Understanding Of Public Relations Research Articles

Shaping the Future of PR Education: Creating a Digital Public Relations Textbook for Course

Teaching Public Relations courses is essential for the Office Administration study program at the Faculty of Economics, Medan State University (FE UNIMED). Current learning materials are outdated and lack alignment with the industrial revolution 4.0, potentially resulting in suboptimal knowledge for future organizational leaders. Thus, updating teaching materials is crucial to ensure students receive contemporary and sharp knowledge in the digital context. This study aims to compile and develop textbooks for Public Relations courses within a digital context, using the ADDIE development model. The ADDIE model includes five stages: Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation, and Evaluation. This Research and Development (RnD) approach ensures a comprehensive development process, enhancing the relevance and effectiveness of the course material. In the Analysis stage, current course materials and student needs were assessed to identify gaps. The Design phase involved structuring the content to incorporate digital public relations concepts. During Development, the textbook was created, integrating modern communication strategies and digital tools. The Implementation stage involved testing the textbook in classroom settings. Evaluation included assessing the textbook's Validity, Effectiveness, and Practicality. The newly developed textbooks provided a contemporary framework for understanding public relations in the digital era. Validation results showed high relevance and accuracy, while effectiveness tests indicated improved student engagement and comprehension. Practicality assessments confirmed ease of use for both students and lecturers. These outcomes highlight the importance of regularly updating educational materials to align with technological advancements and industry needs. Updating Public Relations teaching materials to reflect digital advancements is vital for preparing students as future organizational leaders. The ADDIE model proved effective in developing relevant and practical textbooks. Future research should focus on long-term impacts of these updated materials on student performance and career readiness.

Features of understanding public relations in Ukraine and European countries

The purpose of the research is defining the concept of social relations from the point of view of theoretical, administrative, civil-legal aspects of legal regulation, considering scientists. Main content. The content of the concepts of “public relations” and “social relations” as political and legal entities with different paradigmatic definitiveness is substantiated. Methodology: The methodological basis of the research consists of comparative-legal and system analysis, formal-legal method, interpretation method, hermeneutic and methods of analysis and synthesis. Conclusions. It has been established that the term “public relations” characterizes relations between people, which provide for the unconditional priority of the economy over other spheres of society (political, ideological, cultural), where there is no place for a person with his values, rights and freedoms. At least, the latter do not acquire proper regulatory support.

Perception of Public Relations Practice Among Selected Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) In Ghana

The study's goal was to find out what some of Ghana's top executives thought about public relations. The goals were to determine the Chief Executive Officers' (CEOs') understanding of public relations, as well as their perceptions of public relations' role in strategic management and the restrictions of public relations' role in corporate strategy. Through an in-depth interview with five (5) CEOs of chosen agencies within Ghana's Ministry of Transport, the study gathered data using a qualitative research technique. This data was then evaluated using theme analysis, which demonstrated that the public impression of public relations practice in Ghana is positive, implying that the technique is effective. Public relations were deemed to be an important role in strategic management, particularly if it was part of top management. It also limited its contribution to business strategy owing to a variety of problems experienced in the chosen firms, including financial limits, a lack of deep understanding of CEOs in public relations, and others. According to the conclusions of the research, Ghanaian CEOs and business leaders should identify and promote public relations practice. The Institute of Public Relations Ghana should speed up its attempts to enact a statute making public relations a regulated profession.

When public relations can heal: An embodied theory of silence for public communication

This article extends the conceptualization of silence in public relations beyond strategic communication. It develops a new theoretical framework to explain the mechanisms through which suffering and pain felt inside the body translate into silence, exclusion from public debate, and communication gaps in health communication. This happens through intermediate steps that involve, among others, the role of the media in the narrative construction of the body and the self. This framework advances an understanding of public relations oriented towards civil society and is based on the empirical case study of involuntary childlessness (i.e. not having children not by choice): even in the age of ubiquitous communication, despite affecting about 25% of the adult population of virtually all developed countries, this issue is shrouded in taboo and seldom heard of. The analysis makes the case for a more material, indeed embodied, approach to conceptualizing silence in public relations.

