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8 April 2020
Latest article on Women in PR in Journal of Communication Management

We’re happy to share with our community the latest outcome of the project Women in PR led by Martina Topic: an article published in the Journal of Communication Management, ISSN: 1363-254X, on April 7, 2020.

Women in public relations (1982–2019)
Authors

Martina Topić, Maria Joäo Cunha, Amelia Reigstad, Alenka Jelen-Sanchez, Ángeles Moreno

Purpose

This paper aims to analyse the current literature on women in public relations to establish trends and areas of inquiry in the literature and identify research gaps for future research.

Design/methodology/approach

A total of 223 articles have been empirically analysed using thematic analysis to identify trends in the existing literature. The data has been coded and analysed per decade (1982–1989, 1990–1999, 2000–2009, 2010–2019). The articles have been identified by searching major journals in the field of public relations and communications, as well as snowballing from identified articles.

Findings

The results show that the majority of academic articles have been produced by using lived experiences of women working in the public relations industry and thus reflect the professional situation of female public relations employees. The results show that the position of women has reached a full circle in four decades of research and returned to the discriminatory work environment. Finally, the results show that a liberal feminist perspective has an advantage in the literature since the majority of works have been produced in the United States; however, there is an increase in authors calling for the use of socialist and radical feminism.

Originality/value

The paper provides a comprehensive literature review of works published in the field. The paper takes an empirical approach to the analysis rather than the descriptive one, which helped in identifying major trends in the research and identified a research gap for future inquiries.

Read the full paper
1 August 2018
"Cooling-down" the public relations system: McLuhan revisited in the age of hypermodernity

