Public Relations: State of the Field

Abstract

Public relations is both a professional practice and a subfield of communication with its own research and theory base. Public relations is relatively young as an academic field, however, having developed identifiable theory in only about the last 25 years. The field of public relations is developing into a theoretically based area of applied communication that has the potential to inform several areas of communication/mass communication and to offer theoretic and conceptual tools useful in health, risk, and political communication, among others. Because many readers are unfamiliar with public relations theory and research, this article first reviews and summarizes theory-related scholarship in public relations, then categorizes and explains the theoretic trends in the field. The article concludes by demonstrating how one of public relations' theoretic/conceptual tools, issues management, can apply across all areas of applied communication.

Çağımızın Hikâye Anlatıcılığı Olarak Halkla İlişkiler: Vehbi Koç Biyografileri Üzerine Bir İnceleme

“…Botan ve Taylor da (2004) halkla ilişkilerdeki bu değişimi, perspektif değişimi olarak açıklamaktadır. Yazarlara göre (Botan ve Taylor, 2004) söz konusu değişim, halkla ilişkilerdeki egemen işlevsel yaklaşımların (iletişimin kurumun amaçlarına ulaşmasında araç olarak görüldüğü 1 Halkla ilişkilerin egemen paradigması olarak tanımlanan "Mükemmellik Teorisi" hala alanda geçerliğini korusa da halkla ilişkilerde eleştirel yaklaşımların bulunmadığını söylemek yanlış olacaktır. Son yıllardaki halkla ilişkiler literatüründe egemen paradigma dışında farklı yaklaşımlar da geliştirilmeye başlanmıştır.…”

Audience Enabling as Corporate Responsibility for Media Organizations

“…However, the perspective in the first version of the idea in is close to what Botan and Taylor (2004) call functional: that by building a corporate citizenship niche organizations can more accurately (or strategically) describe what they are doing in terms of responsibility, and by this, they may be able to adjust stakeholder expectations for their own advantage. Though my understanding of expectation management becomes less functional as it progresses, study 1 was important for starting this process, as it brought forth the notion that expectations are part of responsibility narration, especially when companies position themselves as societal actors.…”

“…In particular, the first two articles (see chapter 1.2) lean more toward a managerial or functional perspective (cf. Botan & Taylor, 2004;Ihlen & van Ruler, 2009), whereas the last three articles progress toward a cocreational perspective. The difference between a functional and a cocreational perspective is in what is valued over the other, the organization and its mission (functional), or the relationships and the actors within it (cocreational) (Botan & Taylor, 2004).…”

“…When outlining the cocreational perspective, Botan and Taylor (2004) use the term publics, whereas I refer to both publics and stakeholders in the original articles to discuss the groups or communities that are connected to an organization directly or indirectly 2 . For clarity, I use the term stakeholder in this thesis shell, as it refers to any group that is tied to an organization via a direct or indirect linkthat is, a group that can affect or is affected by the organization (cf.…”

“…As in any other field of research, there are different research orientations within public relations (Botan & Taylor, 2004;Ihlen & van Ruler, 2009). The main concern of this thesis is the relationships that organizations have with their stakeholders and how these relationships resonate more widely with how organizations are positioned in society (cf.…”