Korean practitioners and journalists: Relational influences in news selection

This study investigates how source–media relationships influence perceptions toward news selection from the public relations practitioners’ viewpoint in Korea. The results show that Korean public relations practitioners who perform formal media relations believed that journalists would select news stories based on journalists’ media routine principles, such as using government sources. In contrast, Korean public relations practitioners who perform informal or monetary media relations believed that journalists would select news stories based on journalists’ extra-media factors, such as personal relationships with public relations practitioners.     

Craft and Professional Models of Public Relations and Their Relation to Job Satisfaction Among Korean Public Relations Practitioners

To determine which model Korean public relations practitioners use and their levels of job satisfaction, a survey of 167 Korean public relations practitioners in Seoul was conducted. Results showed that Korean practitioners use the craft models of press agentry and public information. However, they aspire to practice two-way, or professional public relations, models. Practitioners of high professionally oriented public relations are more satisfied with their jobs than practitioners of low professionally oriented public relations. This gap between a positive and a normative model also indicated a strong positive relation between the professional models and job satisfaction.     

Good works well publicized? Understanding L. Ron Hubbard’s interpretation of Effective Public Relations

Scientology’s public relations function is based on research and writing by L. Ron Hubbard, who studied public relations and drafted documents directing Church communication strategies. Hubbard annotated the textbook Effective Public Relations, which was reprinted for Church practitioners. Textual analysis shows Hubbard was particularly interested in redefining key concepts, emphasizing interpersonal communication strategies, and selectively adopting media relations strategies. The findings suggest that he used the annotations to appropriate the text and position himself as a communications expert. Evidence suggests Church communication practitioners continue to follow Hubbard’s recommendations.     

Comparative study of American and Korean practitioners’ dissent with perceived unethical management decisions

This study examined how similarly or differently American and Korean public relations practitioners use dissent tactics. The results showed that assertive confrontation was the most frequently adopted tactic among practitioners in both countries. However, Korean practitioners were more likely to work to sabotage implementation of unethical decision, and to leak information to external stakeholders than the US counterparts. This study will shed light on the impact of cultural difference on public relations practitioners’ dissent selection on unethical management decisions.     

Reimagining dialogue in public relations: Bakhtin and open dialogue in the public sphere

Over the past several decades, public relations scholarship has added significant richness to its understanding of dialogue. Such research has followed a theoretical trajectory centered on the “I and Thou” philosophy of Martin Buber. Drawing from Mikhail Bakhtin’s Dialogic Imagination, this essay puts public relations dialogic scholarship into conversation with the concept of dialogue in a broader societal context. Bakhtin’s work provides additional understanding of public relations’ roles in dialogue, particularly in regards to facilitating public conversations. Bakhtin’s emphasis on contextual and individually generated meanings illuminates the nature and structure of public conversations and the potential for public relations practitioners to play a more active and positive role in the enactment of open dialogue.     

The role of public relations in a counterhegemony: A case study of the 1968 poor people’s campaign

This study examined the role of public relations in Antonio Gramsci’s concept of cultural hegemony, specifically in a counterhegemony. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s preparation for the 1968 Poor People’s Campaign serves as a test case on how public relations can help subordinate groups confront a hegemony. This paper suggests that Gramsci’s philosophy provides an analytical heuristic for researching instances of contestation. Examining counterhegemonic campaigns offer public relations practitioners a means both to think about and to intervene in the world more effectively.     

The Estimation of the South Korean Government's Diplomacy for Its Opposing Public North Korea

Based on the influence of the contingency factors of inner organizational and external situational factors, contingency theory of accommodation provides a good explanation for the real public relations practices. A recent series of experimental studies supports the idea that the theory is also applicable in the public's estimation pattern regarding an organization's public relations practices. This survey study is theoretically important when examining and sorting out significant factors in the real population of a notable public diplomacy domain. That is, this research examines how the South Korean people perceive the contingency factors and how people estimate the South Korean government's stance toward its opposing public, North Korea. The regression model of perceived contingency factors and stance estimation was generalizable in the population of this study (R ² = .279). The most influential perceptual predictors in the model include: the North Korean leader's preference for the South Korean president, the relative power of South Korea, the level of commitment of North Korea, the South Korean president's preference for the North Korean leader, the US government's support for the South Korean policy toward North Korea, the South Korean government's certainty to deal with the North Korean military threat, situational difficulties, the South Korean government's knowledge and skill to deal with the threat, the situational duration of threat, and the South Korean president's relation-oriented leadership. Finally, this study discussed practical implications for the government practitioners.     