Public Relations in Organizations in Student View: Accumulator of Management Tools or Formation of Partnership and Friendly Relations

The relevance of this article is the need to study the students' understanding of public relations as a means of management. The experience of countries with a developed social sphere shows that the use of public relations in the management of social work institutions can improve the social status of social services, form a positive public opinion and, as a result, ensure the social effectiveness of services provided. The purpose of the research is to analyze students' perceptions of the essence of public relations as a means of managing social services in the external environment. Research methods: as a research method, we used a questionnaire survey, which allows us to qualitatively investigate public relations in the organization through the eyes of students. Results of the research: the article considers the students' views on the means of managing social services in the external environment, and reveals the role of public relations in the management of social services in the external environment in the representation of students. The novelty and originality of the research consists in the analysis of public relations as a means of management in the external environment in relation to the activities of social protection institutions in the representation of students. It is revealed that, in the view of students, public relations accumulate management tools and include: the use of various forms of communication aimed at identifying common views or interests of different groups; they contribute to the formation of partnership and friendly relations between the social service, clients and the General public; ensure the achievement of mutual understanding based on truth and full public awareness and, ultimately, form a positive public opinion and a favorable image for the social service. The essential aspects, specific features, structural and functional features and opportunities of public relations as a means of managing social services in the external environment are highlighted in the students' view. It is determined that in the students' views, the management of the social service does not have a well-thought-out concept of organizing public relations, which leads to ineffective management of the social service in the external environment and is used in social work spontaneously. Practical significance: the data obtained in this work can be used in social psychology, Economics, advertising psychology, management psychology, as well as for further theoretical development of this issue.

Problematising history in the public relations curriculum

PurposeThe aim of this paper is to begin a conversation about historicising the public relations (PR) curriculum in universities.Design/methodology/approachThe paper discusses PR history and historiography to identify the underlying ideological and methodological influences. It considers scholarship on PR education, and the inclusion or, more often, the exclusion of history except where it serves to reinforce a narrative of steady, and apparently unproblematic, professional development. The paper reviews the presentation of history in textbooks and discusses the authors' experiences of teaching PR history. The paper concludes with a discussion of how the inclusion of history in the PR curriculum offers an important critical intervention in PR education.FindingsThe PR curriculum tends to meet industry expectations around practice and skills in order to develop students as future practitioners. But this paper argues that a more historical and historiographical understanding of PR can develop in students important skills in research, analysis and interpretation. It can also introduce students to working with ambiguity and alternate perspectives. Foregrounding new histories and challenging existing histories introduce students to richer and more complex understandings of PR. It also introduces students to epistemology and ethics, and therefore offers a way to introduce critical thinking into the curriculum.Originality/valueA more historical understanding of PR develops student skills in research, analysis and interpretation as well as critical thinking.

Book Review: Understanding Public Relations: Theory, Culture and Society, by Lee Edwards

Book Review: <i>Understanding Public Relations: Theory, Culture and Society</i>, by Lee Edwards

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

ABSTRACTThis 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.

Humas dalam Perspektif Manajemen Pendidikan Islam

Public Relations or in the Indonesian language known as public relations and abbreviated as PR has an important role in improving quality that leads to the progress of an institution as well as educational institutions. An understanding of public relations is often associated with Western theories regardless of the values ​​contained in them. whereas in Islam all theories that provide an understanding of public relations are clear, even the Qur'an comprehensively has provided universal and dynamic guidelines. In addition, Hadith as the second source of law after the Qur'an also shows exemplary values ​​that are the guideline in conducting public relations. The principles, rules, and ethics contained in both of them about public relations will provide more value so that understanding and developing Western theories that are rooted can be replaced. Especially in an Islamic educational institution, at least in implementing the concept of relations, the community adheres to the principles that exist in the Qur'an and the hadith of Prophet Muhammad SAW so that what can become a common goal is achieved.

Strategic Public Relations in Post-Gaddaffi Libya for Non-Profit Organizations: A Focus on the Rebuilding Efforts of Bokra and Attawasul

This article focuses on understanding the strategic role Public Relations (PR) plays in positioning NGOs and helping them achieve their set out objectives in Libya- Post-Civil war era. The researchers analyzed two Non-Profit Organizations (NGOs) that operate in Libya - Bokra and Attawasul. NGOs like any other organization have publics they need to communicate and appeal to and as such it goes without saying that they channel their communication messages in such a way that their message is clear and resonates soundly with their intended audiences. This is even more pertinent in a country like Libya. Public Relations ensures that organizations are favorably looked upon by their publics by communicating in the right way. This study was premised on the Social Marketing Theory and dealt with understanding Public Relations and how it is used by NGOs in Libya. Based on the findings of this study, it was determined that Public Relations especially through social media, indeed plays a significant role in the process of getting donors and volunteers for NGOs in Libya. To arrive at this conclusion, questionnaires were distributed to staff and volunteers of the organizations under study and interviews were also conducted with top management staff of both organizations.

