American v. National Football League: Using public relations to “win” a war against a monopoly

No professional sports group ever achieved acceptance as widespread within a single decade's span as the American Football League (AFL). This study chronicles how the AFL used public relations strategies and tactics to garner public acceptance, which in turn helped convince the older National Football League (NFL) to merge with the upstart league. This study will further the understanding of how trade associations use public relations as an image-building device, as well as address a deficiency in the study of sports public relations.     

Public relations and zones of engagement: Employees’ lived experiences and the fundamental nature of employee engagement

While employee engagement has been primarily explored within the business, human resources and management disciplines, public relations research has more recently taken an interest in furthering its understanding and acknowledging how public relations can serve an organization’s internal communication as a foundational component of the field. The purpose of this study is to demonstrate how public relations can serve an organization’s internal communication by better understanding how employees perceive and experience engagement. Following a phenomenological methodology (n?=?32), this study utilized zones of meaning as a conceptual foundation (not a literal interpretation) to examine the process related to the complex, shifting and shared meaning of zones of engagement and how zones of meaning are products as well as drivers of engagement, which offer a new way to conceptualize employee engagement in public relations, shifting to a deeper comprehension and understanding. The findings show that employee experiences align more to Kahn’s (1990) initial personal engagement model than other public relations models. The psychological conditions of meaningfulness and safety from the original employee engagement model emerged as important factors in defining the employees’ shared-meaning lived experiences. In addition, this study offers a new definition of disengagement, which is similar but unique to the scholarship on negative engagement. The findings provide a framework for public relations scholars who work to further refine the understanding of employee engagement and for practitioners who develop public relations strategies for internal audiences, and advances the conceptual foundation of zones of meaning in public relations scholarship.     

Commercial speech,protected speech,and political public relations

Political public relations play an unique role in American democracy because it occupies a dual role of providing both political and commercial speech. However, using analysis of the First amendment, public relations have increasingly been identified as commercial speech which receives limited protection under the U.S. Constitution. This study traces the evolution of the legal framework in which political PR has become associated with commercial speech, and how this association has made Constitutional analysis of political PR more complex. Implications for public relations practitioners and PR's role in democracy are discussed.     

An inside-out exploration of contemporary Chinese public relations education

This study provides an inside-out examination of contemporary Chinese public relations education. Particularly, it seeks to explore (1) how Chinese public relations educators make meaning of the imported U.S. body of knowledge of public relations; (2) how Chinese educators conceptualize Chinese public relations; and (3) the connection and disconnection between academia and industry. We conducted 49 face-to-face in-depth interviews and performed content analysis of 22 Web sites of Chinese universities with public relations programs. Research findings reflected the movement of Chinese PR from a merely technical function to a more strategic function centering on relationship building, reputation, social responsibility, and organizational identity. The findings also suggested significant influence of the U.S. PR education on the development of Chinese public relations education manifested through textbook adoption and core curricular design. However, the study has also shown that educators have undertaken substantial effort to localize the imported knowledge in accordance with China's unique cultural, economic, and political systems.     

When controversial businesses meet dialogic communication: Insights from public relations practitioners in the oil and gas industry

This study investigated how public relations practitioners understand and practice dialogic communication in the controversial oil and gas industry. Guided by theoretical works of dialogic theory of public relations, the dialogic ladder, and negative spaces of dialogue, in-depth interviews were conducted with 21 practitioners who held public relations/communication positions serving the oil and gas industry in Canada. The findings suggest some points of alignment between practitioners’ understanding of dialogic public relations and the related theoretical orientation. Practitioners reported predominantly using an interpersonal approach for shallow dialogue followed by mediated and procedural approaches with different stakeholders in practice. Interviewees also shared the unique challenges they face in practicing dialogic communication due to the controversies surrounding the industry. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.     

Learning by leading: Integrating leadership in public relations education for an enhanced value

Twin surveys of senior public relations executives and public relations majors compared perceptual similarities and differences in leadership qualities, skill development sources, and unique features of public relations leadership. The perceptual gap revealed what students believe to be important or less important in the self-actualization process as future leaders. The results offered pedagogical recommendations on how to integrate leadership training in public relations education to prepare students with a sustainable competitive advantage.     

Dropping the ball on media inquiries: The role of deadlines in media catching

Deadlines have always played a significant role in the practice of public relations, especially the media relations specialization. Public relations textbooks and practitioner handbooks encourage budding practitioners to learn how and when journalists, broadcasters, and Internet authors work so that they may pitch story ideas to them appropriately. Even though media catching, an emerging trend in media relations, reverses the traditional direction of story pitching, deadlines are still critical for this new media relations approach. Through a content analysis of 2802 Help-A-Reporter-Out media requests, this study examines how deadlines vary among media outlets engaging in this new media relations story. Statistically significant differences provide insights for public relations practitioners as to how they can best utilize the service to compete for media placements.     

Soccer, civil religion, and public relations: Devotional–promotional communication and Barcelona Football Club

The aim of this article is to provide a public relations perspective on the civil religion phenomenon through a study of Barcelona Football Club (BFC) as an institution and its public relations efforts. We believe that BFC can be seen as a form of civil religion that uses a devotional–promotional communication model which sets forth, upholds and reinforces relations with “faithful supporters”. The paper links to three main contributions: the work of [Salvador, J. (2004). Futbol, metàfora d’una guerra freda: Un estudi antropològic del Barça. Barcelona: Proa.] on anthropological approach to BFC, [Giner, S. (2003). Carisma y razón. Madrid: Alianza] on civil religion and its communicative dimension, and [Tilson, D. J. (2006). Devotional–promotional communicationa and Santiago: A thousand-year public relations campaign for Saint James and Spain. In J. L’Etang & M. Pieczka (Eds.), Public relations: Critical debates and contemporary practice (pp. 167–184). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.] on devotional–promotional communication. Thus, this article advances a public relations approach to civil religion.     

