‘This is a stage’: A study of public relations practitioners’ imagined online audiences

Public relations (PR) practitioners are among those cultural intermediaries who privilege symbols, products, and communication rituals in society. Through interviews (n = 26) and analysis of practitioners’ Twitter accounts, this study considers how members of this field identify their personal social networking site audiences and how these behaviors are implicated in the performance of their online identity. Findings indicate practitioners feel pressure to use personal social media in accordance with field-constrained norms and that an “occupational publicness” pressure requires them to be visible online outside of the workplace. The persistent specter of public criticism from audiences and the prioritizing of organizational interests above their own self-expression limits performances of PR practitioners’ authentic selves online.     

How to keep Rosie the riveter from contracting VD: A case study of how U.S. social reformers used public relations during World War II

Much of public relations historiography on World War II focuses on the government uses of the function. This study fills a gap in the literature by exploring how a non-governmental organization called the American Social Hygiene Association (ASHA) used persuasion communication efforts to enlist the aid of management, labor, and local communities in the United States in the control of venereal disease (VD) rates. The case study advances a more diverse understanding of how activists have utilized public relations and found that the social reformers’ use of persuasive communications strategies and activities aligned with the view of public relations as the strategic and intentional participation in the social construction of meaning to achieve a planned outcome.     

Building a religious brand: Exploring the foundations of the Church of Scientology through public relations

ABSTRACT

Although L. Ron Hubbard is known for founding the Church of Scientology, he is not generally considered a public relations practitioner. However, his efforts to practice the discipline to advance Scientology are documented in Church publications. Unlike examinations of older religions, which require reinterpretations of activities through a public relations lens, existing Church documents allow for an evaluation of the role public relations played in building a religious movement. This article explores how Hubbard used public relations to establish Scientology, finding he embraced practices such as celebrity endorsement and image management but eschewed common media relations and crisis communication practices.     

Metabolife's meaning: A call for the constitutive study of public relations

Studies of public relations (PR) are usually instrumental in nature, with scholars seeking to explain how organizations employ PR techniques to meet goals. The impact of PR practices on the broader realm of public discourse and deliberation is less often the focus of scholarly attention, although it plays an increasing role in shaping public understanding of political, social, and cultural issues. This article argues that disciplinary scholarship needs constitutive analyses that understand how PR strategies help to create discursive norms. That is, when an organization successfully employs a given PR tactic, other organizations follow suit and audiences can come to expect the use of similar techniques. Through a case study of Metabolife International and 20/20, a constitutive approach illustrates how PR encourages audiences to expect and incorporate discursive speed, to understand how communication forums are created and maintained, and to substitute gestures of corporate transparency for honesty and goodwill.     

An exploratory study to conceptualize press engagement behavior with public relations practitioners

This study addresses how journalists respond to public relations (PR) practitioners in co-creating value for their audiences. The co-creation perspective is conceptualized by synthesizing extant literature from public relations and relationship marketing, including cultivation strategies in organization-public relationships studies, two-way symmetrical model in excellence theory, intereffication model, service-dominant (S-D) logic of co-creation in marketing, and customer engagement theories. Using long-interview technique with 18 journalists, the study investigates how journalists perceive media relations activities of PR practitioners from a value co-creation dimension. A new theoretical model titled press engagement behavior (PEB) with sub-dimensions in press participation behavior (PPB) and press citizenship behavior (PCB) is proposed. A thirty-item scale is proposed to guide future study on scale development and validation. The proposed new model can explain the context of journalist engagement, enriching the operational value of cultivation strategies in dyadic relationship settings.     

Toward a normative social media theory for public relations

Social media might represent the greatest social innovation/revolution in the history of communication, fundamentally altering how humans communicate, and the practice of public relations, journalism, advertising, marketing, and business. Dozens of theories and concepts including dialogue, engagement, identification, social presence, uses and gratifications, conversational human voice, and many others inform social media. However, what has commonly taken place in social media contexts and public relations has been the importation and application of other theories and concepts, rather than exploring and clarifying the unique features and capabilities of social media per se. This essay argues that social media represent a new communication paradigm, and this essay takes up the challenge of building social media theory for public relations by identifying features of social media that have emerged from existing research as fundamental to understanding social media, and eventually developing a theory(s) of social media for public relations.     

Social media use, perceptions of decision-making power, and public relations roles

Public relations practitioners in this study who were more frequent users of social network sites and social media tools reported greater perceptions of their own structural, expert and prestige power. Forty of 115 members of a PRSA chapter responded to the survey request. In terms of day-to-day practice, the sample matched national samples of practitioners, with manager and technician questionnaire items loading on the exact same factors as in prior studies. However, those enacting predominantly manager roles did not differ significantly from those enacting predominately technician roles in social media use. This study points to the need for future research to examine more closely the use of social media in the daily roles of public relations practitioners.     