Testing an environmental framework for understanding public relations practitioners’ orientation toward relationship management

ABSTRACTThis 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.

Corporate voice and ideology: An alternate approach to understanding public relations history

Scholars in the U.S. generally agree that the origins of corporate public relations correspond to the rise of the U.S. Industrial Revolution during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This essay explores the under-theorized relationship between ideology and public relations by examining the role of the corporate voice in public relations history. Evidence suggests that public relations counsel, serving as the corporate voice, created messages that produced and reproduced certain ideological meanings about the corporation. These ideological meanings provided important guidance on how members of the public should think about, relate to, and experience the corporation as a necessary, natural and benevolent organization in society. By incorporating ideological theory as an analytical tool to study public relations history, this article explores an important, but not often studied aspect of public relations history – the development and use of the corporate voice as a site of ideological production.

Toward a Theory of Public Relations Practitioners’ Own Conflict: Work Versus Life

This study took a first step to build a theory understanding public relations practitioners’ work–life balance. Through a national sample of Public Relations Society of America members, we examined what factors influence practitioners’ perceptions of work–life conflict and what kind of impact such perceived work–life conflict may have on their income and career path. Analysis of online survey data of 820 practitioners found that a more family–supportive organizational work environment overall would minimize practitioners’ reported work–life conflict. Gender did matter, especially in explaining strain-based conflict perceived by practitioners. Last, women whose career was interrupted earned significantly more than those whose career was not.

Understanding Public Relations in China

To contribute to critical public relations (PR) and communication research, the authors employ an institutional perspective in examining how actors conceptualize PR and make sense of PR practice in relation to their shared and competing logics. Specifically, they highlight the primacy of logics and identities in the social construction of PR by exploring how a wide range of actors interpret and understand PR in Chinese cultural contexts. In conducting 40 semistructured interviews with PR agency consultants, in-house PR practitioners, media journalists, and industry association officers, the authors have found multiple and competing logics within the field that, in turn, confer reconciled identities on Chinese PR. The Chinese cultural contexts serve as a repertoire for stakeholders to draw institutional logics and legitimize their interpretations of PR practice in China.

Understanding Public Relations Organizational Practices in China through an Institutional Lens

To respond to a recent call for a sociological turn to the promotion of institutional thought in communication research, we propose a novel theoretical framework based on institutional work for stu...

A public relations identity for the 2010s

New voices are being heard and new questions are being asked within the field of public relations. However, in its present multifaceted state, public relations research is still struggling with recurring questions regarding academic and practical contributions. This position article presents some common starting points for a public relations identity for the 2010s aiming to preserve both consistency and multiplicity. We argue that public relations should be studied as a social activity in its own right and that it must be understood in relation to its societal context. Furthermore, we point to some concepts (trust, legitimacy, understanding and reflection) that are crucial to understanding public relations practice. We also argue that issues of power, behavior, and language have to be dealt with if public relations is to be taken seriously as an academic field. Building on these ideas we make some suggestions for empirical research. Finally, we propose, on a philosophical level, to develop a critical realist framework in order to study public relations scientifically.

Critical Theoretical Considerations of Public Relations Messaging Around the Globe: Tools for Creating and Evaluating Campaign Messages

This study employs several critical theories in order to demonstrate their explanatory power in understanding public relations communication, globalization within campaign communication, and, in particular, some sample campaign messages drawn from public relations research and practice. In particular, critical theories of cultural studies, semiotics, and postmodernism inform the design and understanding of public relations messages through the tools of analysis they offer and through the rich vocabulary they provide. This study argues that public relations is the logical business communication discipline to develop theory and research into campaign message design and globalization issues utilizing the critical paradigm.

Is Public Relations a Real Job? How Female Practitioners Construct the Profession

This study examined how female practitioners' discourses shape perceptions of public relations as an emerging field in Russia. Interviews with 25 practitioners from Moscow public relations agencies showed that a prism of a real job and a woman's job can help explain how socio-economic, professional, and gender-defined contexts influence practitioners' perceptions of public relations and provided evidence for understanding public relations as a socially constructed gendered profession. The study found that Russian women construct their professional identities in gendered ways that may limit their career opportunities.