By Alexandra Crăciun
Assoc. Prof. Dapartment of Communication Sciences,
Faculty of Letters, University of Bucharest, Romania
Al Ries, one of the leading figures in advertising today, in his best-seller book: The Fall of Advertising and the Rise of PR, was pointing to one Aesop’s fables pleading for a new pattern of persuasion. In this Aesop’s fable, the North Wind and the Sun had a quarrel about which of them is stronger. They decide to compete by making the first traveller to strip off his coat. Aesop’s fable was ending in a – let’s call it – “strategic communication” conclusion: the harder the North Wind was blowing, the more tightly the traveller wrapped his coat around him. But, as the Sun started to shine, the traveller was taking off his coat.
Ries is proving thus, that the model of persuasion has changed since nowadays brands are no longer forcing their way into the consumer’s mind: ‘The harder the sell, the harder the wind blows, the harder the prospect resists the sales message.’ (Ries, 2002). Public relations according to Al Ries, are switching the roles. Its neither the wind, nor the sun but the traveller that acts, and generates change, because, in the core of the brand/corporate communication the consumer finds out, embedded, his own “agenda”. The roles of the wind or the sun become contextual – turning more and more into a sort of “media”, a vehicle for a conversation centred around the stakeholders’ issues.
In this context, McLuhan’s theory on media might become operational and descriptive for the new processes evident at the level of strategic communication.  In the Chapter II of the book Understanding Media, the Canadian Professor and philosopher proposes his famous distinction between the “cool” and the “hot” media.
“Hot” media – according to McLuhan – amplifies, enhances just one single sense, providing a low degree of consumer’s participation.  In comparison, a “low definition” medium requires a more important contribution, while the consumer needs to fill in its own details in order to “complete” the missing information.  “Any hot medium allows of less participation than a cool one, as a lecture makes for less participation than a seminar, and a book for less than dialogue.” underlines McLuhan (Understanding Media, 1964).
During the last half of a century, authors like Umberto Eco or Regis Debray (1) have raised critics, pointing out the fact hat McLuhan’s theory is lacking a clear distinction between the message, internal code and the channel/vehicle, but revisited from a recent, hypermodern perspective, McLuhan information theory might be reconsidered.
McLuhan’s distinction between the “high definition” and the “low definition” medium, about the cold and hot media is providing a framework for understanding an emergent paradigm of communication based on “engagement”.  A hot medium is one that extends one single sense in “high definition.” High definition is the state of being well filled with data. A photograph is, visually, “high definition.” A cartoon is “low definition,” simply because very little visual information is provided.”   –  writes McLuhan (1964).
Al Ries’ perspective  on the “fall of advertising and the rise of PR” – resumed by the Aesop fable – is putting forth a turn from a “high definition” corporate communication, filled with data, overwhelmed with company’s information, to a “low definition”, user-centred communication, providing more space for interaction, for participation and consumer engagement.
The “JFK Unsilenced” (2) campaign for The Times / News UK & Ireland using  “AI technology to recreate the speech that US president John F. Kennedy delivered in Dallas, Texas the day he was assassinated in 1963”,  or the “Palau pledge campaign”  – “requiring the visitors to Palau to sign a passport pledge to act in an ecologically responsible way on the island”,  or the “Trash Isles” announcing and providing citizenships for  “the world’s first country made from plastic pollution in the ocean so that other countries would be obliged to clean it up”  (to mention just few of  of them Grand Prix winners from Cannes Lions 2018) – are all of them “low definition” campaigns urging the consumer to participate, to interact, to fill in the own data in order to co-create the communication system.
Sebastian Charles in the  “Paradoxical individualism” introduction to the “Hypermodern times” of Gilles Lipovetsky was claiming: “hypermodernity is a liberal society characterized by movement, fluidity and flexibility, detached as never before  from the great structuring principles of modernity” (2005).
Its clear thus, that the new communication system, is lowering its definition, it is cooling down, becoming more fluid, and flexible by eliminating data, in order to provide more space for interaction.
Public relations as well as advertising, are gradually giving up the traditional strategies and tactics, becoming more and more a sort of vehicle, a platform, where the message is no longer belonging to the brand/corporation, but shared and developed together with the stakeholders.
Public relations system today might be reconsidered as a platform of engagement, a sort of hypermedia making used of other media within a holistic experience urging the consumer to fill in data, to participate, to provide together with the brand the corporate message.
As McLuhan was pointing out “our own time is crowded with examples of the principle that the hot form excludes, and the cool one includes” (1964). Cooling down the PR system means building up inclusive communication strategies, where the consumers are co-creating hyper-corporate messages in the realm of dialogue and multi-sensorial experience.
[1] “confusing technology itself with its use of the media makes of the media an abstract, undifferentiated force and produces its image in an imaginary “public” for mass consumption.” (Debray, Media Manifestos, 1996).
[2] The campaigns as well as the campaign descriptions are available at the following link: https://www.campaignlive.co.uk/article/view-grands-prix-winners-cannes-lions-2018/1485862.

11 July 2018
A World in Crisis: The Role of Public Relations

by Prof. Dr. Dejan Verčič
organizer of BledCom,
Chair of Department of Communication, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia
The world in which we live is a world in crisis. I don’t expect it to end, and there is no need for a collective suicide because there is no future. On the contrary, there are many futures in front of us. We, also we in public relations, are responsible for their selections and enactments, and here is what I believe are our key challenges and responsibilities.
We have contributed to some of the world’s worse problems. We have a role to play in finding solutions.
We in public relations have to take full responsibility for contributing to culturally induced doubt in scientific evidence against smoking (causing cancer), ignorance of climate change (causing drought, melting of polar ice caps, weird weather around the globe), panic about vaccination of children against communicable diseases (causing reappearance of what were eradicated viruses like measles); dehumanization and sanitization of warefare (every war starts and ends with communication and hybrid warefare is nothing but communicative warefare: we are at the forefront of every military conflict and we have to acknowledge that); normalization of rising social inequalities that are for the first time in the recent history making it probable for the majority of population that their children will be poorer than their parents were; thus contributing to migrations and the global refugee crisis that became a business in itself (caused by drought, violent conflicts, poverty, and enabled by smart phone technology); and a general oversight for revolutionary changes brought by digitalization and the emergence of artificial intelligence – it is only now that we are really leaving the Gutenberg Galaxy (traditional media are more or less gone and new media is different; we face the breakdown of privacy, while looking for solutions from the 20th century for 21st century, like the recent GDPR directive in Europe). But we are also essential for the betterment of the world, as we have overtaken the public discourse (by some calculations, in the US there are five public relations practitioners to every journalist, with the difference increasing and the same trend evident across the globe).
What are our key responsibilities? The first one is knowledge. It is amazing how far we came from 1994 when we started BledCom, an annual international public relations research symposium. Twenty-five years ago there were practically no academic programs in public relations in Europe. Now we are nearly everywhere, although often as cash cows for schools of social sciences. There is also a lot of proprietary research done in agencies, governments and corporations, and we have to employ it (also) for the public good.
The second one is power. We attract power and we are attracted by it. The current violent crisis in the Middle East has been fundamentally enabled by us. Promotion of illiberal democracies and autocracies in Europe and around the world is largely our product. Cambridge Analytica and Bell Pottinger belong(ed) to us; they are gone, but if we look closer, they are around. And while in 2015 American Psychological Association (APA) sacked its chief executive officer, its deputy CEO and its communications chief for their endorsement of torture in the USA, nothing similar has ever happened in public relations community. We have power and we have to take responsibility.
And there is beauty. The world is black and white and all colors in between since its inception. The ways in which it reveals itself to us is in many ways of our doing and seeing. We in public relations are uniquely positioned for the betterment of reality. We have to protect the beauty of the world: life is good.
These are some thoughts from my keynote speech to the 25th annual international public relations research symposium – BledCom, delivered on 6th July 2018 to 175 academics and practitioners from 30 countries by Lake Bled, Slovenia.