Discrepancy Between Korean Government and Corporate Practitioners Regarding Professional Standards in Public Relations: A Co-Orientation Approach

This study examines the perceptional accuracy and the extent of the discrepancy between the professional standards of government and corporate public relations practitioners. Using a co-orientation approach in a national survey of randomly selected public relations professionals in Korea, it also measured practitioners' own attitudes as well as responses to questions about the attitudes of their peers concerning professional standards.

The results of this study suggest the influence of cultural perspectives. First, gender inequality in the relationship hierarchy has been largely eliminated but there is still no social and occupational consensus in the Korean public relations field. Second, the personal influence model and the behavior of gao guanxi (personal relations) still operate in the public relations of government systems, which have paternal authoritarian cultures. Government practitioners, nevertheless, feel strongly about the importance of social scientific research in their field and desire closer relationships with their communities and publics.     

Public relations and artificial intelligence: It’s not (just) about robots

Organizations of all kinds, as well as their in-house or agency public relations teams, increasingly co-opt Artificial Intelligence (AI) to enhance their capabilities. This paper examines a relatively new topic that has received little scholarly attention: the growing relationship between AI and public relations. It outlines several key roles that AI may play in future, based on trends in other industries, and considers the implications for public relations practitioners, their clients and employers. It therefore launches a dialogue about the diversity and extent of AI’s uses in public relations practice. The paper argues that, to date, commentators have placed too much emphasis on AI’s potential for task automation; AI’s broader technological, economic and societal implications for public relations warrant greater critical attention. This does not imply that practitioners need become expert technologists; rather, they should develop a sufficient understanding of AI’s present and potential uses to be able to offer informed counsel.     

Writing in the public relations curriculum: practitioner perceptions versus pedagogy

Educators and practitioners seem to agree that writing is a public relations curriculum fundamental. An examination of the writing requirements of 152 ASJMC accredited public relations programs indicates that only a little more than half (57%) require a news writing course. Fewer require a public relations writing course (51%). Nearly 200 public relations practitioners were surveyed as to their perceptions of college public relations educators’ writing emphases. This exploratory study’s findings suggest that practitioners believe both news writing and public relations writing classes should be mandatory for public relations students; they offer slightly stronger support for news writing. Recommendations include requiring writing-intensive coursework, overall, and encouraging students to seek journalism experience through campus news outlets.     

“In-awareness” approach to international public relations

The skill of cultural “in-awareness” developed within the field of intercultural communication is applied to international public relations to understand culture’s influence on the communication function of public relations. The goal of the in-awareness approach is to expose hidden cultural assumptions and expectations that plague international public relations and allow one to explore national and cultural differences between clients and practitioners in a systematic and nonthreatening manner. A three-tiered framework is presented based on a country profile, cultural profile, and communication profile. The country profile provides a broad outline of what may be feasible within a particular country, while the cultural profile speaks to what may be effective in that country. The communication profile further refines cultural generalities by delineating culturally-based communication behaviors that underlie common public relations practices. By examining the communication profiles of both the practitioner and client, one can see how cultural communication differences translate into culturally-defined expectations and assumptions about specific public relations activities.     

Mandating dialogue? International perspectives on differences between theory and practice

