Relations Research Research Articles

Social construction of public relations knowledge by academic institutions worldwide: A bibliometric network analysis

This VOSviewer-enabled bibliometric study examines scientific knowledge construction in public relations research since 1955. A co-citation analysis indicates that while sustaining its cross-disciplinary nature, public relations increasingly relies on scholarship generated within its own discipline, with Public Relations Review, Journal of Public Relations Research and Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly most cited academic sources. A citation analysis of author affiliations revealed a number of findings, including universities with the highest count of publications, university pairs that tend to cite each other, as well as regional university groups and large clusters within a broader, citation-based network. Among the 108 most productive academic institutions from four continents included into the study, U.S.-based universities produced the highest number of publications in nine peer-reviewed journals. Cross-referencing citation relationships among university clusters in different world regions illustrates an ongoing pattern of globalized construction of public relations knowledge.

Russian-Venezuelan relations during the COVID-19 pandemic. The perspective of Russia's superpower interests

Background: The fight against the COVID-19 pandemic has been instrumentalised on several occasions by powers that have seen a new sphere for realising their interests. One such power is the Russian Federation. The article aims to explain the importance of close relations with Venezuela for Russia's strategic objectives in expanding its political power in the Latin American region in the era of the COVID-19 pandemic. To achieve the research objective, the authors focused on answering the following research questions: How has the political crisis in Venezuela affected the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic? Why and how does Russia consistently support the regime of Nicolás Maduro in times of a pandemic crisis? The article's research hypothesis is that Russia used the new conditions of superpower policy, the COVID-19 pandemic, to strengthen its influence on Venezuela's domestic politics to secure the realisation of its superpower interests. Methods: The authors used content analysis of media broadcasts, statements by politicians, and literature on the subject (in English, Russian and Spanish). In addition, the re-analysis of quantitative data made it possible, for example, to characterise the economic level of the relations. The main part of the research was completed in November 2021. The article uses methods characteristic of international relations research, including the method of decision analysis. Results: The results of the research confirm that Moscow’s activity in Latin America should be interpreted as one of the manifestations of the reactivity of Russian geostrategy, i.e. a response to U.S. actions in the post-Soviet area. Conclusions: In this context, Caracas has a special position in Russia’s policy as a key regional partner in energy cooperation and a market for the sale of military technologies. The research was conducted on 13 March 2020 and ended before 24 February 2022.

Behavior Analysts' Relationship to Relating Relations: A Survey on Perceptions, Acceptability, Knowledge, and Capacity for Derived Stimulus Relations Research and Practice.

The study and application of procedures that result in stimulus relations via relational frame theory (RFT) and stimulus equivalence (applied as equivalence-based instruction; EBI), have made tremendous strides in contemporary behavior analysis. However, applications at scale lag basic and translational research. We turn our attention inward to investigate potential causes. We replicated and extended Enoch and Nicholson (Behavior Analysis in Practice, 13(3), 609-617, 2020) by conducting a survey of behavior analysts (n = 129) to determine their perceptions, experiences, and barriers in carrying out research and practice based on RFT and EBI. Participants indicated an interest in RFT and EBI, and mostly perceive both within the scope of behavior analysis. A majority of behavior analysts reported formal education in EBI (78.3%), in contrast to a minority in RFT (15.5%). Adoption of procedures derived from RFT and EBI may be in proportion to formal education. Compounded with a lack of accuracy on basic knowledge questions, there is a potential gap in capacity in the field in addressing behavior related to complex verbal behavior.

Understanding conspiratorial thinking (CT) within public relations research: Dynamics of organization-public relationship quality, CT, and negative megaphoning

Research on conspiracy theories in the fields of social and political psychology has identified dispositional and situational factors that lead to belief in conspiracy theories. However, there is still a lack of research on how and why individuals engage in conspiratorial thinking (CT) within the area of public relations. This study views CT as individuals’ propensity to consider malicious events and circumstances as secret plots initiated by a powerful organization for its self-serving purposes and applies CT to a government-public relationship context. Using a survey dataset collected from a nationally representative sample of Australia citizens (n = 542), this study examines CT about the Australian government using five survey items that measure CT. CT was found to be significant in fully mediating the relationship between organization-public relationship quality and negative megaphoning.

