Postmodernism,symmetry, and cash value: An Isocratean model for practitioners

Postmodern philosophy has presented significant challenges to the practicality, universality, and justice of a pervasive paradigm in public relations theory: Excellence Theory, including the concept of the two-way symmetrical worldview. Conversely, however, the practical value of postmodern public relations remains problematic for current practitioners. This article seeks to show that the symmetrical rhetoric of Isocrates – with its values of moderation, justice, and inclusive discourse – presents a practical, successful model for the infusion of postmodern values into 21st-century symmetry.     

Opportunities for public relations research in public health

While communication researchers have developed a solid body of knowledge in the health field, we know little about the activities of public relations practitioners in public health bodies. This is unfortunate, because public health bodies at the federal, state, and local level have faced considerable criticism for what amounts to poor public relations. Public relations scholarship and practice have much to offer the field of public health in helping public health bodies meet their challenges. In order for public relations scholars to assist public health bodies, however, scholars first must fill a void in the research by investigating the public relations functions of public health bodies. The author suggests six avenues of public relations research in the field of public health.     

Democracy and government public relations: Expanding the scope of “Relationship” in public relations research

The author argues that the unique nature of the US government poses significant barriers to democratic governmental public relations practiced in and by the US. By exploring challenges in relationship management that surface while analyzing a particular instance of government public relations, the author posits that relationship management research should take into account publics’ (non)desire for a relationship as well as different types of organization–public relationships (OPRs) including government–public relationships. The author analyzes the US Government's official apology, administered by President Clinton, to Tuskegee study survivors, introduces the communicative conception of distance to PR to broaden relationship management frameworks, and argues for broader understanding of what constitutes democratic public relations.     

Queering PR: Directions in theory and research for public relations scholarship

ABSTRACT

This article presents an historical overview of queer activism and inquiry, advocating for queer theorizing in public relations, and outlining future directions for theory building. It proposes making public relations theory queer (challenging the heterosexist foundations and presumptions that constitute theory in public relations) and queering public relations theory (challenging the discomfort in theorizing sexuality and gender identity). This article is intended to be provocative and to serve as a disruption to contemporary public relations theory; it is a cry for radical rethinking of how we come to identify, define, and understand the discipline.     

Towards a postmodern research agenda for public relations

The theory and practice of public relations are largely based on a modernist understanding of organization that privileges management perspectives and a strategic focus in the field. This article explores the possibility of postmodernism as an alternative theoretical approach to public relations. Postmodernism rejects the manager as a rational being who has the ability to determine organizational outcomes through strategies. Modernist public relations is examined as a hegemonic practice that interpellates practitioners into the system to legitimize the perspectives and actions of corporate managers as objective knowledge, particularly through discursive practices in organizational media. Public relations’ media relations role is critiqued for its creation of a hyperreality and the resulting crisis of representation. The paper concludes with suggestions for a postmodern research agenda based on reflexivity.     

A reappraisal of Delphi 2.0 for public relations research

This paper introduces, analyzes, and explains the Delphi method of research, particularly as it applies to the public relations industry. The Delphi technique became known some 50 years ago when the RAND Corporation used it for forecasting. Since then, scholars and forecasters have used it periodically for qualitative explorations into complex issues or domains. The overall purpose of the Delphi is to facilitate formal discussion among selected experts in a given domain around a particular topic; it is particularly useful when those experts cannot easily gather in one place. The method encourages the sharing of diverging worldviews over a few “rounds” or iterations in the hope that the views may converge into some direction around the given topic. For this reason, the Delphi has often been used in situations or environments that tend to be somewhat ambiguous and where interviews and surveys are neither timely nor appropriate.     