Organizational contingencies,organizational blogs and public relations practitioner stance toward publics

Public relations practitioners in this study who perceived social media (e.g., blogs) to be a normal part of their organization's day-to-day communication were less likely to choose an accommodating stance toward a key public than practitioners in “low-tech” conditions. Forty-three practitioners with a mean of 14.5 years professional experience participated in a 2 × 2 (contingencies for dialogue × technological orientation of organization) experiment. The data reveal a disconnect between the potential relational benefits of social media and the stance public relations practitioners in this study chose when social media were introduced as a regular part of their working environment.     

Growth of public relations research networks: a bibliometric analysis

ABSTRACT

This research reported and expanded on a 6-year citation study of published scholarly research in public relations that occurred between 2010 and 2015. This analysis built on the work of Pasadeos and his collaborators, who examined the literature’s most-cited works from the 2000s and 1990s, respectively, and studied the field’s research network. Moreover, this study expanded the scope of coverage by adding three international journals. Overall, this study found that public relations scholarship experienced quantitative and qualitative leaps during the last decade, and the areas of excellence theory, relationship management, and crisis communication were heavily researched across the journals examined, whereas stakeholder and corporate communication are major study areas in the international journals.     

International public relations as a predictor of prominence of US news coverage

This study aims to test the public relations efforts of other countries as a predictor of their newsworthiness in the US news media, after controlling for national traits and social significance. Based on a content analysis of US newspaper and television news coverage (New York Times, Washington Post, ABC, NBC, CBS, and CNN) of 97 countries, this study found that the public relations of other countries’ governments is a significant predictor of these countries’ prominence in the US news coverage.     

Influence of responsiveness,accessibility, and professionalism on journalists’ perceptions of Southwest Airlines public relations

This longitudinal study presents the results of three biennial surveys of key national journalists who routinely report on Southwest Airlines, a company widely recognized for its extraordinary public relations efforts. Synthesizing data garnered through relationship, utility, and perception scales as well as robust open-ended responses, the results support and advance media relations best practices. Ultimately, data confirm that practitioner responsiveness and accessibility to reporters are the keys to ensuring that journalists maintain positive perceptions of Southwest Airlines’ public relations. The results provide an instructive case study and recommendations to corporate public relations practitioners for cultivating favorable media relationships through a commitment to dialogic communication principles.     

Socially distributing public relations: Twitter,Haiti, and interactivity in social media

Social media and communication technology have shifted the power of communication from public relations practitioners to social media users who may not have a recognized role or defined interest in an organization. What results is a social model of public relations in which traditional public relations responsibilities are distributed to social media users, and which depends on interactivity, legitimacy, and a user's social stake. This study explores social public relations through a qualitative analysis of user involvement on Twitter regarding relief efforts to support Haiti following the 7.0 earthquake that hit Port-Au-Prince in January, 2010. This analysis of Twitter posts also expands understanding of interactivity online and demonstrates social media user fulfillment of public relations objectives.     

Anticipatory socialization in the use of social media in public relations: A content analysis of PRSA's Public Relations Tactics

This article examines one issue in how public relations students are socialized in their understanding of the value and power of social media in the practice of public relations. The public relations academic research about social media is explored, as well as the professional claims about the value of social media as a public relations tactic. The researchers conducted a content analysis of 1 year of Public Relations Tactics issues. The data are viewed through the theoretical frame of the socialization literature ( Jablin, 1987). The results suggest that claims of social media power far outweigh evidence of social media effectiveness as a communication tool. A disconnect exists between what authors of Public Relations Tactics pieces view as the potential for social media and the research findings about the effectiveness of social media. The final section of the article discusses the implications for public relations educators, professional associations, and practitioners as they consider social media tactics in public relations strategy.     

The Role of Public Relations With Internal Activists

Abstract

Within the context of benefits/outsourcing reviews at a small, Eastern U.S. college, this qualitiative case study examined potential internal activism, employee/organizational leadership communication strategies, and ensuing changes in internal public relations practices/structure. Findings revealed that employees implemented activist strategies in response to perceived communication gaps, prompting organizational leadership to increase solictiation of employee input and commit to ongoing, two-way symmetrical communication; structural changes in internal public relations practices and reporting relationships also resulted. Extending previous activism research findings to internal publics as activists, in this study I suggest that the prodrome of potential employee activism should inform future public relations practice.     