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.

Finding the path beyond reputation repair: A structural topic modeling analysis of the crisis communication paradigm in public relations

This research utilizes computational methods to examine crisis communication scholarship from 2010 to 2020 in two studies with a census of all articles in Public Relations Review and the Journal of Public Relations Research (n = 1293 articles, 7400,685 words). Results indicate crisis scholarship has expanded beyond its prior focus on reputation repair. Situational crisis communication theory and image repair are compared in volume of scholarship and methodological affinity. Social media, SCCT, and media relations are identified as central topics within crisis communication scholarship.

Examining Corporate Crisis Public Relations Practices in Sport Star Crisis Events from the Perspective of Positive Public Relations

Positive psychology is an emerging current of thought in contemporary psychology. The extension of related viewpoints and concepts from positive psychology into public relations research can facilitate a "qualitative" leap for corporations in crisis handling, communication, image reshaping, and trust rebuilding in the field of crisis public relations. This paper adopts a positive public relations perspective to analyze the "Liu Xiang incidents in 2008 and 2012" as case studies, exploring corporate crisis public relations practices in sports star crisis events. This research bears significant practical implications for strengthening corporate public relations crisis management and future development.

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.

Sociology, labour and transition in post-Soviet Russia: A view from within

For almost 20 years, since the early 1990s, Professor Simon Clarke led multiple international research projects in Russia, China and Vietnam studying labour relations, enterprise restructuring and household economics under post-socialist transition. Breaking out of post-socialist scholarship’s narrow confines, both social and ideological, he led an exploration of the void opened by former Soviet Union disintegration reconnecting with those who brought the brunt of it. Equally unique among western scholars was his promotion of a vast network of former Soviet Union researchers and activists, later formalised in the Institute for Comparative Research in Labour Relations. Here, for the first time, some of its leading scholars reflect on his legacy, methods and ever-lasting contribution to the advancement of sociology and social activism in Russia. Their accounts convey the radically alternative character of the overall project, returning both achievements and limitations. In substantive terms, the emerging picture confirms the indeterminacy and complexity of Clarke’s original findings: no linear development from ‘the subsumption of labour under capital’ to ‘familiar patterns of class conflict’ has occurred. Instead, growing labour protests follow labour degradation and restructuring, a strong state becoming the arbiter in the stand-off between neoliberalism and workers’ resistance.

An inspired collaboration with Russian sociologists: An interview with Simon Clarke

In 1990, Simon Clarke inaugurated two decades of research of the former Soviet Union through an international collaboration with Russian sociologists that examined a society in the throes of transformation. Along with his colleague Peter Fairbrother, Simon developed a network of Russian researchers in the Institute of Comparative Labour Relations Research. Together they produced a corpus of work that meticulously analysed the impact of economic reform on workplaces and households and the response of workers and their organisations. This piece is an extended version of a published interview with Simon conducted by two of his former students, Sarah Ashwin and Valery Yakubovich.

Power and bias in industrial relations research

AbstractWe survey 20,439 estimates from 64 distinct research areas to assess power, bias and statistical significance in industrial relations research. The average estimate published in industrial relations research lacks adequate power; average power is 33 per cent, and median power is only 14 per cent, much lower than the conventional 80 per cent standard. Low power means that industrial relations researchers will find it more difficult to detect important associations pertaining to workplace relations. Low power also leads to exaggerated research findings. We find substantial publication bias in industrial relations research, though nearly half of the research areas have little or no bias.

Shaping media relations scholarship: A systematic review

The present meta-analysis study systematically reviews articles on media relations published from 1945 to 2021. It aims to explore media relations research in terms of progression, journals, theories, methods and data analytical tools, media genres and platforms, geospatial distribution of discussed issues and first author affiliations, organization types, most frequently used words, and major themes covered through a quantitative content analysis and a qualitative text mining approach. After applying the inclusion and exclusion criteria, 276 articles from 2006 to 2017 were collected as the final sample. Public Relations Review has published the most articles, while the most commonly used theories were agenda setting /building theory, rhetorical theory, and framing theory. Media relations articles utilize qualitative methodologies more than quantitative ones, while the commonly used data analytical tools were content analysis, interview, survey, and case study. Our analysis of the discussed regions and geospatial distribution of first-author show that the North American, European, and Asian continents and the US, the UK, China, and Australia have relatively more publications. The majority of media relations articles discussed governmental organizations. Five themes dominated media relations articles: public relations strategy, media relations practice, mass media and journalism, state–media relations, and organizational media relations.