24 July 2017
BledCom 2018: jubilee edition

Theme, dates and venue for the jubilee 25th Symposium BledCom 2018, organized by the University of Ljubljana, have already been finalized to offer more time for participants to plan their abstract submission and travel.
BledCom 2018 will take place on July 6-7, 2018, in the marvellous sorroundings of Bled, Slovenia, on the theme “A World in Crisis: The Role of Public Relations”. Abstract deadline is February 1, 2018. More info / Call for papers 2018

17 July 2017
An integrated evaluation Framework to replace the use of AVEs

AMEC, the International Association for the Measurement and Evaluation of Communication, is inviting the support of public relations and communications organisations to join a global initiative to eradicate fully the use of Advertising Equivalency Value (AVE) and all of its derivatives as metrics in public relations work. Some practical steps which form part of a long-term industry education project:

  • Adopting a “Say No to AVEs” campaign logo.
  • Inviting all international trade associations to stop the use of AVEs in national PR Awards schemes. AMEC is asking its partners to use this wording in the Terms and Conditions of Entry in Award schemes and in briefing notes to judges.
  • Joining together through training programmes and events, to continue to push the message that by using AVEs it demeans the credibility of the PR consultancy or internal comms team involved.

AMEC has already made improvements to its free to use Integrated Evaluation Framework to make it an easier to use replacement for AVEs. “The Framework makes sense of the complexities of working across the PESO channels and shows how to shift the emphasis of evaluation from counting outputs to proving value via the critical outtakes, outcomes and organisational impact of our work” said Richard Bagnall, AMEC Chairman, highlighting the need to take decisive action to eradicate AVEs, which invalidity is shown by the global online educational resource centre.
The AMEC Framework, a free resource and hosted online at www.amecorg.com/amecframework, is interactive allowing users to be guided through the process while also saving their work as they go and is already available in 15 languages including Chinese. More info