Social media,temporality, and the legitimacy of protest

ABSTRACT

This article examines how the rise of social media affects the temporal relations of protest communication. Following a relational approach, it traces how regimes of temporality are constructed and transformed through the entanglement between media infrastructures, institutions, and practices. These regimes involve particular ‘speeds’ -the rate at which media content is renewed – as well as ‘temporal orientations’ towards present, past, and future. The article questions how specific temporal regimes enable or complicate protestors’ efforts to gain public legitimacy. A large body of research suggests that it is difficult to gain such legitimacy in the mainstream news cycle, in which protest is primarily covered from an ‘episodic’ perspective, ignoring larger protest issues. The present analysis suggests that despite the participatory affordances of social media, it has not become any easier to generate sustained public attention for structural protest issues. Drawing examples from three case studies, it demonstrates that the dominant mode of social media protest communication reproduces and reinforces the episodic focus of the mainstream news. While other temporal perspectives on protest are certainly developed in the alternative and mainstream news, as well as in activist social media communication, these do not fundamentally challenge the prevailing temporal orientation towards the present, towards the event.     

Building theory in public relations: Interorganizational relationships as a public relations paradigm

ABSTRACT

This article suggests that agreement on a paradigm focus for public relations scholarship would greatly enhance the probability of productive theory development. The author argues, influenced by Thomas Kuhn, that until those who call themselves public relations scholars come to agreement on the focus of public relations research and theory development, there may be much activity we call research in public relations, but there will not be much theory development.     

Revisiting the SMCC model: How Chinese public relations practitioners handle social-mediated crises

As social media are used widely by Chinese organizations, this study comprehensively examines how Chinese public relations practitioners cope with social mediated crisis and how culture interacts with social mediated crisis response. An in-depth interview was conducted to collect data from 23 Chinese public relations practitioners who had experience in dealing with crises and issues via social media. The results showed that Chinese public relations practitioners use diverse social media platforms to satisfy the publics’ needs and social media usage preferences. In addition, the results also showed the importance of matching information platform and information sources in response to social-mediated crises. Furthermore, we revealed how the uniqueness of Chinese culture moderated information platforms and information sources, such as face-saving strategies, collaborating with opinion leaders and influencers to shape the publics’ opinions, using no response, apologizing, and self-mockery, and emphasizing the importance of media relations.     

Data craft: a theory/methods package for critical internet studies

ABSTRACT

Disinformation campaigns continue to thrive online, despite social media companies’ efforts at identifying and culling manipulation on their platforms. Framing these manipulation tactics as ‘coordinated inauthentic behavior,’ major platforms have banned culprits and deleted the evidence of their actions from social activity streams, making independent assessment and auditing impossible. While researchers, journalists, and civil society groups use multiple methods for discovering and tracking disinformation, platforms began to publish highly curated data archives of disinformation in 2016. When platform companies reframe manipulation campaigns, however, they downplay the importance of their products in spreading disinformation. We propose to treat social media metadata as a boundary object that supports research across platforms and use metadata as an entry point for investigating manipulation campaigns.

We illustrate how platform companies’ responses to disinformation campaigns are at odds with the interests of researchers, civil society, policy-makers, and journalists, limiting the capacity to audit the role that platforms play in political discourse. To show how platforms’ data archives of ‘coordinated inauthentic behavior’ prevent researchers from examining the contexts of manipulation, we present two case studies of disinformation campaigns related to the Black Lives Matter Movement. We demonstrate how data craft – the exploitation of metrics, metadata, and recommendation engines – played a prominent role attracting audiences to these disinformation campaigns. Additionally, we offer some investigative techniques for researchers to employ data craft in their own research of the disinformation. We conclude by proposing new avenues for research for the field of Critical Internet Studies.     

Hierarchical consistency of strategies in image repair theory: PR practitioners’ perceptions of effective and preferred crisis communication strategies

ABSTRACT

Drawing from image repair theory and situational crisis communication theory, this study advances crisis communication theory by analyzing nearly 800 public relations professionals’ perceptions of 15 image repair strategies. A national sample of US public relations professionals evaluated communication strategies for their effectiveness and preference for use in three crisis scenarios (accidents, product safety, and illegal activity). Compensation, corrective action, and mortification were the most highly ranked crisis response strategies, regardless of attribution of organizational responsibility or culpability, across 3 different types of accidental and preventable crises. This hierarchical consistency suggests that using communication strategies for maintaining and strengthening an organization’s relationships with its publics may be the best protection for sustaining and repairing positive reputation long-term.     

Experience of female public relations practitioners in Bahrain

The research addressed the gap in the literature about the experience of public relations practitioners in the non-Western society of Bahrain. The research aims to contribute to public relations scholarship by using a qualitative approach to study the experience of Bahraini women working in public relations. It used open interviews with Bahraini PR practitioners who offered rich insights on their “experiences” as women working in PR in Bahrain. The interviewees talked about various types of challenges when working in public relations such as cultural marginalization, relationship with colleagues, social domination, and marginalization of PR function. The research suggests combined liberal and radical feminist strategies to improve the role of Bahraini women in public relations. It recommends social and organizational reforms, in addition to empowering women to utilize their personality traits, communication behaviors and management styles.