Removing the Spin: Toward a New Theory of Public Relations History

PART I: OVERVIEW Introduction In the absence of a general theory that describes the rise and growth of public relations, scholars have tended to organize public relations and its antecedents into time periods that present a progressive evolution from unsophisticated and unethical early roots to planned, strategic, and ethical campaigns of the current day. We argue that such attempts at periodization have obscured our understanding of public relations and its history. Indeed, public relations historians have long called for such a departure, noting the constraints it has imposed on understanding the development of public relations in the United States and around the world (e.g., Brown, 2003; Gower, 2007, 2008 Hoy, Raaz, & Wehmeier, 2007 L'Etang, 2004, 2008; Lamme, 2003 McBride, 1989; Miller, 2000 Pearson, 1990; Piasecki, 2000 Toledano, 2005). We therefore analyzed scholarship about public relations (whether it is called publicity, press agentry, propaganda, or public relations) prior to 1900 to understand the growth of the in a variety of contexts and time periods. This is not an attempt to catalog additional antecedents to 20th century practices. Instead, this study seeks to break away from the misleading dependence on linear interpretations of the field's past and construct a broad, long-term view of the development and institutionalization of persuasive organizational communication strategies and techniques. In the process, we seek to correct misunderstandings about public relations history which have (mis)informed public relations theory for more than 20 years and to describe and understand the historical relationship between public relations, the mass media, and the historical contexts in which public relations emerged. By doing so, we seek to depart from what L'Etang (2008, p. 321) called the patterning, or colligation, of history, which can artificially inflate or diminish the historical role of people and events, and reappraise the criteria used to establish the meaning of value in the field (Creedon, 1989, p. 29). The effect of these efforts, then, will be to remove the spin - the conscious positioning of public relations history that has heretofore dominated scholarly understanding of the field's development. SIGNIFICANCE TO MASS COMMUNICATION Public relations history has been of great interest to disciplines lying outside the mass communication field, such as social history (Ewen, 1996; Pimlott, 1951), business history (Gras, 1945; Marchand, 1998, Raucher, 1968, Tedlow, 1979), political science (Maltese, 1992), cultural history (Leach, 1993), English (Davis, 2007), and history (Billington, 1978; Goldman, 1948, 1978; Nevins, 1963). Mass communication scholars also have contributed studies of significance to American public relations history, largely concerning the press and government (e.g., Cone, 2007; Lumsden, 2000; Oukrop, 1976; Streitmatter, 1990), religion (e.g., Ferre, 1993; Nord, 1984), and the advocacy press (e.g., Burt, 1998, 1999; Steiner, 1983; Folkerts, 1985). The latter, in particular, has been found to serve as a tool for community-building (Steiner, 1983; Folkerts, 1985), for enhancing a movement's legitimacy (Folkerts, 1985), for articulating a movement's message, for propagating a movement's mission, for recruiting, mobilizing, and sustaining support and membership (Burt, 2000, p. 73), and for serving as community bulletin boards (Burt, 1999, p. 39). Finally, three authors grounded in journalism have, to date, written the most extensively on three 20th century public relations pioneers: Hiebert (1966) on Ivy Lee, Tye (1998) on Edward L. Bernays, and Henry (1997, 1998, 1999) on Doris Fleischman. Within the public relations field, however, scholars have pursued new theoretical ground by looking outside the to apply multi-tiered analyses and frameworks (e.g., Brown, 2006; L'Etang, 2004; Miller, 2000; and Pearson, 1990). Others have considered public relations history in the context of ethics (McBride, 1989) and ethical propaganda (St. …

Behavioral dimensions of public relations leadership in organizations

PurposeThe evolution of public relations into a management function has brought the importance of leadership to the forefront of professional discussion. This study aims to identify and develop a measure of behavioral dimensions critical to effective public relations for organization‐wide public relations leadership.Design/methodology/approachUsing a national survey of Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) members (n=159), a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was conducted on the seven theoretically‐driven leadership behaviors: upward influence, coordinating, internal monitoring, networking, representing, providing vision, and acting as a change agent.FindingsThe results suggest that the measurement model had a good internal and global fit. CFA results supported the seven‐factor model over the one‐factor model, suggesting that public relations leadership is multi‐dimensional. Among the behaviors, “providing vision” and “acting as a change agent” were those most strongly associated with the value of public relations in an organization.Originality/valueThe study shows that understanding public relations leadership from an organization‐wide perspective opens up a whole new avenue for future research to strengthen public relations as a management function. The present study also provides public relations managers with valuable insight concerning the leadership behaviors they can exercise to contribute to the value of public relations in their organizations.