Workplace adversity and resilience in public relations: Accounting for the lived experiences of public relations practitioners

Public relations practitioners face workplace challenges as they cultivate public relationships, resolve conflicts, and manage crises. Odds of adversities may be high in this role, requiring practitioners to be resilient. This qualitative study explores workplace adversities in public relations from a practitioners’ perspective, and examines how they enact resilience. By asking current practitioners about their lived experiences, we found workplace adversities occurred on multiple levels and ranged from mundane to life-altering events. Patterns of resilience were, metaphorically, bouncing forward, bouncing up, bouncing back, and bouncing around. This study contributes to public relations and resilience scholarship by (1) uncovering workplace adversities and resilience enactment in public relations, therefore connecting practice with scholarship, (2) extending the “bounce back” metaphor in the resilience literature, therefore making resilience more inclusive, and (3) exploring the connections of multi-level resilience, and suggesting the complex and negotiated nature of resilience among individuals embedded in collectives.     

Fringe public relations: How activism moves critical pr toward the mainstream

The dominance of Excellence Theory in public relations theory and research may be eroding as contemporary issues in corporations, including the concern with activist challenges to reputation management and corporate social responsibility, increase in visibility and demand explanation. We argue that Excellence Theory‘s seemingly reluctant evolution has provided unsatisfactory treatments of concepts like power and activism, even though it has attempted to address some limitations of the symmetrical model's efficacy in responding to activist challenges. Excellence Theory‘s acknowledgment of once-vilified concepts like persuasion and power sets the stage for critical public relations theory and research to emerge as significantly more capable of addressing activist advocacy and concomitant issues. The paper argues that critical theory, buoyed by acceptance of its key concepts, its increasing access to presentation venues and journals sympathetic to once-marginalized, alternative perspectives, is poised to infiltrate the public relations orthodoxy. This possibility offers hope that once marginalized pluralistic approaches, especially critical public relations, may disrupt the colonization of the orthodoxy and infiltrate mainstream public relations.     

A methodological evaluation of public relations research

An examination of journal articles published from 1989 to 2007 reveals that although public relations scholars appear to have followed rigorous procedures, reporting on research protocols is inadequate in some quantitative and qualitative studies. Most areas of needed improvement concern sins of omission, not of commission.     

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.     

Development of public relations research in Ghana: A systematic review

Even though the extant literature has pointed to the steady growth of public relations research in different contexts, the developing economy context continues to be marginalised in terms of scholarship, theory development and, consequently, the practice of the discipline. This has necessitated calls from scholars to document research in the discipline to trigger future research agendas. This study was therefore undertaken to scientifically synthesise and analyze 26 peer-reviewed public relations studies in Ghana, which were published over a period of 10 years (2012–2021) to document the dominant issues, gaps, and future research avenues. Through a systematic review, the study found that there is an over-concentration on themes such as CSR and CSR communication, public relations within higher education institutions, and dialogic public relations at the expense of other key subject areas within the discipline. Methodologically, 65% of the studies reviewed have employed the qualitative methodology as opposed to the quantitative and mixed-method approaches, thereby reducing the ability to extrapolate their findings to other populations. The study has thoroughly discussed the implications for public relations scholarship, theory development and practice within Ghana and other emerging contexts.     

Public relations and tourism: Fighting for the role of public relations in tourism

The objective of this paper is to demonstrate the importance of public relations work in the tourism industry and to defend its role for its practical application. The study is empirically based and adopts a case-study approach through qualitative methods. It reveals the development of public relations activities and the great need that exists for public relations theoretical framework within the tourism industry.     

Community based participatory research for public relations: Realizing potential for researcher-participant relationships

Relationship management theory and organizational-public relationships (OPR) continue to guide much of the research in public relations (PR) and espouse values of building collaborative and dialogic interactions for mutual benefit. Yet, OPR historically prioritized the use of relationships to reach organizational goals instead of public or community needs. Furthermore, the relationship paradigm has overlooked the significance of relationships between researchers and participants. This essay urges PR to prioritize researcher-participant relationships when engaging in research that concerns a community by using community-based participatory research (CBPR), an approach that values the contributions of community partners. We consider the foundations and critiques of relationships in PR and explain how CBPR can transcend some of these limitations by facilitating mutual benefit in methodological decisions. We then outline the benefits and challenges of using CBPR based on a review of studies across disciplines and the authors’ reflections on employing CBPR in their research. This work builds on the PR scholarship of relationships to offer concrete ways that researchers can utilize CBPR to address community needs and prioritize participants in the research process.