Testing an environmental framework for understanding public relations practitioners’ orientation toward relationship management

This study offers an alternative conceptual framework for an integrated understanding of public relations practice globally. It investigates the relationships between political, economic, and media constructs and relationship management in public relations by building upon an environmental framework for understanding public relations. Based on a survey of public relations practitioners in Singapore, this study positions relationship management as a conceptual locus for public relations theory and practice. Four environmental variables—perceptions of the degree of democracy in the political system, level of economic development, level of economic freedom, and level of media freedom—are found to be associated with public relations practitioners’ orientation toward relationship management, based on Hon and Grunig’s relationship management scale.     

Are ‘journalists’ own problems’ aggravating their hostility toward public relations?—A study of Korean journalists

Journalists’ own job problems have been found to be detrimental to media recognition of public relations: journalists vent frustration from their worsening job conditions at public relations practitioners. This outlook of occupational psyche casts a shadow over the bright prospect for media recognition of the profession. Journalists’ problems operate outside media relations, thus beyond direct attempts of public relations practitioners at media recognition via enhancing professionalism in their practices. There have been, however, only a few qualitative studies on this significant issue, all pointing to journalists’ occupational psyche running against media recognition. The purpose of this study is to determine quantitatively whether journalists’ own job satisfaction and their envy of public relations practitioners lead to their negative attitude. A survey of 128 Korean off-line journalists was conducted, and its results suggested that occupational psyche has little influence on media attitude—contrary to the findings of previous qualitative studies. For future study, this paper issues a call for cross-country, comparative research on the subject of journalists’ occupational psyche.     

Understanding public relations in the ‘sharing economy’

In spite of the macro-economic impact of the so-called ‘sharing economy’ there is a nearly complete dearth of contributions from the communication academy to its discourse. More attention is overdue, particularly for the conceptual pressure the ‘sharing economy’ is exerting on the public relations function. The authors propose a reconceptualization of public relations by identifying the constitutive aspects of the sharing economy and bringing together the explanatory concepts ‘circuits of commerce’ and ‘viable matches’ from economic sociology and communicative constitution of organizations theory to develop the notions of ‘deliberate disintermediation’ and ‘circuits of communication’ in public relations. The contention is that by doing this, communicative acts not only contribute meaning in the sharing economy, but have economic value. Furthermore, the sharing economy poses challenges to the traditional forms of organizing public relations functions, but offers opportunities to realize different potential when public relations facilitates circuits of communication and becomes a meta-communicative competence embedded within the organization.     

Developing public’s information transmitting behavior (ITB) model in public relations: A cross-national study

The purpose of this study was to develop a multidimensional model of publics’ information transmitting behavior. Relevant literature in public relations, public communication, marketing communication, and interpersonal communication were reviewed. We composed a 6-dimensional public’s information transmitting behavior (ITB) model according to the three criteria—activeness, valence, and expressivity. The six dimensions were as follows: positive-proactive megaphoning, positive-reactive megaphoning, negative-proactive megaphoning, negative-reactive megaphoning, avoiding, and no-commenting. A series of surveys was conducted both in Korea (N = 500) and the United States (N = 500) for the development of the model. The results indicated that the 18-item ITB model was significantly reliable and valid, as we expected. Theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed.     

Editors’ letter: New research and opportunities in public relations and visual communication

We are proud to present four articles exploring the intersections of public relations and visual communication as a way to move both fields forward, together and separately. The articles focus on health communication, crisis communication, social media, and corporate social responsibility, and the editors end with concrete suggestions for future research, including expanding theory and methodological applications.     

‘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.     

