Search results

This study aims to provide a comprehensive analysis of how discursive practices shape the promotion of public relations undergraduate programmes in the context of market-driven UK higher education.

Research combines a descriptive analysis of the UK universities offering public relations undergraduate degrees and a critical discourse analysis of the online prospectus entries of 25 public relations undergraduate programmes (often called “courses” in the UK), focussing on the course/programme overview and career path sections.

This wide-ranging review of UK universities’ communication of their public relations provision demonstrates that although the student as consumer has choice, the presentation of the programmes is sometimes “headline grabbing” and often positions public relations as a tactical subject, emphasising promotion and practical skills. Overall, public relations is taught alongside subjects such as marketing, journalism and advertising, and these subjects are foregrounded in promotional material when discussing teaching and potential career paths. Public relations is a difficult subject to explain within the confines of a university prospectus, with the result that it is frequently presented as a promotional practice with little connection to management, leadership or academic research.

To the best authors' knowledge, this is the first study exploring the discursive practices that shape the promotion of public relations undergraduate programmes in UK universities.

This study aims to analyze whether companies from six Latin American countries are encouraging dialogic communication on Facebook.

To do so, the paper studied the level of predisposition for interaction and the type of interaction achieved by companies on Facebook to produce an effective dialogic communication exchange and to generate conversation through different types of communication exchange between organizations and users. This research includes a specific analysis of the active presence, interactive attitude, interactive resources, responsiveness and conversation of 29,078 posts on 135 corporate fanpages of companies from six Latin American countries.

The results show that companies have a low interest in managing communication from a dialogic perspective on the social network, not only because a greater predisposition to interaction is needed, but also because the interaction generated is very low. Therefore, the paper identifies the need to review the communication strategy on social networks and to define a strategy aligned to the dialogic nature of the social network.

This research contributes to broadening the conceptual reflection on the evaluation of the dialogue in the digital context and aims to generate new methodological contributions to the evaluation of dialogic communication in an integrated way.

This paper aims to explore the position of women in the communication management sector in Spain from their own experiences. The study examines female communication and leadership styles, emphasising the cost of leadership in which they are leaders or led.

This study used a qualitative methodology based on in-depth interviews with 22 women actively working in top companies and agencies: female communication directors, female employees with a female leader and female employees with a male leader. Data were analysed through thematic analysis.

Results show mixed communication and leadership styles. In addition, the high level of self-demand of female communication managers stands out, making it challenging to achieve a work-life balance and the implementation of successful role models.

Exploring the factors of female leadership remains necessary to understand and make their situation in various industries and positions visible. It also helps remove barriers to leadership, guide organisations in addressing gender discrimination issues and develop mechanisms for the internal promotion of female professionals.

To the best of authors' knowledge, this is the first study exploring the leadership and communication styles of women in the Spanish Public Relations (PR) and communication management industries. It also highlights the aspects influencing the cost of leadership.

Web 2.0 and the social networks have changed how organizations interact with their publics. They enable organizations to engage in symmetric dialogic communications with individuals. Various organizations are increasingly ­using different social media to enhance their visibility and relationships with their publics. They allow them to disseminate information, to participate, listen and actively engage in online conversations with different stakeholders. Some social networks have become a key instrument for corporate communication. Therefore, this chapter presents a critical review on the organizations’ dialogic communications with the publics via social networks. It puts forward a conceptual framework that comprises five key dimensions including ­“active presence,” “interactive attitude,” “interactive resources,” “responsiveness” and “conversation.” This contribution examines each dimension and explains their effect on the organizations’ dialogic communication with the publics. Hence, this contribution has resulted in important implications for corporate communication practitioners as well as for academia. Moreover, it opens future research avenues to academia.

Research on the role of women in Public Relations (PR) has seen a notable increase in recent years (Topić et al., 2019), yet exploratory studies on the subject remain limited, particularly concerning the role of women in the academic sphere of PR in Spain. Guided by the imperative to reflect on the role of PR professionals operating within the Spanish academic landscape, this chapter aims to identify and reflect on the role of women in PR academia in Spain to discover the extent to which women are leading the communication faculties where PR is taught; to identify the presence of women in the departments where communication studies take place and to determine women's leadership in national research activity. This study follows a combined approach with two dimensions, exploratory and interpretative, combining quantitative and qualitative techniques. The interpretative approach is developed using a focus group with women currently working in PR education and leading projects and institutions in the Spanish academia. Through this research, we discover the struggles and opportunities they face and identify possible solutions and ideas to improve the situation of women in academia and, specifically, in PR.

The foreword to Women's Work in Public Relations discusses the multitude of ways that women experience public relations (PR) work. Each women's experience depends on, for instance, location, culture, the presence (or otherwise) of a union or professional association, the support of colleagues, the practitioner's domestic circumstances and more. There is not just one female experience of PR.

This foreword reviews the chapters in Women's Work in Public Relations and points to the parallels, contradictions, and struggles faced by women working in the little-understood occupation of PR where the everyday work of women is largely invisible. It explains how women working in PR carry out tasks which can at once be necessary, unnecessary, the whim of a client or management, performative, or exploitative – such is the varied and unstructured occupation of PR.

Women face barriers and discrimination at work but past research has not always explained the form that this takes. The foreword notes that much discrimination takes place in plain sight (for instance in terms of erratically applied flexible working policies, unpredictable workloads, or language in professional documents that accepts inequality) and observes that unless we recognise discrimination it's difficult to vocalise opposition to it.

The foreword's discussion of methodology shows that there is no one way to study women working in PR and this book represents a small but rich range of largely qualitative research methodology. It demonstrates that, just as there are many experiences of women in PR, there are also many ways to research them.