Researcher Responsibility to Diversity and Inclusion in Public Relations and Social Scientific Research: A Call for More Inclusive Research and Researcher Participation

ABSTRACT Public relations researchers make inferential claims about populations based on analysis and evaluation of data they have collected from smaller samples of people. A question that has been raised in the social sciences is how well the populations sampled in conducted studies represent or reflect broader populations. We also ponder, to what extent DEI-related topics are explored in public relations scholarship. We conducted a quantitative content analysis of 1,277 articles published in leading, peer-reviewed journals in public relations or adjacent journals in mass communication, strategic communication, and communication studies known to publish public relations research. We found that scholars are not providing complete demographic data when conducting research involving human participants; samples include significantly more women than are represented in the most current U.S. Census; samples overly rely on White participants; samples include significantly fewer persons of Latin origin than reflected in the most current U.S. census; and DEI-related publications are still proportionally few but are increasing. Based on these findings, we introduce the Researcher Responsibility to Diversity and Inclusion, which provides six guiding principles for journal editors and researchers to advance disciplinary theorizing and research and to make inclusivity a more central aspect of disciplinary theory and research.

Peran Public Relation dalam Meningkatkan Citra Universitas Medan Area

This research is to examine how the role of public relations in improving the image of the University of Medan Area. In this study, the authors used field research (field research) which is qualitative in nature. This study uses the theory of the four steps of public relations (Research, Planning, Implementation, Evaluation) perspective. This research uses the case study method involving informants from Higher Education Lecturers at UMA and observing the process and results of publications. The results of this study indicate that the strategy carried out by Public Relations in improving the image of the campus is by means of; Improving the quality of learning (lectures and practicum) and the quality of graduation and Improving the quality of the academic atmosphere.
 Keywords: Role, Public Relations, Citra, University of Medan Area.

Trade union strategies to tackle labour market insecurity: Geography and the role of Sheffield TUC

AbstractThis paper analyses the role of trades councils and trade unions in organising within local and regional contexts around the challenges facing and potential union strategies for addressing the needs of insecure and precarious workers. We deploy a case study on the Sheffield Trade Union Council and the Sheffield Needs A Pay Rise campaign as a way of exploring innovations and challenges for the trade union movement for organising the unorganised. We explore the potentials as well as limitations of local organising and campaigning around insecurity and marginalisation by trade unions to demonstrate theoretically and empirically within industrial relations research the role of strategic spaces for action by workers and trade unions and the set of institutional, economic, social and cultural resources that workers can draw on in developing their respective strategies.

Addressing participation, belonging, and temporality in public formation and maintenance: Advancing a rhetorical approach to publics

This paper expands the conceptualization of publics as rhetorical constructs in recognition of non-functional perspectives to public relations scholarship. After reviewing the functional/issue-based approaches and the non-functional/discursive-based approaches to theorizing publics within public relations research, we note the significance of the stranger relationality and temporality that is invoked when considering the circulation of discourse and texts as the basis for public existence. We suggest four premises to a rhetorical understanding of publics, expanding upon the public relations literature that has previously suggested a discursive nature of publics, but has not articulated the consequential details of public formation, maintenance, and existence. These premises decenter the organization by highlighting the circulation of and attention to texts, emphasize public existence as allowing a fluidity of participation, suggest further understanding belonging rather than behavior, and underscore questions of temporality and collective memory. We then suggest some implications for public relations research, including how a rhetorical understanding connects to the non-functional approaches of the field, as well as how it may extend studies of relationships and counterpublics.

