El Modelo Psicológico de Salud: El Cambio de Conductas de Riesgo por Conductas de

The question of whether or not public relations is a craft or profession is sometimes open to debate, especially when the term PR itself draws ambiguity. Kim & Hon (1998) propounded that public relations can indeed be either a craft or a profession, depending on what model of public relations is practiced by the practitioner. The four models of public relations

developed by Grunig and Hunt (1984) as highlighted already in this chapter, are:

 Press Agentry

 Public Information

 Two-Way Asymmetrical

 Two-Way Symmetrical.

Professional PR is found in the two way models ranging across a spectrum from persuasion on the one end (two way asymmetrical) to conflict management (two-way symmetrical). However craft public relations is the term used for the first two models – namely press agentry and public information:

Press Agentry and Public Information are called craft public relations - meaning one way communication ranging from propaganda (press agentry) to journalism (public information) on the other (Kim and Hon, 1998, pages 158- 159).

Grunig (2000) noted that the most popular approach to determine the level of

professionalisation is that known as the trait method. With this method, Grunig (ibid) noted that a list of theoretical characteristics are developed and applied to an occupation such as public relations to determine the extent to which it is professionalized. With the trait method in mind, Grunig and Hunt (1984) outlined five characteristics of a professional including:

 A set of professional values

 Membership of strong professional organisations

 Adherence to professional norms such as those provided by a code of ethics that can be used to enforce values

 An intellectual tradition and an established body of knowledge and

 Technical skills acquired through professional training.

31 In later years, Grunig (2000) wrote that he believes public relations is achieving professional status largely because of the development of a theoretical body of knowledge that has

intellectualised the nature of strategic, symmetrical practice whilst also providing practical methods and strategies to implement the symmetrical ideal.

Similarly, the defining characteristics of the public relations profession as noted more recently by Pieczka & L’Etang (2006) are the troika of a ‘body of knowledge, ethics and

certification’ (p270). The criteria therefore for professionalism referred to in this paragraph

find their justification in social research and scholarly inquiry, as noted by IPRA (1997) and Ehling (1992):

‘There is a close association on the one hand between professionalism and a body of knowledge and the role of education in transmitting that body of knowledge on the other hand’ (Ehling,1992 p442).

Most of these professionalized occupations enjoy respect and autonomy which Grunig (2000) believes are key characteristics of a profession that public relations must develop and that eventually will allow public relations practitioners to realise the importance of serving the interests of all the publics of an organisation and not just that of the client.

As noted by IPRA (1997), public relations has emerged from publicity to decision-making and into an applied social science discipline. The IPRA (1997) further states:

Central to the development of public relations as both a profession and a serious academic discipline is the development of a body of theoretical knowledge that differentiates public relations from other occupations and academic areas (IPRA,1997, p22).

Gregory (2012) also noted that there are growing numbers of academic conferences indicating a healthy interest in sometimes more specialist areas. For example, the International History of Public Relations Conference held in Bournemouth UK was established in 2009 (Theofilou and Watson, 2014) and the International Public Relations Conference in Barcelona - which was launched in 2011 – is now running annually.

Arguably, one of the main problems public relations continues to have in relation to professionalism is the connection of public relations programmes with journalism schools.

32 Journalism is seen as one-way communication – equated with press-agentry, (Grunig and Hunt 1984) where it simply involves the business of getting something into a newspaper, or online, or on onto a television or radio broadcast. Tench and Fawkes (2005) suggest that this could be one of the reasons why public relations may not be viewed as a profession and more-so as a craft. Therefore, the location of where PR courses are taught within HE in Ireland are looked at in the following table.