Towards the professionalisation of public relations in Malaysia: Perception management and strategy development

The aim of this study is to explore how the status and standards of public relations as a profession are perceived by the three main groups involved in public relations: academics, practitioners, and business leaders. It is concluded that public relations can be a ‘true’ profession if all parties involved are united and committed to developing standardised, universal forms of public relations practise.     

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.     

Transforming the city: The potential for urban ethnographies of PR: The case of Latin America

Framed within García Canclini's concept of cultural hybridity, this paper will argue that “the city” and, consequently, the field of urban anthropology, offers great potential for the study of public relations and its audiences. Urbanisation will be one of the twenty-first century's biggest drivers of global economic growth (Dobbs et al., 2011) and public relations efforts will need to adapt to reflect the shifting urban environment. We will propose that cities provide opportunities for exploring the meanings, confines and possibilities of public relations as a socio-cultural practice. We will consider how ethnographically-inspired research can help us to further understand how public relations is understood and practised, both formally and informally, in large metropolitan cities and how public relations is influenced by, and can contribute to, urban cultural life. We will propose an ethnographic framework for research to explore the phenomenology of everyday lived experiences of public relations (PR) in relation to the complexity of the global processes which shape today's cities and the PR practices which take place within them. To contextualise our proposed research framework, we will draw on two particular cases from our own work: one of a project now completed in Mexico City, Mexico, and the other, a project in progress, in Lima, Peru.     

Social movements and public relations in the early twentieth century: How one group used public relations to curtail venereal disease rates

ABSTRACT

A case study of the American Social Hygiene Association (ASHA) campaign to craft a national vision for social health showed that the group used public relations-like strategies to, as one of their officials said, “crystallize public opinion” years before Edward Bernays wrote a book of the same title. Although these efforts might not have been labeled public relations at the time, this study introduces some precedents of contemporary public relations. In this study, social activism offered a more robust approach to addressing an issue than using media relations alone could do. ASHA members used communication strategies such as segmenting audiences, utilizing events to reach appropriate audiences, using visual media, and creating house organs to arouse public sentiment, influence attitudes, and promote desired behavior.

This case study expands public relations history theory by examining why ASHA members practiced public relations as they did. In this case, ASHA used persuasive communication to pierce the veil of silence around venereal disease to craft a national vision for social hygiene and legitimize the group as the major voice on this topic. Lessons from this case can illustrate how public relations can be conducted more effectively, especially in relation to social movements.     

Perceived professional standards and roles of public relations in China: Through the lens of Chinese public relations practitioners

As the first quantitative examination of perceived public relations professional standards in China using an online survey, this study was designed based on the standards of professional standards inventory Cameron, Sallot, & Lariscy (1996) constructed and tested among practitioners in the U.S. The survey results suggest six dimensions of perceived standards of professional performance: (1) role and function in organizational strategic planning, (2) sufficiency in professional training and preparedness, (3) gender and racial equity, (4) situational constraints, (5) licensing and organizational support, and (6) participation in the organizational decision-making team. Four dimensions of public relations roles were also identified by the survey participants: (1) brand promotion facilitator, (2) public information specialist, (3) media relations counsel, and (4) conflict management expert. Primary practice area was found to affect how Chinese practitioners perceive the six clusters of professional standards and the four identified public relations roles. These findings provide insights for both practitioners and researchers on how Chinese public relations practitioners view public relations as a profession and how the profession currently holds its professional standards in China.     

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.     

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.     

The genesis of public relations in British colonial practice

This paper fills a gap in the documentation of the evolution of public relations in the 20th century by demonstrating how the British Colonial Office employed public relations strategies and tactics in the administration of an African colony. This policy development traced primarily through British Colonial Office and Ministry of Information written and film archives in London, Zimbabwe and Zambia demonstrates how colonial officials in an Africa colony in conjunction with civil servants at the Colonial Office in London developed and implemented public relations policies, strategies and tactics on an ad hoc basis in response to the need for colonial officials to communicate and manage relations with colonial subjects in an intercultural setting.The case study is that of the British colony of Northern Rhodesia, the evolution of government public relations activities follows three distinct phases, before, during and after World War II and covers political public relations as well as community development activities and “education for citizenship.”     

The portrayal of public relations in the era of Ivy Lee through the lens of the New York Times

Public relations has and, it appears, always has had an image problem. From public relations’ protohistory, through the rise of the publicist and press agent, the history of the relationship between journalists and public relations practitioners remained rocky. Using the New York Times as a lens, this study seeks to examine, through a qualitative framing analysis (N = 106), how public relations was perceived and discussed by one of its most important audiences, the journalist, during the early years of the twentieth century. The study found that while the tasks and media used in the practice of public relations as framed by the Times may be accurate, the cultural context of the early 20th century called the very “doing” of public relations into question.     

Collaboration and conflict between agencies and clients

Public relations agencies are an important part of the public relations industry, but their relations with client organizations are rarely studied. There is more literature and studies in agency-client relations in advertising than in public relations. This paper reviews literature and reports results of an empirical study into perceptions of public relations agencies and their clients on the reasons for their cooperation and sources of conflict between them. Results show that agencies misperceive reasons for which they are hired and the sources of conflict in the relationship. The paper offers several suggestions about how to tackle the problem: notwithstanding rebranding into consultancies and firms, public relations agencies-client relations should be studied as a particular example of a broader family of agency-client relations. Also agencies should study and strategically manage relations with their clients, while being realistic about client organization’s needs – sometimes they just need additional arms and legs.