Blogging PR: An exploratory analysis of public relations weblogs

Although there are ever more weblogs on the Internet, this is an area that has been little researched in public relations, and where they have been analyzed it has been as a tool for communication rather than a primary information source in the public relations body of knowledge. This paper provides an exploratory study of the structure and content of 67 blogs on public relations to determine what issues they deal with and whether they are a tool for the theoretical development of the field. In addition to their content we have looked at the structure, usability and interactivity of the blogs.     

Who are the social media influencers? A study of public perceptions of personality

Social media influencers (SMIs) represent a new type of independent third party endorser who shape audience attitudes through blogs, tweets, and the use of other social media. A mature public relations literature has identified the characteristics of effective spokespersons, but relatively little is known about audience perceptions of the SMI. A q-sort technique identified core perceived attributes of four sample SMIs. A better understanding of the perceived personality of SMIs provides tools for optimizing an organization's SMI capital.     

Blog power: Examining the effects of practitioner blog use on power in public relations

While blogs are not yet a standard public relations tool, practitioners use blogs to enhance their power within their organizations. Using an online survey of public relations practitioners, this pilot test examined the relationship between power and blog use. Three factored categorizations of blog use among practitioners emerged: routine information and research, interactive blog communication, and issues identification. Results showed differences based on power, between blog users and non-users, owner-practitioners and non-owners, among others.     

Toward a dialogic theory of public relations

This essay clarifies the concept of dialogue in public relations. As public relations theory and research move toward a two-way relational communication model, many scholars and practitioners are increasingly using the terms “dialogic” and “dialogue” to describe ethical and practical approaches to public relations. The concept of dialogue is deeply rooted in philosophy and relational communication theory. Its inclusion in the public relations vocabulary is an important step toward understanding how organizations can build relationships that serve both organizational and public interests. This essay traces the roots of dialogue, identifies several over-arching tenets, and provides three ways that organizations can incorporate dialogue into their communication with publics.     

Postmodernism for modernist public relations: the cash value and application of critical research in public relations

This essay argues that postmodern theorists, while adding philosophical criticism of public relations practice, also must have a “cash value” for modern public relations professionals to use their ideas. The essay argues for a fuller domain definition of public relations than used by postmodernists. It defines modernism and postmodernism, using Mumby’s four categories. It suggests examples and criteria for how postmodernist thought could be added to practitioners’ theoretical checklists.     

Public relations as “dirty work”: Disconfirmation,cognitive dissonance,and emotional labor among public relations professors

Public relations is among the least-respected professions in the world. Despite this uncomfortable fact, little research has seriously considered that public relations is perceived as a “dirty” profession, and how that perception translates into difficulties for public relations academics. Scholarship has not examined the lived experiences of public relations professors and how we reconcile our sense of self and self-respect in the mixed academic and professional environments that are often (un)intentionally disconfirming to our chosen area of study. Thus, this critical and self-reflexive essay takes up the challenge of dealing with the issues of disconfirmation, cognitive dissonance, and emotional labor that may be experienced by public relations professors in their interactions with colleagues, students, and even family members or friends.     

Corporate voice and ideology: An alternate approach to understanding public relations history

Scholars in the U.S. generally agree that the origins of corporate public relations correspond to the rise of the U.S. Industrial Revolution during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This essay explores the under-theorized relationship between ideology and public relations by examining the role of the corporate voice in public relations history. Evidence suggests that public relations counsel, serving as the corporate voice, created messages that produced and reproduced certain ideological meanings about the corporation. These ideological meanings provided important guidance on how members of the public should think about, relate to, and experience the corporation as a necessary, natural and benevolent organization in society. By incorporating ideological theory as an analytical tool to study public relations history, this article explores an important, but not often studied aspect of public relations history – the development and use of the corporate voice as a site of ideological production.     

The Effects of Blog-Mediated Public Relations (BMPR) on Relational Trust

Key features of blog-mediated public relations are conducive to initiating and nurturing relationships with publics. As a result, blogs have emerged as a new venue for public relations in recent years. Many public relations practitioners have come to realize that blogging is not just a fad and have recognized a growing trend of blogging adoption in the industry—suggesting a need for common principles of successful public relations blogging practices. This study selected the following critical features of effective blog-mediated public relations: salience of narrative structure, dialogical self, blogger credibility, and interactivity. Using these concepts, the researchers proposed a theoretical model in explaining relational trust as a central outcome of effective blog-mediated public relations. Findings showed that dialogical self in blog posts enhanced interactivity, which, in turn, led to an increase in relational trust. Additionally, this study found that blogger credibility played a positive role in relational trust.     

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.     

How understanding multidimensional diversity can benefit global public relations education

This essay offers a novice way to look at diversity as a multidimensional concept. Such approach may help to enrich students’ understanding and appreciation of one another and can contribute to a more fruitful pursuit of global public relations education among undergraduate and graduate students. Specifically, the essay shows how a multidimensional diversity approach can help students to uncover the complexity of their own identities they may not have been articulating in the past. Addressing multidimensional diversity in the classroom can encourage discussions about the importance of diversity in public relations practice and in the globalized society.     

Learning web analytics: A tool for strategic communication

This essay discusses the usefulness of analytical software for public relations and communication professionals. Using data from four organizations (academic, professional, governmental, and activist), the authors unpack web analytic tools and their potential for improving the strategic communication skills of students.     

Reconsidering public relations models

This essay examines some of the methodological and conceptual problems involved in measuring public relations models. The analysis suggests that there are several contradictions between the relationship management metaphor underlying this work and how public relations models are conceptualized and measured.Drawing on examples from the historical evolution of leadership studies, the authors argue that “public relations models” need to be measured at the relational level, rather than being aggregated across publics and relational stages. They also argue that an adequate normative theory of organizational practice will have a developmental component built into it.     

