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.     

Beyond organization-centred public relations: Collective action through a civic crowdfunding campaign

Public relations scholars have called for a shift from organization-centred approaches and practices to community, – or collective-based ones. With the Internet, the latter have become more frequent although under-researched or not well understood. This article addresses those gaps by researching a community-based campaign in New Zealand and by underpinning the research with collective action theory. Methodologically, it combines netnography, thematic analysis, and interviews with major players, to analyze a civic crowdfunding campaign. It provides an account of how two amateur activists not only initiated and managed this campaign, but also raised US$1.5 million (NZ$2.27) within three weeks to buy a private beach and gift it back to the New Zealand public. The article seeks to add to both PR scholarship and practice. It adds to the former by analysing the campaign and identifying success factors for civic crowdfunding campaigns more generally; and to the latter by accounting for a different kind of activist and community-based PR that goes beyond organization-centred approaches to offer gratifying community-centered work that improves the reputation of PR for contributing to the common good.     

Short-term and long-term effects of a public relations campaign on semantic networks of newspaper content: Priming or framing?

This naturalistic pre-test/post-test field experiment studied a university public relations campaign, the “Great Cities Initiative,” for evidence of priming or framing effects on newspaper reporters and editors. The phrase “great cities” in the Chicago Tribune increased 433% during the 16-month post-test, but only 26% of stories identified the campaign source. Several measures of semantic network diversity increased, also supporting priming over framing effects.     

Vietnamese public relations practitioners: Perceptions of an emerging field

Our exploratory research into contemporary PR practice in Vietnam is underpinned by 12 semi-structured interviews with senior Vietnamese PR executives from various agencies. We selectively use professionalism as an underlying theoretical framework to explore key areas of PR as a profession in Vietnam by considering the impact of environmental variables such as culture and the media system. This paper provides a current snapshot of how an industry introduced by Western multinational corporations has adapted to the Vietnamese context.     

Engagement across three social media platforms: An exploratory study of a cause-related PR campaign

This study analyzed a social media campaign promoting child welfare to explore the associations among people's social media use, their engagement with different social media platforms (blog, Facebook page, Twitter account), and three intended behavioral outcomes (social media behavior, offline communication behavior, and helping behavior). An online survey of 73 participants shows that people's use of each social media platform was significantly related to their engagement with it at a bivariate level (when the other control variables were not considered). Social media use was also related to all three behavioral outcomes. Additionally, users’ engagement played a significant mediating role in the relationship between their social media use and their offline communication behavior.     

Corporate public relations dynamics: Internal vs. external stakeholders and the role of the practitioner

Most public relations research advocates for stronger organization-public relationships and the implementation of dialogic theory to advance the practice and elevate the status of the public relations practitioner. However, this study reveals that internal relationship dynamics can prevent corporate public relations practitioners from carrying out this function of the public relations role. Twelve weeks of observation and eleven interviews were conducted at a Fortune 1000 technology company to gain insights on how corporate PR practitioners build relationships with external publics, to gauge practitioners’ orientation to dialogue, and to identify challenges to external relationship building. Results show that internal relationship management is a prerequisite to corporate public relations practitioners’ success in developing mutually beneficial relationships with key publics. These findings have implications for both the theory and practice of public relations especially when considering the discussion of the technician versus strategic manager role of public relations and the advancement of the field to a professional status.     

Adding value to organizations: An examination of the role of senior public relations practitioners in Singapore

A key characteristic of public relations excellence in organizations is ensuring that the senior public relations practitioner – the head of the communication function – has the competencies to enact the strategic role of a manager. It is only when the top communicator possesses strategic management knowledge and engages in managerial work with support from colleagues who are technically skilled in traditional craft work can public relations work be considered to be value-generating.This paper presents the findings of the examination of the role of senior public relations practitioners in organizations in Singapore. It also explores the importance of core communication activities to the role of top in-house communicators, examines the time they allocate to managerial and technical work, and assesses if the managerial role which the practitioners play adds value to organizations. Data collected from both in-depth interviews and self-reported log of daily activities showed that although top communicators in Singapore enjoy strategic reporting and unhindered access to senior management, it also revealed, paradoxically, senior management's mixed worldviews of public relations; and that Singapore's top in-house practitioners lack the strategic knowledge to enact the managerial role as they are too focused on technical work.The paper concludes with recommendations on how the level of public relations professionalism can be raised in Singapore, starting with the practitioners themselves having to be fully equipped with the relevant academic knowledge of what makes communication excellent.     

An assessment of work-integrated learning for public relations in an open distance learning context

Education institutions are increasingly required to ensure the employability of their students through quality and relevant educational programmes. Organisational change, in response to current global challenges, is not a new occurrence and impacts on all levels and functions of the organisation. This is of particular relevance to the field of public relations as an organisational function and it is therefore essential to match theoretical learning with practice, to ensure that the function operates effectively in the broader organisational context. It, moreover, re-establishes the need for the continuous assessment of educational programmes to ensure competent and employable public relations students.     

Tracking public relations scholarship trends: Using semantic network analysis on PR Journals from 1975 to 2011

A semantic network analysis of keywords in titles of studies published in Public Relations Review and the Journal of Public Relations Research was conducted to determine the salient keywords in public relations scholarship from 1975 to 2011. “Communication,” “PR,” “public,” “practitioner,” and “corporation” have been the most prominent keywords, and the association of “PR-practitioner” was the most salient keyword association in public relations scholarship consistently.     

