Public Relations

Abstract

Public relations – both as a scholarly domain and as professional practice – is involved with ways to understand, inform, and intervene to adjust relationships between ideas, individuals, groups, and societies. As an interdisciplinary field, it seeks to influence the building, maintenance, and restoration of reputation through such methods as public affairs and issue management, risk and crisis communication, community building and corporate social responsibility, and rhetorical advocacy, thereby attempting to contribute to organizations and society at large. Looking to the future, public relations scholarship is evolving from its relatively restricted geographical beginnings in a few Western regions to a more robust and diverse global effort.