13 July 2017
Communication Management Forum brings research results on crisis management

Bernays’ international scientific conference on “Living in crisis mode: Time to reconsider definition, meaning and practice” was attended by 200 participants this year.
Communication Management Forum 2017 was opened by Bernays’ President of Board of Governors Mario Petrović, who pointed out that Bernays in 2015, organizing its first international scientific conference, has positioned itself as the educational vertical in public relations and communication management and that it is now time to move the boundaries into new branches of science. This year’s Forum was also supported by Assistant Minister of Science, Assistant Professor Tomislav Sokol and Assistant Director of the Agency for Science and Higher Education MSc Sandra Bezjak, who welcomed the holding of scientific conferences of this kind and Bernays’ contribution to information and communication sciences. Bernays’ Dean, Damir Jugo, PhD stressed in his speech the responsibility that Bernays has at this moment, not only as a higher education institution educating future communication experts, but also as a scientific institution.
The first day of Communication Management Forum 2017 was marked by the presentations of experienced experts from public relations and crisis communication, Associate Professor Piet Verhoeven and Full Professor Ana Tkalac Verčič, the round table on the topic of “Reflection of a Crisis Situation on the Image of a Tourist Destination”. Assoc. Prof. Verhoeven emphasized in his presentation that, in crisis situations, media interest grows rapidly, however, a crisis, depending on how an organization approaches it, can also be an opportunity at the same time. Full Prof. Tkalac Verčič pointed out that crises in the time in which we live has become a “normal phenomenon”, and this claim has been supported by examples of recent events in Croatia. She noted that, in Croatia, information is often provided by spokespersons in times of crisis, when it should actually be given by the head of the organization.
In addition to the keynote speakers, the round table was attended by Katarina Miličević, PhD and G.L.A. Van der Meer, PhD, and the discussion was moderated by Romana Lekić, PhD and Ivan Pakozdi, MA. Ms Miličević, from the Institute for Tourism, emphasized that Croatia has the image of a safe country, and the great influence of social networks and the adequacy of choice of different channels opens the possibility of communication of “everything we want”. Speaking about Croatia’s image, Ms Miličević, also mentioned the research she carried out with her team, where they analysed 28,000 articles, in which they found that Scandinavian countries continue to associate us with the war period. Van der Meer, PhD pointed out in the example of the flood in the Netherlands that countries in the crisis should act as organizations and that it is always advisable to emphasize positive aspects in country-related crises.
As the only college in Croatia that provides full-fledged public relations education and communication management, with the organization of its, now, traditional scientific gathering, Bernays seeks to contribute to the further development of information and communication sciences. With the latest public relations and communication management research, Communication Management Forum 2017 also brings the results of interesting research in marketing, media, politics and related disciplines, and the value of the project has been recognized and supported by Atlantic Grupa, Lider, Zagreb Tourist Board, Blitz -CineStar, Croatian National Tourist Board, Millenium promocija (MPR +), Magis tim and Catering Kvatrić.
Visit the Communication Management Forum website

