Exploring how organizations can design politically unifying advocacy campaigns in times of polarization - Scholar Q&A with Carlina DiRusso

As the sociopolitical landscape gets more challenging to navigate for companies and organizations, developing the right strategies to meaningfully be a part of these conversations is of the utmost importance. Scholars from Clemson University Carlina DiRusso, Brandon Boatwright and Virginia Harrison are uncovering insights from focus groups to explore public perceptions of businesses’ sociopolitical roles and message characteristics to inform a subsequent experiment that will test the effectiveness of different message characteristics. DiRusso and Harrison have been funded by the Page Center multiple times. Boatwright is a first time scholar. This project is part of the Page Center’s 2026 Call on Social Responsibility, Advocacy, and Activism in an Age of Political and Cultural Polarization.

How do your research interests align with the Page Center’s 2026 research call?

My main goal in research is to improve communication strategies for prosocial outcomes. So, whether that's in the context of health, science, or politics, I tend to look at how we, as communicators, can design persuasive campaigns that benefit society in some way. Since my colleagues and I are big fans of the Page Center and its mission, we always look at the research calls to see if our research overlaps with it in some way, and I think after sitting down and talking through our ideas, it was a natural fit.

Talk about how your team’s idea for the project came to be.

After brainstorming some ideas, we landed on our project from inspiration from a Heineken commercial. Basically, the commercial showed a bunch of different people from all walks of life talking about their political differences over a Heineken beer. Their message was all about unification; if we disagree, we can still come together and be humans in this world together. The commercial aired in 2017, and the sociopolitical climate has obviously changed since then. So our team got to thinking, do campaigns like this still work?

How are you hoping to answer your research questions?

In phase 1 of our project, we will conduct a focus group to examine polarization. Before we do a message testing experiment, we want to directly ask people questions about these sociopolitical campaigns. We want to ask questions like “What has your experience been with some of the political divisiveness that's been going on?” “How do you feel about it?” “How do you feel about a brand talking about social issues?”. In phase 2, we'll take what we learn from the focus groups and build a small campaign around them, then we'll measure those outcomes.

What are you hoping to learn from this research project that you hope will apply to the practice?

We are really hoping that brands and organizations can talk about political unity, because I think that's a message we all need to hear today. We're hoping to provide tangible evidence that there is a benefit to both society and the brand, should they decide to discuss these important issues. Our goal is to compile a report to share with industry professionals because we want to actually reach the people who make these decisions out in the industry.

How about theoretical contributions?

Prior literature has done a great job at figuring out what kind of message features matter, what kind of brand characteristics matter, and how audience traits influence the way those campaigns are received. We're hoping to build on how political polarization might interfere with those outcomes, like empathy, a sense of connectedness to humanity, and the organization-public relationships, to hopefully contribute something new to the literature.

What is the Page Center’s role in this project?

To be honest, I think that this might have been a back burner passion project if it weren't for the Page Center. I think seeing the grant call and then being lucky enough to get the grant has helped us actually make this happen and bring it to life. The Page Center’s principles that focus on ethics and integrity were also an important guiding light in making decisions about what outcomes we really want to observe and what kind of goals we want our tested campaign to have. Doing research with Page Center funding ensures that no matter where this project goes, it will always end with the question of “How can this be good for stakeholders?” That guiding support from the Page Center’s mission has been so helpful.