Search

Highlights • European PR professionals see a cultural transformation towards hyper consumption, hypermodernisation and hyper narcissism. • Hypermodernity influences the communication between the organisation and its stakeholders. • Perceived post-/hypermodern organisations engage more often in societal debates. • First empirical study in PR about hypermodern culture by the European Communication Monitor. Abstract This article raises the question of whether European public relations (PR) and communications professionals perceive a cultural transformation in the direction of hypermodernity, and if so, attempts to assess how this influences their organizations and their work. Questions were asked in the European Communication Monitor 2017, an annual survey among communications professionals, and 3387 respondents from 50 European countries filled in the questionnaire. The results indicate that European professionals recognize a cultural transformation in the direction of hyper consumption, hyper modernization and hyper narcissism that influences the communication between their organizations and their stakeholders. A cluster analysis shows that less than half of the respondents perceive a transformation of their organization in the direction of hypermodern characteristics and values. Organizations with post/hypermodern characteristics have superior communications departments compared to modern organizations. Post/hypermodern organizations and excellent communications departments also engage more often in societal debates than other types of organizations and departments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reviews the status of media relations in Europe while it reflects the upcoming media shift from mass mediated communication to own produced and delivered content by strategic communicators. The literature review echoes the changing media landscape from the PR practitioner’s point of view: Whereas the 20th century gave birth to different kind of media relations, the highly networked and fluid ways of content re-production, dissemination and therefore the co-construction of meaning became much more important for all kinds of organizations and their public relations practitioners as well as marketeers. Referring to these new forms of mediatized content, the final section of the literature review introduces the concept of strategic mediatization as a new practice supplementing and/or replacing old media relations. Based on the theoretical ground stressed out in the literature review, an empirical study was carried out based on a quantitative survey among 2253 communication practitioners across Europe. The survey results emphasize a strong shift from the prevalence of mass media to owned media especially in Western and Northern Europe. However, the rising importance of new content practices is considered important in all European regions alike. Nevertheless, the study identifies large gaps between the considered importance and the usage of these new media relations practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public affairs and lobbying is a high status and strategically vital public relations specialism. It is a field of PR practice that generates high levels of both scholarly and public concern in regard to its perceived role in supporting corporate power and the associated impact on the functional legitimacy of democratic institutions. For this paper a content analysis was conducted of academic journals (between 2000 and 2013) to provide insights into how public affairs and lobbying have been theorised and researched within public relations scholarship and to ascertain to what degree wider public concerns have been addressed. Findings include an empirical confirmation of the low level of research activity on public affairs; that stakeholder and rhetorical theories have been the most widely used theories, but are far from constituting dominant paradigms; that scholarship has privileged functional objectives over civic concerns; and that published work originates almost entirely from institutions in Europe and the US with the Global South invisible. The paper also discusses future directions for research in public affairs and advocates the placing of discourse into definitions of public affairs, and that academic public relations should assert responsibility for this field, but in a manner that more equitably balances organisational and societal concerns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Ethical problems and resources addressed in a survey among 2324 PR managers. • PR practitioners face more moral challenges in their daily work than 8 years ago. • Concerns regarding bots, big data, social media influencers and sponsored content. • Personal values and beliefs most important resource for dealing with moral issues. Digital communication tools and practices improve the spread and impact of organisational messages. Quite often, however, they also pose moral problems. This article examines how often public relations practitioners encounter moral issues in their day-to-day work, how they assess digital communication tools and practices in terms of ethics, and the resources on which they rely to tackle moral challenges. Four research questions were addressed in an online survey among 2,324 practitioners who work in PR departments of organisations or in PR agencies across Europe. Results show that PR practitioners face more moral challenges in their daily work than they have faced in the past. Regarding digital communication tools and practices, they report moral concerns especially related to using bots, exploiting personal data for big-data analyses, paying social media influencers, and using sponsored content. Personal values and beliefs are the most important resource for dealing with moral issues—whether because only a minority of practitioners has participated in any formal ethics training within the past three years, or because existing ethical guidelines are outdated. Results call for the development of ethical guidelines that can provide explicit advice in the area of digital communication. Furthermore, structured training programs and ethics courses in graduate programs are needed to enhance practitioners' ethical knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This article reviews lobbying in the political sciences and public relations literature, and it also provides a conceptualization for the regulatory practices of lobbying around the world. Then, it presents the newest law on lobbying instituted in 2010 in the Republic of Slovenia, the Integrity and Prevention of Corruption Act. This Act treats lobbying in two ways: (1) as a communication technique used by interest groups to privately influence government officials and (2) as a process of access to information by the same interest groups. This inconsistency follows the same trend for lobbying regulation in Europe and raises important questions regarding lobbying practice and regulation. Lobbying is fundamentally a public relations practice exercised in private and public sectors, and it uses direct and indirect communication between interest groups and their respective government. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: While the need for and lack of implementation of more sophisticated methods for measuring the impact of public relations efforts has been well documented in the U.S. and some other world regions, relatively little information exist about this practice in the European Union. Results from a survey of both consumers and providers of public relations in the EU shows that perceptions of effectiveness and actual use are not related for most advanced techniques of measurement and evaluation. These results demonstrate some potentially important differences between the perceptions of providers and consumers that may support practitioner observations regarding a lack of interest among clients in more accurate assessment of results from public relations activities. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: The European Communication Monitor (ECM) is an extensive longitudinal research project to monitor trends in public relations and communication management and analyze the changing framework for the profession in Europe. The 2009 ECM edition identifies the main characteristics of individual practitioners and the organizations where they work. The aim is to monitor the challenges for communication management in the recession and media crisis; the development of the sub disciplines, instruments and strategic issues; and the influence on management decisions. Additionally ECM 2009 evaluates three specific areas: internal communication, research in communication and interactive communication. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Presents a European view of the United States-based definition of public relations as relationship management. Public consequences of organizational behavior; Research project on the European Public Relations Body of Knowledge; Consequences of the project for definitional activities in the US practitioner and academic communities.