1 July 2017
New Challenges of Communication in the Age of Post-Truth

by Alexandra Crăciun, Associate Prof. Dr., University of Bucharest
A research analysing the penalty records of the National Football League and The National Hockey League in United States during a time frame of fifteen years, carried at Cornell University, was proving that the teams wearing black uniforms were penalized more often than the teams wearing other colors. The result was confirmed by another experiment, displaying two identical videos with the same sequence of a football game, one version with players wearing black, and one version with players wearing white. The videos were showed both to professional football referees, and to college football fans, asking them to assess the game. No matter if the viewers were professionals or fans, they decided to penalize the team wearing black more often than the team wearing white.
Can we really “frame” the reality by using colors, sounds, textures? Can we use uniforms, logos, and videos to “program” a certain response of specific targets?  Can strategic communication, branding, or public relations really change the public opinion about a specific subject? Can we provide different “versions” of truth switching from black to white, from penalty to reward? Can we generate alternative patterns of behavior, altering just the colors of the T-shirts? The answer, coming from emerging fields of research such as behavioral economics and neurosciences, seems to be: YES. But there is one more question. Where is the truth?  Or better said – who is right, in the end: the ones judging the team wearing black uniforms; or the ones that were judging the team dressed in white?
The Oxford Dictionary’s word of the year in 2017 seems to bring another perspective. The adjective ‘post-truth’ is opening a new realm where questions like this are becoming irrelevant. Do we really need to see who is right?
With 2000% increase in usage compared with 2015 (after Brexit and the US elections) the term seems to be coined by Steve Tesich, in an essay published in The Nation magazine in 1992. The ‘post-truth’ adjective is defined as ‘relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief’.
As the philosopher Timothy Williamson was putting forth in a recent conference held in Bucharest, ‘post-truth’ is neither a synonym with truth, nor an equivalent of lies, and falsehood, since it is simply making the distinction between truth and untruth irrelevant. According to the The Oxford Dictionary: ‘In this era of post-truth politics, it’s easy to cherry-pick data and come to whatever conclusion you desire’. In other words,  ‘reality’ just a matter of  ‘interpretation’ within an age of disruption.
Basically, the idea is not new, but deeply related to the concept of  ‘deconstruction’ – one of the “basic” post-modern ideas launched in 1967 by Jacques Derrida (Of Grammatology).
Reality, truth, are no longer based on scientific evidence, there is no need of facts, or better said – facts might be altered, distorted and transfigured. The new frames of communication where the Web provides a parallel ‘media eco-system’, where the network of users are generating ‘echo chambers’ where everybody’s voice is legitimate – makes experts and expertise useless. Clickbaits based on ‘curiosity gaps’ are fueling alternative media narratives where scientific information is replaced by emotionalism.
‘My science is named Evan, and he’s at home. (…) The University of Google is where I got my degree from.’ These phrases used in 2007 and quoted by Matthew d’Ancona in his book The New War on Truth and How to Fight Back (Ebury Press, 2017) were used by the model Jenny McCarthy on Oprah Winfrey’s show, referring to her boy called Evan, and arguing against vaccination.  The perspective is paradigmatic for the age of ‘post-truth’. ‘Mommy instinct’ or ‘Google University’ are becoming personal and emotional alternatives challenging the history of scientific research on vaccination. ‘Web had digitally turbo-charged false science’, argues the same author, but it is also clear, that an empowered consumer has “turbo-charged” the references of our world.
In the article entitled ‘Valuable Virality’, published by the Journal of Marketing Research (2017), Ezgi Akpinar and Jonah Berger are explaining that ‘compared with informative appeals, emotional appeals are more likely to be shared.’
The results were just confirming a trend identified by the ECM since 2013 as the most important challenge of international communication (Zerfass et. al, 2013, quoted in Communication Excellence: How to Develop, Manage and Lead Exceptional Communications by Tench, Verčič, Zerfass, Moreno, Verhoven, 2017). In 2013 already, 73,7% of the communication professionals believed that ‘developing communication strategies with social, cultural and political sensitivity’ was the most important challenge in their field.
From ‘social, cultural and political sensitivity’ to emotionalism was just one step. Strategic communication and public relations are dealing with challenges related to the new fragmentation of the media sources, with facts that are just altered to fit. The ‘emotional-pack’ becomes more and more the new standard for getting viral and generating buzz. Binary oppositions between facts and opinions, good and bad, real and fake, truth and lie – seem to lose relevance in front of the emotional appeal that turns into ‘likes’ and ‘shares’. The role of the Communication Manager (see Communication Manager Roles Grid in ‘How to play the game’, Volk et. al, Communication Insights, Issue 3, 2017) seems to turn from a “multiplicator” of knowledge, more and more into “multiplicator” of ‘strategic’ emotions.
Relativism, emotionalism, alternative media narratives are mapping the current world of communication in the age of ‘post-truth’ bringing new challenges for the public relations profession, in a world of augmented possibilities.
Beside these, the question is still open. Who was right in the end: the ones judging the team wearing black uniforms or the ones that were judging the team dressed in white? Where is the truth?
Basically, it depends.
In the age of ‘post-truth’ this is anyhow not relevant, because a communicator with some visual communication skills might be able to use Photoshop or an app to adjust colors of the uniform, right on the screen.

29 June 2017
European Communication Monitor 2017 results presented today

World’s largest survey in strategic communication demonstrates increasing influence of the communication profession in organisations and societal debates.

