ABSTRACT
This chapter, Chapter 5, reviews whistleblowing research in communication, journalism, and public relations in the United States. It begins with research on whistleblowing in communication, including upward communication, organizational climate, interpersonal closeness, communication channels, and rhetoric, discourse analysis, and narrative identity theory. Research in journalism includes whistleblowers as sources, the importance of sources to journalists, the changing role of sources in the surveillance age, and the need for journalists and journalism to improve digital security to protect whistleblowers who are sources. Research in public relations discusses codes of conduct as one potential reason whistleblowing is frowned on in public relations, the stigma attached to whistleblowing by the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) within the past two decades, whistleblowing by public relations executives as a rare event that falls into the category of dissent, whistleblowing as a role-prescribed function for public relations executives in the form of boundary spanning and counseling management about internal wrongdoing, and whistleblowing as a factor in organization-public relationships. It also further explores the potential for evolutionary theory to explain whistleblowing in public relations.
