where he delivered his survey results and explained U.S. politics to Spanish speakers.

Through his remarkable efforts to include Latinos in U.S. politics, Bendixen was "largely responsible for giving Hispanic America a voice" according to his friend and business partner, Fernand Amandi.
Institute for Public Relations
This post summarizes a roundtable discussion by the IPR Measurement Commission.

In August, members of the IPR Measurement Commission participated in an online discussion about the changing values of organizations and the coinciding shifts in what is measured. In this conversation, each member offered their perspective on values and measurement within their organizations.

Some key takeaways from the conversation included:
  • ESG influences not only stock price but also the reputation culture of a brand as ESG scores become standardized.
  • Focusing on the audience is becoming paramount in measurement, as opposed to focusing primarily on the media distributed.
  • Traditional research methods such as in-depth surveys are still an essential tool for measuring audiences.
Pew Research Center examined how political beliefs are related to trust in national news, local news, and social media.

A survey of 10,606 U.S. adults was conducted June 14–27, 2021.

Key findings include:
  • 78% of Democrat adults trust information from national news organizations compared to 35% of Republican adults.
  • 66% of Republican respondents trust information from local news organizations compared to 84% of Democrat respondents.
  • 34% of Democrats trust information from social media compared to 19% of Republicans.

The Institute for Public Relations conducts an annual survey of disinformation in society. Check out what we found in terms of the most trusted sources of information. Look for the 2021 report in November!

Pierluigi Conzo, Ph. D., Collegio Carlo Alberto, et. al.
Dr. Pierluigi Conzo and colleagues explored the effects of negative and positive portrayals of immigration in the media on discrimination toward immigrants.

Two experiments were conducted; the first experiment had 196 participants and the second experiment had 166 participants. In each study, participants were exposed to either a positive or negative portrayal of immigrants in Italy.

Key findings include:
  • Participants who watched the negative video were more altruistic toward those with traditional Italian names than to those with names suggesting an immigrant background.
  • Participants who watched the negative video had increased perceptions of immigration as a threat.
  • Conservative and liberal participants showed different levels of trust toward immigrants.
  • Right-leaning respondents who saw the negative video were less likely to trust immigrants.
  • The negative video did not affect trust levels for left-leaning respondents.

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