Trends in public relations roles: 1990–1995

This study reported trend data on the roles of national Public Relations Society of America members. The authors posited that roles are constantly in process and illustrated this through analyses of activities within the broad manager and technician categories. The authors argued also that professional experience as a predictor of manager enactment should be defined not as number of years in the field but by looking at the kinds of experiences received on the job.Study results suggested that for this sample of PRSA members an agency role emerged in 1995 in addition to the manager and technician roleso found in 1990. There was still cross-over in the activities performed in each of the role profiles, indicating that public relations people do an assortment of activities. The agency role could be a result of the economic downturn that occurred in this five-year period. Women still seemed to be doing “it all” for less money. They did not carry out the same activities as the male role profiles that emerged and enacted a less pronounced agency role.     

Serving public interests and enacting organizational values: An examination of public interest relations through AARP’s Tele-Town Halls

Public interest relations (PIR) is an approach to public relations scholarship and practice that contributes to the social good by integrating the concept of public interest into organizational goals and values. The need for PIR was emphasized during the COVID-19 pandemic as publics looked to organizations for information about a variety of topics (e.g., symptoms, vaccines). AARP created a series of tele-town halls to communicate with its publics, who are considered to be members of a “vulnerable population” during the pandemic. In order to understand how AARP’s Coronavirus Tele-Town Halls reflected the practices of PIR, I completed a critical thematic analysis of 28 virtual sessions that were hosted in 2020–2021. The analysis, which was guided by the tenets of PIR, found that AARP’s communication (1) highlighted common life course milestones of its publics, (2) emphasized the quality of the information, and (3) provided avenues to engage with the organization and its experts. Based on these findings, I developed theoretical implications that reflect a critical perspective on PIR and suggest future research avenues that seek to build this ethical and socially meaningful approach to public relations.     

Internal public relations’ role with workplace,spirituality, and religion

This article argues that public relations ought to lead the integration of spirituality and religion in an organization’s workplace. Because no model of this opportunity exists for internal public relations (a.k.a. employee relations or internal communication), this article looks at scholarship about spirituality and religion in the workplace to show links among organizational performance, employee engagement, and public relations operations, particularly that focused on employees. From this research-based approach, guiding principles for public relations’ lead role in integrating spirituality and religion in an organization’s workplace and an operational framework for internal public relations are given so public relations professionals can make the integration reality and effective for all.     

Breadth or depth? A content analysis of the use of public relations theory

In a 2003 content analysis of scholarly public relations journal articles, Sallot, Lyon, Acosta-Alzura and Jones stated that, although no dominant paradigms had yet emerged, scholarship and theory building in public relations was well on its way. Entering into this project, the authors expected to see public relations at a stage where the majority of public relations research and scholarly journal articles were focusing on a centralized body of theory as the field entered the first decade of the 21st century. The results of the study presented in this article, however, suggest that this expectation was unduly optimistic. The evidence demonstrates that, after more than three decades of scholarly efforts, it is still not the case that public relations has enough of a central focus in its research and theory building to be deemed a mature discipline.     

Digitalization in public relations—Changing competences: A longitudinal analysis of skills required in PR job ads

Digitalization has affected working practices in the field of public relations over the past two decades. Consequently, the skills and competences that are expected from public relations professionals are theorized to have undergone stark changes, with obvious implications for educators, role perceptions, and the professionals themselves. Job postings provide information about these changes by describing the skills employers expect and desire from applicants. To date, only a few studies have used this source of information, and these mostly concern the U.S. market using small samples of job postings. The purpose of this study is to enrich our understanding of how digitalization has impacted the skillsets required of public relations practitioners through the longitudinal automated semantic analysis of 62,391 public relations job postings published in Austria and Germany between 2015 and 2020. The analysis shows an increase in the number of hard skills demanded in PR in this region over the past five years. This change is particularly pronounced with respect to digital skills, thus underlining the importance of digitalization in public relations. The detailed and up-to-date findings describing what the job market is currently looking for and how it is changing will be useful for educators in developing and aligning PR curricula and advanced training programmes.     

