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| Vol.
5, No. 6, November 22, 2006|
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Please! |
 Jim
Macnamara's " Measuring Up" (see below) The
Fork in the Road of Media and Communication Study and Practice This is a condensation of a paper presented at the 2006 Measurement Summit.The full paper includes references omitted in this summary. Download the entire paper here. Background: PR's research phobia PR practitioners just don't seem to want to or be able to measure. Numerous studies show that, despite some heartening signs of a take-up of research for planning and measurement, there seems to be a roadblock. The primary reasons advanced for this are (a) cost and (b) lack of time. However, there is a range of low-cost and even no-cost methods available to do some level of formative and summative research – such as use of secondary data; case studies; consultative and advisory groups; DIY (do it yourself) surveys and media analysis; omnibus survey questions and Web statistics on visits, inquiries and downloads. The Evaluation Toolkit, originally produced by the Institute of Public Relations in the UK (Fairchild, 2001), now the Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR), and the Pyramid Model of PR Research (Macnamara, 2002; 2005) both list a range of informal and formal methods of measuring public relations, a large number of which do not require any substantial budget or time. Walter Lindenmann, Tom Watson, I and others have found in studies and in practice that these low-cost and no-cost and time-efficient methods are also often not used in planning and evaluating communication programs. So the claim that lack of budget and lack of time are barriers to research are shown to be excuses. The naming of lack of budget, lack of time and lack of demand as what they are – excuses – in turn suggests that there are other more deep-seated reasons behind the industry's lack of research. So how do we get past the apparent roadblock that is preventing practitioners doing what 10-15 years of professional and academic advice has urged them to do? A theory on the real underlying reasons for the industry's research-phobia and the route to negotiating this obstacle is advanced in the balance of this paper which I summarise as the ‘fork in the road' in public communication. The
Fork in the Road: The transmissional or injection view of communication and Marxist-orientated mass communication models which dominated in the 1940s and 1950s gave way to new thinking in the 1960s. Spurred by the landmark research of Elihu Katz and Paul Lazarsfeld (1955) and Joseph Klapper (1960), we began to realise that audiences did not simply swallow information, or ‘mainline' it like a drug, and that communication did not work en masse. Klapper and others found that much communication had limited effects, with the most likely impact being reinforcement of existing views rather than changing opinion or creating new attitudes and behaviours. Even though public relations has evolved to be much broader than 'journalism for hire' and press agentry, it has continued to focus on practice and, particularly, on the production of outputs. While modern academic thinking and research in media and communication departed substantially from the direct effects approach and made new discoveries about how people learn (e.g., social learning theory, social cognitive theory, social comparison, situational theory, and an increasingly integrated view of how communication works), mainstream public relations continued down its practical path – or straight ahead based on outdated assumptions about the effects of communication. As Jim Grunig (1984) observed, the dominant model of public relations practice has been the Public Information Model – an information processing approach that is focused on outputs. Framed within this focus on outputs, public relations turned its back to a large extent on audience effects theory. This fork in the road represents a fundamental paradigm shift or split in the development of public communication. See the model in the image below.
Xavier, Patel and Johnston (2004) reported that practitioners still evaluate outputs rather than outcomes. Cutlip, Center and Broom (2006) also identify a focus on outputs. Rice and Atkin (2002) note that many communication campaigns fail because fundamental theoretical aspects of communication are not understood. Murray and White (2004) report that public relations practitioners feel they have an intuitive sense of what works. They assume that public communication works. This is the real reason for lack of commitment to measurement. Most PR practitioners do not proactively use research to measure, either for planning or for evaluation, because in their worldview, it is not relevant. When one focuses on and sees one's job as producing outputs such as publicity, publications and events, measurement of effects that those outputs might or might not cause is an inconsequential downstream issue – it's someone else's concern. And, when one assumes that public communication causes effects, there is no imperative for research. Research is seen as an unnecessary enforced activity on those occasions when management's predilection for numbers requires practitioners to prove what they believe they know intuitively. In philosophical terms, public relations has remained structuralist, while modern societies and sophisticated views of communication are post-structuralist. The practice route down which public relations has traveled leads inevitably to, as David Dozier and Jim Grunig have said, an industry of technicians. Skilled technicians though they might be, they seldom belong to or participate in senior management because processes and outputs, while necessary, are not the stuff that strategic management is concerned with. The more you look at it, the more you find a real fundamental split in the public communication field – with:
In terms of professionalisation, the long-standing debate over whether, when and how public relations becomes a profession, this ‘fork in the road' view most closely aligns with the Knowledge Model of professionalism. Further, it adds to this model by suggesting that not only does a field have to develop and apply a body of theory and knowledge to become a profession, but that the theory underpinning its activities needs to be correct and valid as far as we can determine. Public relations has lost its way in its journey to reach profession status. It has taken a fork in the road that has led to craft; to technicianship; to industry. To simply summarise the ‘fork in the road’ that this paper describes, public relations has evolved to be predominantly intuitive, author-centric and concerned primarily with producing outputs, whereas communication scholars, researchers and social scientists take an approach that is scientific, audience-centric and concerned with outcomes.
The Solution: Education and Training Universities have to play a lead role in ensuring that future graduates emerge with a sound, broad understanding of social sciences and, specifically, of communication and media theory. Professional institutes also have a key role to play and I believe they need to lift their game considerably to be relevant in the future and fulfill their charter. I propose we need a major review of public relations education and training, both within universities and the industry, to retrain practitioners and give them the knowledge that many of them have missed either because of career transition or the fork in the road that I have talked about. Self-learning will also be a key requirement. Becoming a profession and gaining the respect they seek will require PR practitioners to commit to the level of ongoing self-directed learning that accountants, doctors and lawyers are required to do. Without it, they become out of date and irrelevant. I know there is nothing new in this proposal for a revitalised focus on education and training. Many have been saying this for years. But perhaps the stark illustration of the fork in the road and how far public relations has ventured away from the large body of knowledge about media and communication that exists in cultural studies, psychology and other areas of the social sciences will spur a realisation of the need for a new direction – a reorientation and reintegration within the social sciences. Public relations has become siloed. Even worse, it has become ghettoed – not only from disciplines such as business and management, but it has become ghettoed within the social sciences. I remain
convinced that public communication, including public relations
and corporate and organisational communication, is a vitally important
function. We face a necessity and a great opportunity to chart
a new course. |
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