Using the methodological rules of the questionnaire in public relations researches

The study aims to diagnose the reality of using the questionnaire in public relations research, and to clarify the mistakes that researchers commit when using questionnaire, as the wrong usage leads to wrong conclusions that cannot be generalized or relied upon. The researcher used the content analysis and statistical method, where a stratified sample of master's and doctoral theses were selected at Omdurman Islamic university, department of public relations and advertising.
 Based on the forgoing, the problem of the study is represented in (what is the real extent of the researcher's knowledge regarding the scientific base which the questionnaire built upon?).The findings of the study have proven that public relations researchers selected a sample to measure the validity of the tool depended on the validity of the arbitrators , they did not care enough about the validity of the concept , the validity of the factor , the validity of the set criterion and the correlative and productive validity. They also depended on the increasing number of options to measure the reliability of the questionnaire. Cornbrash's Alpha was adopted to measure the general validity, in measuring the validity of the content they depended on the arbitrator's agreement on the set paragraphs. The researchers did not care about the order of the questionnaire design steps, while they paid attention to the pre-test of the questionnaire.

Exploring Public Relations Research Topics and Inter-Cluster Dynamics Through Computational Modeling (2010-2020): A Study Based on Two SSCI Journals

ABSTRACT This project addresses the evolution of public relations research over the past decade by examining its two SSCI-indexed journals with methods that can reveal the influence of multiple categories of research clusters. Modeling the full text of all 1,293 published articles in Public Relations Review (PRR) and the Journal of Public Relations Research (JPRR) from 2010 to 2020 (7,400,685 words), we identified nine non-discrete clusters in public relations research. Using three computational methods – structural topic modeling, inter-cluster network analysis, and network simulation – we found that (1) the strategic management cluster emerged as the most central for the past decade, followed by public relations professionalism, digital media, crisis communication, internal communication, global public relations, rhetoric and philosophy, media relations, and critical studies, ranked by their proportions in the scholarship; (2) JPRR had greater emphasis on the strategic management cluster relative to PRR, which offered a more diverse representation; (3) little longitudinal change occurred throughout the decade, although internal communication gained traction and public relations professionalism and media relations lost ground as the decade progressed; and 4) the last ten years of public relations research did not see intersection among theoretical traditions from different clusters as much as expected, leaving opportunity for more inter-cluster knowledge production. Theoretical and practical implications for the public relations research community are discussed.

Complexities of the Ethical Dilemmas in Qualitative International Relations Research: Research Subjects, Ethical Codes, and Constructing Qualitative Rigor

Existing scholarship has not thoroughly explored topics of ethical dilemmas faced by qualitative international relations researchers. Due to the distinctiveness of the study and the need to address ethical concerns with regard to international relations research, this article aims to elucidate the ethical dilemmas in three aspects: ethical dilemmas of research subjects (gatekeepers and vulnerable groups), ethical codes and scientific conduct, and constructing qualitative rigor in international relations. It further attempts to connect to existing opinions of social research studies critical toward the positivist methodological stances of contemporary ethical reviews and echoes the need to reflect on ethical dilemmas on a case-by-case basis.

Bidirectional Associations Between Friend Overprotection and Psychosocial Adjustment During Adolescence

As friends increase in closeness and influence during adolescence, some friends may become overprotective, or excessively and intrusively protective. Engaging in overprotective behavior, and being the recipient of such behavior, may have positive and negative adjustment trade-offs. The current study examines, for the first time, bidirectional associations between friend overprotection and several adjustment trade-offs, including internalizing problems (i.e., depressive and anxiety symptoms), peer difficulties (i.e., rejection and physical and relational victimization), and positive friendship quality (i.e., closeness, help, and security) during early adolescence. Participants were 269 young adolescents (140 boys; Mage = 11.46, SD = 0.41) who completed self-report and peer nomination measures in their schools at two time points 4 months apart (Fall and Spring of the school year). Structural equation models revealed that being overprotected by a friend predicted decreases in friendship quality and was predicted by peer difficulties and internalizing problems (negatively). Being overprotective of friends predicted increases in internalizing symptoms and was predicted by peer difficulties. Findings are novel as they suggest that friend overprotection may be risky (and not beneficial) for both the overprotector and the overprotectee, setting the stage for future inquiry in this new area of peer relations research.