Blog offensive: An exploratory analysis of attacks published on campaign blog posts from a political public relations perspective

An advancement in online campaigning during the 2004 election cycle was the integration of blogs in candidate Web sites. This content analysis investigated the political public relations message strategy on campaign blogs during the 2004 election, focusing on attacks as a part of Functional Theory of Political Campaign Discourse. Results indicated frequent discussion of the opponent, reliance on attacks, and the dominance of logical appeals. Candidates focused on issue over image. The incumbent attacked more often than the challenger.     

The limits of collaboration

The premise of the essay is that collaborative public relations is unfeasible in some situations. Certain types of conflicts virtually require asymmetric or win-lose public relations efforts. The involvement of multiple parties in a dispute or the timing of a dispute, may necessitate reactive and confrontational responses on the part of public relations personnel. Practitioners sometimes perceive few degrees of freedom in how they may respond to a situation. There are also cases in which activist publics are motivated to pursue confrontation and to avoid open communication and collaboration.     

Public Relations as Negotiation: An Issue Development Perspective

In this essay 1 reconceptualize public relations as negotiation within an issue development perspective, Issue development is a communication approach to negotiation that focuses on the framing and reframing of issues. Theoretical characteristics of communication and negotiation models are utilized to identify shortcomings of the two-way symmetrical model and to advance notions of public relations as negotiation within an issue development framework. Issue development public relations is a management process of negotiating the organization public relationship. Theoretical implications and future research questions are indicated.     

Starbucks is forbidden in the Forbidden City: Blog, circuit of culture and informal public relations campaign in China

This study offers an in-depth analysis on the closedown of a Starbucks café inside the Forbidden City, one of the most recognized historic sites in Beijing, China, under the pressure of a Web-based activist campaign. Adopting the circuit of culture model, this study illustrates the intricate role of culture in international public relations within an Internet-based media context, as well as the tension surrounding the conflicting identities between Starbucks’ global presence and the local sensitivity attached to the cultural heritage—the Forbidden City. This study also highlights the role of new media (e.g., blogs) in China and its impact on international public relations practice.     

Interpreting definitions of public relations: Self assessment and a symbolic interactionism-based alternative

This article reviews several popular definitions of public relations and explicates the shared elements and assumptions inherent in these definitions. Further, the article presents an alternative conceptualization of public relations based upon Herbert Blumer's symbolic interactionism.The purpose of this essay is to stimulate questioning and self assessment as well as to introduce alternative goals, ideals, and directions for the field of public relations.     

Standing their ground: Southern white hegemonic defense of place through camouflaged narrative continuity

Public relations research typically conceptualizes the practice as organization-centric by emphasizing strategies, tactics, and tools used to achieve objectives that advance organizational interests. Often less organizational but essential to understanding community self-governance, grassroots actors use public relations to defend, advance, or challenge ideographs such as freedom, democracy or environmental quality. The ideograph analyzed in this case is the postbellum narrative continuity of “Southern Heritage not Hate” which served as camouflage for redeeming the Lost Cause, the argument that the South did not lose the Civil War. This essay normatively identifies, interprets and judges public relations strategies southern advocates used to “stand their ground” by defining place as a cultural issue and source of relational agency. This grassroots public relations campaign sought to defeat the post-Civil War Reconstruction narrative continuity that fostered the societal agency of African Americans; postbellum activists re-imposed a narrative favorable to Southern white male hegemony. To stand their ground, “Southern” voices used military textuality, focused on CSA General Robert E. Lee, as narrative continuity during the U.S. Civil War (1861–1865), Reconstruction (1865–1876), and Jim Crow (1877–1954). The term “camouflage” is used to explore this narrative and critically illuminate how text can define place so as to make it seem different than it is. Camouflage encodes messages differently to different decoders; it conceals as it reveals. Such strategies are typically more emergent contextually than the result of a grand plan. Through grassroots activism by groups such as the United Daughters of the Confederacy and Sons of Confederate Veterans, what once was overt became covert regarding national military culture.     

Building “foundational” linkages between development communication and public relations: A collaborative communication approach to development

Few scholars have examined the intersections between communication for development and public relations, creating a gap in the development communication scholarship and practice. Because public relations efforts are often used to achieve managerial tasks in development, rather than to serve marginalized groups, the value of public relations in development contexts is undertheorized. This essay uses the lens of power to bring the two fields of development communication and public relations together. With a detailed examination of the fields of Communication for Development and Public Relations, this essay aims to advance the understanding of communication in international development and propose collaborative approaches by establishing linkages between public relations and development communication.     

Are They Not Worthy? How Partisan Political Blogs Legitimize the Tea Party Movement and Occupy Wall Street

Social movements struggle to gain acceptance as legitimate actors so that they can raise money, recruit members, and convince politicians to meet their demands. We know little, however, about how this legitimacy is granted by various political authorities, in part because legitimacy is often poorly operationalized. To operationalize legitimacy, I revise Charles Tilly's ( 1999 ) classic concept of WUNC displays (i.e., public presentations of worthiness, unity, numbers, commitment) to assess how political authorities legitimize social movements. I analyze original data on the coverage the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street received from 20 elite political blogs during a critical event early in each movement's development. I find that liberal and conservative blogs both use the same aspects of worthiness (and not unity, numbers, or commitment) to endorse their preferred movement but different aspects of unworthiness to denounce the movement they opposed. Conservative outlets were more partisan on both accounts. This suggests that these blogs' shared status as distinctly partisan political outsiders produces a similar, but not identical, relationship with social movements. While both sets of blogs legitimize and delegitimize a movement based on its specific strengths and weaknesses, conservative blogs act more as a partisan bullhorn and liberal blogs act more as a forum for debate.