This paper replicates an Australian study (Lane, 2018) into how public relations practitioners understand dialogue in practice. The original study found practitioners believed they were carrying out dialogue legally required by government, but what they were doing was no more than two-way communication. It also found practitioners’ operating environments meant they could never actually undertake dialogue, even if mandated to do so. These empirically-based insights revealed the existence of gaps between theory and practice in dialogue in public relations. The study was repeated in Austria to determine if these findings were consistent internationally, and to consider what this might mean for the place of dialogue in public relations. Examples of so-called mandated ‘dialogue’ provided by Austrian public relations practitioners in semi-structured interviews were analyzed using Kent and Taylor’s (2002) five principles of dialogue. This analysis showed that despite the Austrian practitioners’ familiarity with the work of Habermas on dialogue, the mandated communication they carried out was not dialogue. The Austrian experience also showed that the nature of the underlying context of mandated communication—the need to achieve agreement between parties in varying levels of conflict; and conducting communication within boundaries of time and non-negotiable pre-existing decisions—meant dialogue could never occur. Comparing the two studies demonstrated high levels of similarity between the countries’ results, which we hope can provide the starting point for the development of a longitudinal and international perspective. This paper concludes that the place of dialogue in the theory and practice of public relations is dependent on the education of practitioners in its implementation; and a re-thinking of the role of the aspirational in situations where it can never be attained.     

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.     

Cognitive communication competence within public relations practitioners: Examining gender differences between technicians and managers

This study examines gender differences within public relations practitioners. Of specific interest was the role that cognitive communication competence played within public relations managers and public relations technicians. Public relations practitioners completed a questionnaire that included the Duran and Spitzberg's [Duran, R. L., & Spitzberg, B. H. (1995). Toward the development and validation of a measure of cognitive communication competence. Communication Quarterly, 43(3), 259–275] Cognitive Communication Competence Scale. Participants self-identified whether they were a technician or a manager. Results showed that male public relations managers had significantly higher cognitive communication competence than male public relations technicians. However, the hypothesis that female public relations managers would have higher cognitive communication competence than female public relations technicians was not supported. Also, this study found no significant gender differences with levels of cognitive communication competence. However, female technicians have significantly higher cognitive communication competence than male technicians.     

Public relations master's education deliverables: How practitioners and educators view strategic practice curriculum

A national sample of practitioners (PRSA members) and academics provided their perceptions of what graduate students of public relations should study (N = 463). Despite expectations of difference between practitioners and educators, they agreed that a master's program graduate should have knowledge of business and understand how globalization shapes public relations. Still, a master's of public relations program graduate should also write well, speak well, and have had some “capstone” experience.     

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.     

Extending public relationship-building through the theory of politeness

For more than thirty years, relationship-building has been recognized as central to public relations, and yet, exactly how practitioners go about building and maintaining relationships at the micro level has been insufficiently explored in public relations scholarship. Politeness, or a lack thereof, is ever-present in all communicative interactions, affecting the formation and development of relationships. There is therefore value in extending our understanding of how these relationships are impacted by (im)polite communicative acts. Principally, politeness attempts to balance participants’ face needs or needs for self-esteem through employing various strategies, and this article attempts to explicate the theory of politeness for public relations work. It concludes that an understanding of the fundamentals of politeness theory and strategies enables practitioners to be more effective at building relationships within and across communities, avoiding potential pragmatic failure.     

Practitioners’ web use and perceptions of their own roles and power: a qualitative study

Four focus group discussions with 35 practitioners were guided by theory about roles from public relations literature and power from strategic management literature to explore how World Wide Web use is related to practitioners’ perceptions of their own status and decision-making power. The web has become essential to public relations. Practitioners use the web extensively for research and evaluation, two-way communication, productivity and efficiency, issues management, and other applications. All four types of practitioners’ power, according to Finkelstein’s [Acad. Manage. J. 35 (3) (1992) 505–538] taxonomy—structural, expert, prestige and ownership—were enhanced by web use. Because, the web is such a great equalizer, web use may contribute to the blurring of practitioners’ roles.     

Toward excellence in public relations: identifying practices and barriers in Kuwaiti corporate,governmental and non-profit organizations

ABSTRACT

This study aimed to examine the applicability of the Excellence principles in Kuwait, generating insights into factors that affect the practice of strategic public relations management across corporate, governmental and nonprofit organizations. The findings, based on 21 semi-structured in-depth interviews with Kuwaiti public relations practitioners, revealed that the public relations profession demonstrates low levels of adherence to the generic principles of excellence. Public relations practitioners are less involved in strategic management and less empowered in the dominant coalition. Practitioners have provided various barriers including higher management’s lack of understanding of public relations, and lack of qualified practitioners, which have created disparities in understanding symmetrical communication. The sector of the organizations and the employment system in the country have also contributed to the situation.