Women’s activism as public relations in a patriarchal society: The case of Kuwait

This paper addresses an important era of women’s activism in Kuwait. In the 1950s, when the government recognized women’s rights for education, the wave to obtain other civil rights clashed with culture, tradition and religion which became serious obstacles facing women in their struggle for basic rights. This historical study focuses on the establishment of two women’s organizations -- the Arab Women’s Development Society in December 1962 and the Kuwait Women's Cultural and Social Society in February 1963. To sway the negative image of women in a patriarchal society, women used activism as a public relations tool to achieve their social, civil and political rights. The study uses cultural-economic model (CEM) to illustrate how activism and public relations were articulated as synonymous to foster women’s rights in Kuwait. Archived documents and content analysis of media content published in the 1960s reveal that activism played a vital role as a public relations strategy and that social activism was more effective than political activism. The study highlights the implications of culture within the context of both public relations and activism.     

Turkish-German access to higher education: an historical and democratic theory analysis, 1960–2010

This article looks at access to higher education in Germany. For a number of reasons, explained in this article, higher education is presently an elite system that privileges ethnic Germans while preventing Turkish-Germans from gaining sufficient access into academe. If Germany is to become a fully functioning multicultural democracy with equal rights for all it will have to revamp its higher education system so that Turkish-Germans can gain better access to such institutions and consequently feel included into the German social and political system.     

De-motivating employees’ negative communication behaviors on anonymous social media: The role of public relations

This study focuses on employees’ negative communication behaviors on anonymous social media and explores the effects of organizational antecedents on reducing their motives. Specifically, the effects of organizations’ symmetrical communication and organization-employee relationship (OER) on individuals’ social media usage motives (e.g., vent negative feelings, warn others) and negative behavioral intentions are examined. Results of an online survey of full-time employees in the United States show that the effects of OER on employees’ negative communication behavior intentions are mediated by their social media motives. Symmetrical communication had a large positive effect on OER, which in turn decreased their motives to share negative contents on anonymous social media. Theoretical and practical implications for public relations and employee behaviors are discussed.     

South Koreans’ perceptions of North Koreans and implications for public relations campaigns

Analyzing data from a telephone survey of South Korean respondents, we explored public campaign strategies for relationship building between South and North Koreas. We examined three important questions essential for the relationship building: What are the typical images of the North that South Koreans find in the media? How do South Koreans perceive North Koreans? Do such perceptions guide their intention to integrate with North Koreans? Our findings may provide important insights in developing communication agenda and message strategies, particularly for policy makers and public communication practitioners, whose efforts aim to build a favorable relationship between the South and the North.     

Reputation management: the new face of corporate public relations?

An empirical study of Fortune 500 companies suggests that “reputation management” is gaining ground as a driving philosophy behind corporate public relations. Whether the phenomenon is a trend or a fad is not clear, given the lack of consensus in defining reputation, the instability and questionable validity of reputation measures, and unanswered questions about when and how (or even whether) reputation can be “managed.” Besides reputation management, corporate public relations departments in the study embraced a wide variety of other definitions of their function, suggesting that public relations continues to have great difficulty in defining itself. While the study did not find a strong correlation between reputation and overall spending on corporate communication activities, as had a similar study the prior year, it did find some interesting correlations between reputation and specific categories of spending.     

Cultivating listening spaces for civil society: Reorienting public relations amid Hannah Arendt’s urgent pluralism

The article explores how the ideas of Hannah Arendt can further public relations’ understanding of organizational listening and its role in civil society. We draw on three major theoretical concepts from Arendt and scholars studying her work—plurality, interspaces, and lamp holders—and contextualize them within existing civil society research in public relations. Reading Arendt into organizational listening and civil society literature yields insights for how public relations contributes to the maintenance of structures and spaces for deliberation and civil society. Her theory points toward the concepts of bracketing and unbracketing as ways to enter civic spaces with an awareness of power and identity. As research on organizational listening has yet to fully identify how listening can contribute to supporting representative deliberation in polarized societies, this paper helps to theoretically position listening within civil society and provides initial suggestions as to how civic-minded listening can be incorporated into public relations practices aimed at building community.