Table 4 - PR Courses in Ireland within Higher Education and what Schools/Faculties they are located in

Name of Higher Education Institution

Name of PR degree(s) Faculty (or School) Department

Institute of

Technology Carlow (IT Carlow)

Media and Public Relations (BA hons)

Business and Humanities

Sport, Media and Marketing Cork Institute of Technology Higher Diploma in Arts in Public Relations (Postgraduate course) MA in Public Relations with New Media (taught)

Crawford College of Art and Design

Department of Media Communications Dublin Institute of Technology (DIT) MA in Public Relations (full-time, one year)

College of Arts and Design

School of Media (which is located within the College of Arts and Design in DIT)

Dundalk Institute of Technology

Currently developing a new programme in the area of Digital Marketing, Public Relations and Communication (Level 7 degree-with Level 8 add-on options) Business and Humanities Department of Management and Financial Studies

DCU (Dublin City University)

MSc in Public

Relations and Strategic Communications

Humanities and Social Sciences

33 The above table highlights as stated not just a listing of the PR courses within HE in Ireland, but also the school or location of where these courses are taught. It’s interesting to note the diversity of locations – e.g. the PR degree in Cork IT is located in the School of Art and Design as is the MA degree in PR from DIT. The location of where PR degrees are taught in higher education in Ireland, is important to highlight as course content may be affected as a result. For example, in the US, many PR degrees were taught in communication departments, linked to journalism and there is criticism that this has hampered its development as an

academic subject (Wright 2011). Tench and Deflagbe (2008) wrote that PR in the UK took a different route with many PR degrees taught in business schools offering a strong focus on strategic management rather than media relations.

This location of PR education located within media schools is significant because locating PR courses within media and journalism schools is deemed to be a flawed model and the focus is too much on news media which continues to treat PR as one-way communication centred around publicity and media relations (Kalupa 2007; Wright 2011). This is not of course to say that media relations is not an important part of a PR curriculum. In fact, Macnamara (2014) noted that in studies over the past 100 years, there is an indication that 40-75% of media content is routinely sourced from, or influenced by PR. However this finding in the literature will be worth exploring when the views of senior practitioners on the occupation of public relations, are explored.

Separately, Pieczka & L’Etang (2006) suggest that the professionalism being called for can be received from a large volume of respectable published research. Public relations is

relatively young as an academic field and has developed identifiable theory only in the last 50 years (Botan & Taylor, 2006).

The published record of developments in the field of public relations has been dominated by the American experience, primarily because the longest established academic journals in public relations to date – Public Relations Review and Journal of Public Relations Research are based in America and largely devoted to American research. In fact, Wright (2007) noted that there were no public relations scholarly journals until the arrival of Public Relations

34 Review in 1975. A full list of scholarly journals that focus on public relations are relayed in table the following table.

Table 5 - Public Relations Scholarly Journals

Public Relations Scholarly Journals Year of First Volume

Public Relations Review 1975

Journal of Communication Management 1996

Corporate Communications: An International Journal

1996

Prism Online PR Journal 2003

International Journal of Strategic Communication

2006

Public Relations Journal 2006

Public Relations Inquiry 2012

Information sources: Wright (2007); Gregory (2012) and Ihlen and Verhoeven (2012)

This table highlights the range of academic journals located within the field of public relations. As noted by Ihlen and Verhoeven (2012), the rich array of academic journals, promises a richer and wider approach to the study and practice of public relations (p 160).

Many universities are now attempting to quantify the perceived value of academic research and are doing so by calculating the amount of citations that a journal receives. Wright (2014) criticises this methodology, especially the assumption that all citations are equal. Wright (ibid) noted: ‘Faculty members frequently are granted or denied promotion and tenure based

upon this measure of the impact of their research’ (p 5).

Be that as it may, Pasadeos, Berger and Renfro (2010) examined PR literatures’ most cited works at the turn of the millennium and compared it to an investigation of literature

completed ten years previously by Pasadeos, Renfro and Hanily (1999). They found that in the period from 2000-2005, a total of 14,798 citations were recorded which was 93% larger than the 1990-1995 total of 7,659 citations. Of course, this increase can be attributed to the increase in digital technology.

Nonetheless, in addition to this increase in citations, Pasadeos et al (2010) noted that new research and topics have emerged in areas such as international studies, technology, crisis

35 communication and gender studies. The literature continues to ‘reflect a new and diverse

group of published scholars with an increasing internationalisation of scholarship’

(Pasadeos, Berger and Renfro, 2010, p 151). Heath (2005) advocated that although there are challenges to the concepts of professionals and professionalism, professions still dominate our world.

36