  • Professionals working in communications are fully aware of the trend towards increased visualisation in society, however every second professional has limited visual competencies
  • Social bots are seen largely as a threat for society and organisations – an explanation why only a few organisations already use social bots
  • A cultural turn towards hyper-modernism changes the way organisations communicate with their stakeholders

Brussels, June 29th 2017 – The European Communication Monitor has been surveying trends in strategic communication for more than a decade. This year’s edition is based on a record number of 3,387 respondents from every European country, ensuring it makes once more an outstanding contribution in the area of strategic communication and providing valuable insights for professionals working in public relations, business or political communication. Moreover, this year’s Monitor deals with the cultural transformation towards hypermodernity and offers detailed insights for everybody working as communication managers for small, medium or large organisations in the public or private sector. Comparable global data for the Latin American and Asia-Pacific regions make the Monitor even more relevant.
Visual trend offers huge potential for strategic communication
The fact that we live in a visual society and social media and mobile communication boost all types of visuals is clearly observable and broadly recognised by European communication managers. However, 53.3 per cent of the surveyed professionals have low visual communication skills – compared to 12.1 per cent with high visual competencies. That is also true at the organisational level. More than 80 per cent of the professionals have implemented standard guidelines for their visual communication. However, only 36.7 per cent have developed advanced guidelines and less than five per cent have advanced management processes for visual communication.
ECM17-Graphic02
Personal competencies of communication professionals are low in nearly all fields
of visual communication – also in the areas of online videos and infographics
Source: European Communication Monitor 2017
 
 
 
 
Social (ro-)bots are largely neglected in Europe
Despite the growing commercial and political application of social bots findings from the ECM 2017 data demonstrate that this phenomenon is largely neglected by many communication professionals in Europe. Only one third follow the debate about social bots and 15.9 per cent have no idea about the topic at all. In this context social bots are mainly seen as a threat for public debates and organisational reputation alike, although four out of ten respondents do also see opportunities arising from them. 73.2 per cent of all respondents agree that social bots present ethical challenges for the profession.
ECM17-Graphic03
Communication practitioners in the German speaking countries are more attentive to the debate about social bots
Source: European Communication Monitor 2017
 
 
 
 
 
Hypermodernity challenges old paradigms in strategic communication and for organisations
A hypermodern society is a society in overdrive, characterised by a culture of hyper consumption, hyper change, and hyper individualism. A large majority of 71.5 per cent of the European communication professionals witness the cultural transformation towards a hyper modern culture in their country. The transition from a postmodern to hypermodern culture is the strongest in consultancies (57.2 per cent) and private companies (51.8 per cent). Organisations with postmodern and hypermodern characteristics are ahead in sensing the trend towards an overarching consumer mentality. Most of them think that it has already changed communication with stakeholders and a large majority thinks that it will change their communication in the next three years.
Quality management and Benchmarking
Quality management and continuous improvement is less common in communication departments and marketing, compared to other organisational functions. If communication departments assess their activities at all, they focus predominantly on the performance or impact of messaging activities. Holistic benchmarking approaches against externally validated standards seem to be less relevant.
ECM17-Graphic05
Quality management and continuous improvement is less common in communication departments, compared to other organisational functions
Source: European Communication Monitor 2017

 
 
 
 
 
Statements from the EUPRERA lead researcher and the president of the EACD
ZerfassProfessor Ansgar Zerfass, lead researcher of the survey, explained: “During the last 12 months we have experienced significant events on the world geo-political stage with impact and implications for strategic communication. While the European Communication Monitor continues to track the specifics of the communicator’s role we are also interested in mapping and monitoring the influence of wider societal issues, from economic and cultural developments to technological change, and understand their implications on practice.”
Heitmann“What stands out most of all from this year’s Monitor is the recognition of the important operational and strategic contribution that communications makes to an organisation’s success, with more than 70% approval rates, with the communications function emerging as a key supporter for daily management and the operations of other departments,” said Herbert Heitmann, president of the European Association of Communication Directors (EACD). He added: “However, top management is not aware of the full range of contributions that communications can deliver. More efforts are necessary to close this expectation gap.”
A joint study by academia and practice, the ECM is organised by the European Public Relations Education and Research Association (EUPRERA) and the European Association of Communication Directors (EACD), supported by partner PRIME Research, a global leader for media insights, and media partner Communication Director magazine. The communication monitor series is known as the most comprehensive research in the field worldwide covering more than 80 countries – the European survey is complemented by bi-annual surveys in other regions like Asia-Pacific and Latin America.

A PDF report with full results as well as a video featuring highlights
from the study is available at http://www.communicationmonitor.eu/

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