March 28, 2003

PR Paradoxes and
Poolside Piña Coladas
Our Ms. Paine visits the
6th annual Miami IIPRRC

by Katie Delahaye Paine

If you want to know what’s happening in PR research, the annual International Interdisciplinary Public Relations Research Conference (IIPRRC) in Miami is the place to be. Launched six years ago as a forum to bring academics together from different disciplines and organizations, the three-day event hosts a large number of presenters from all over the world.

The papers range from highly esoteric to supremely practical. Every hour another three or four scholars present their work to groups of 8 to 10 people, so by the end of the third day some 50 papers have been given.

This year’s work covered every conceivable area from using research to increase attendance at the symphony (see the article “Bach to Basics” elsewhere in this issue) to measuring relationships between student organizations and their constituencies. Since there are far too many to go into in detail here, we will be presenting detailed abstracts of the more exciting ones in future issues of The Measurement Standard.

Poolside Piña Coladas
The real magic of the conference doesn’t come just from the level of intellectual thought, but rather from the discourse among the attendees. In fact, I often find the piña colada-fueled conversations poolside are as stimulating as the formal presentations.

“The people here have been comfortable enough to admit their failures, as well as talk about their successes. Feedback they get from attendees helps shape and improve their research in the future,” explains attendee Doug Newson, Professor at Texas Christian University.

The conference proved once again that our international counterparts are far ahead of us in many respects. PR professionals in Colombia, for example, have been charged by the National Association of Industrialists to produce annual Social Reports. The requirement for these detailed research reports are created in response to pressures from NGOs and protest groups on corporations in Colombia.

Other reports included measures of relationships between in-house PR practitioners and staff in four divisions of the Florida Department of Fish and Wildlife. As it turns out, relationships were strongest with the division most frequently under fire—the one that dealt with manatees. Other divisions that had fewer dealings with their PR practitioners reported weaker relationships.

A number of papers sought to verify or challenge existing PR theory. Ymee Yoon, a doctoral candidate at Syracuse University, compared two conflicting theories of relationship measurement, one behavioral, based on observations and one perceptional, based on surveying the opinions of the two groups. The research showed that although one group claimed to have strong communal relationships, their behavior did not necessarily confirm that belief. Like most of the papers presented, the data was preliminary and would require further verification and additional investigation.

PR Paradoxes
Among the more controversial papers was one on Paradoxes in PR, co-authored by Brad Rawlins and Kevin Stoker of Brigham Young University. They proposed that there were a number of fundamental paradoxes in PR, some conflicting, some complementary. They weren’t necessarily arguing for change, just that we should change the way we look at PR.

For example, take the basic premise of Public Relations. Rawlins and Stoker argued that you can’t have a relationship with a “public” i.e. a group; you can only have a relationship with individuals. So essentially if you look at “publics,” which most of us do, you lose touch with the individual. They argue that the “Public” in public relations is really a group of individuals with shared values and that we can only develop relationships because of these shared values or interests. They went on to argue that you can’t actually manage a relationship, you can only empower someone with whom you have a relationship to manage their relationship with you.

The conference was organized primarily by Professor Don Stacks, of the University of Miami, a frequent contributor to The Measurement Standard and a member of the IPR Measurement Commission. “We started this as a forum to promote dialog between educators, PR firms, and practitioners as a way to promote research among the academics,” explains Stacks.

Another important function of the conference is to get educators from different disciplines and different institutions in one place. “We’re trying to establish a networking mechanism among educators. Our goal is put more academics back into the industries, so we have more PR people who know how to do PR and PR research correctly,” said Stacks.

The war and travel security posed a big problem with this year’s conference. More than one would-be presenter gave up trying to get into the country. “The hardest part used to be funding, now its visa problems. We had to write several letters for the international presenters just to get them into the country,” Stacks said.

Funding for the conference comes from Allstate Insurance, the Arthur W. Page Society, the Council of Public Relations Firms, the Institute for Public Relations, ITT Industries, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, General Motors, Northwester Mutual, Betsy Plank, PRSA, Larry Thomas and the University of Miami.

This issue is on us!
In celebration of our first birthday, all articles in this issue are free of charge! Here is what is new this month:

Army Intelligence:
Army Public Affairs Gets It Right this Time

Four Tips on Measurement When Your News Is Just Not Getting Out

Five Crisis Management Firms

Seven Experts on Accounting for Extraordinary External Events in Your Ongoing Measurement Programs

Bach to Basics: The Symphony Searches for a New Audience

Report from the Miami IIPRRC conference

Moves and Shakeouts

Can Charlotte Beers’ Reputation be Saved?

...And Found Lacking

The Monthly Measurement Menace and Maven

The PR Weather Report

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