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.     

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.     

Made by a human like you or me: Back to the Greek classics to further develop the rhetorical paradigm of public relations

The first aim of this paper is to establish some of the core assumptions and concepts that have been used to build the rhetorical paradigm for developing public relations theory. The key tenets of this paradigm are deployed to enable some critical reflection on the value of the model, and particularly the work of Heath, for scholars who accept that public relations is constituted by persuasive discourses and perpetual competition between opposing interests and values. The second aim of this paper is to explore the question of where next? How do we develop the rhetorical paradigm and take it into new directions and allow it to embrace new problems? This paper will attempt to do this by applying agonistic theories of democracy. To mirror how Heath has drawn on classical writers such as Aristotle, Isocrates and Quintilian, this paper will also draw on classical texts: Firstly, through the satirical drama and social commentary in the writing of Aristophanes; and then through Honig’s work in reinterpreting Sophocles’ play Antigone. Agonism derives from the ancient Greek word agōn - a contest or struggle. A key priniciple of classical agonism is that protagonists should seek to win acclaim and admiration by performing openly in public, and it extols plurality above dispassionate deliberation. This suggests some resonance with the dominant assumptions of the rhetorical paradigm, but more modern forms of agonism make post-foundationalist assumptions of the impossibility of any consensus existing beyond precarious hegemonic relationships. They also hold to a radical pluralism that when applied challenge widely-held assumptions that ethically grounded public relations practice is that which seeks to eliminate conflict in favour of seeking consensus. Fusing agonistic cooperation with Heath’s notion of concurrence is suggested as a means of integrating critical theory into the rhetorical paradigm.     

Transparency laws and interactive public relations: An analysis of Latin American government Web sites

A content analysis of 50 Latin American government Web sites was conducted to assess whether new transparency laws in the hemisphere impacted the interactivity, usability, technological expertise, and national symbolism manifest on the sites. Web sites were found to be generally usable but limited in interactivity. There was no difference in Web site interactivity between countries with transparency laws and those without them, but countries with laws used more visual symbols aimed at national branding. The article offers a model of Web site features for public relations practitioners interested in increasing the sophistication, usability, and interactivity of their sites in order to improve relationship building with stakeholders.     

An exploratory study of transformed media relations dimensions after the implementation of an anti-graft law in Korea

The Improper Solicitation and Graft Act, which went into effect on September 28, 2016, strictly prohibits gift giving to journalists, thereby making a traditional media relations practice in Korea illegal. A survey of 342 public relations practitioners revealed that providing monetary gifts, performing formal responsibility, building informal relationships, receiving paid media coverage, and giving and accepting informal support were found to be significant subdimensions of media relations. After implementation of the anti-graft law, public relations practitioners expressed a belief that the practice of providing monetary gifts would shrink the most and that performing formal responsibility would experience the most growth. The formal responsibility factor was significantly positively related to support for the new law and public relations ethics, while giving and accepting informal support was negatively linked to public relations ethics. Paid media coverage showed a positive relationship with public relations practitioners’ perceptions about difficulties of increasing outputs of media relations. Finally, this empirical study shows how new external regulations arising from implementation of the anti-graft law can affect the personal influence model of media relations in Korea.     

Public relations in Kenya: An exploration of models and cultural influences

This pioneer study explores the public relations models that inform the practice of public relations in Kenya, and the cultural values that influence this practice. Results show the personal influence model as the most used by practitioners in Kenya, while individualism is the most experienced cultural value. The strong correlation between personal influence model and Hofstede's cultural value of femininity points to the practitioners’ strong desire for good interpersonal relationships with colleagues, supervisors, clients and key publics.     

The student-run public relations firm in an undergraduate program: Reaching learning and professional development goals through ‘real world’ experience

A student-run public relations firm can offer a variety of benefits for an undergraduate program in which there are limited resources for professional involvement by students. The article is a case study that profiles a student-run firm launched in conjunction with a capstone course in a journalism department. Specific learning and professional development goals were established for students, the department, and for clients served by the firm. The article presents a brief summary of successes, along with a discussion of opportunities and challenges. General recommendations are offered for establishing a student-run public relations firm.     

Illuminating the invisible college: An analysis of foundational and prominent publications of engagement research in public relations

Researchers and practitioners assert that engagement is a fundamental element of public relations with some claiming the field is in an era of engagement. Yet, many have lamented that engagement is disorganized and conceptually murky. To address this, this study examines how researchers have stood on the shoulders of “giants”. Results from the bibliometric network analyses of 91 journal articles and over 3000 citations reveals the structure of the invisible college of engagement research and identifies foundational and prominent publications. A close reading and analysis documents how these publications are influencing the theoretical development of engagement research in public relations.     

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.     

Maximizing public relations with the organization–public relationship scale: Measuring a public's perception of an art museum

This study employed the organization–public relationship scale to measure member perceptions of an art museum. Analysis shows member perceptions of the museum–public relationship differentiated members likely to continue their membership from those likely to discontinue their membership with the museum. This study confirms the appropriateness of using the organization–public relationship scale with museums.