Effective Legitimizing Efforts for Issue-based Organizations: A Mixed Methods Examination of Paid Leave Advocacy

For a comprehensive examination of paid leave advocacy, this dissertation includes three studies. The first manuscript is a content analysis of paid leave advocacy organization’s Facebook pages to identify message strategy, engagement, and comment sentiment, based on legitimizing strategies used in the post. The second manuscript extends that analysis by using qualitative interviews to better understand the internal perspectives of workers at advocacy organizations regarding best practice strategies and suggested directions for advancing the movement. The third manuscript is an integrative, comprehensive overview of Study 1 and Study 2 to identify how the quantitative-driven results of Study 1 intersect with qualitative-driven results in Study 2. Results indicated that legitimacy literature in public relations should be expanded to consider a new concept of “legislative legitimacy” for issue-based organizations. The third study also recommends expanding issue advocacy partnerships to corporations – through corporate social advocacy – to appeal to economic stability and capitalistic values of legislators and their constituents. Applied and theoretical implications are discussed thoroughly in each study.