1,721,069 research outputs found
Gender and public relations: Perspectives, applications and questions
Get PDFIt is impossible to understand adequately the social construction of public relations without closely examining its gendered nature. The work of feminist-inspired scholars has brought to our attention the centrality of gender in shaping social relations, pointing out that gender is one of the central organising principles around which social life revolves. We believe that inquiry into public relations as a gendered practice will bring deeper understanding of its internal and external relationships, its past and future directions, and its cultural variety. Thus this special issue of PRism enables us to take stock of knowledge in a certain domain and at a particular point in time. It helps us to identify some common concerns and differences among scholars currently researching public relations as viewed from the conceptual lens of gender
The cultural dynamics of identity formation: managing commercial-professional discourses in a Dutch newspaper and a British television station.
Get PDFThis study examines how members of media organisations deal with their increasingly commercialised working environments. We explore the experiences of members of two media organisations, an established Dutch newspaper and a new British television station, and trace how journalists, editors and others involved in producing and managing news and features construct their organisational realities. Our research methods are qualitative and we take a cultural approach to analysis.
We find that media organisations are characterised by conflicting ideologies which are exposed in the tension between commercial values concerning profits, and professional values concerning quality. We suggest that cultural values, ideologies and discourses are used situationally and strategically depending on individual and collective interests, emotions and identifications. In conceptualising the processes through which individuals and organisations interact to continually negotiate their contexts and identities, we note that change and continuity, harmony and conflict exist simultaneously; consequently, culture is best viewed as an ensemble of disparate meanings that mutually implicate, contradict or even confuse each other. This approach acknowledges the often paradoxical nature of cultural reality and highlights the interrelationship between conflict and order. The study serves as an 'extreme case' of the cultural politics that take place in all organisations which are concerned with both profits and quality
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Get PDFWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
'Insiders' in Mexico: researching the occupational culture of public relations
Get PDFInternational PR research has typically been concerned with ways that allow for an ‘objective’ characterisation and classification of practice, using what are assumed to be value neutral and ‘scientific categories’ (in particular, attempts to translate Excellent practice into ‘non-Western’ contexts). Such approaches are flawed in their attempts to assume ethnographic authority (Banerjee and Linstead, 2004: 231), and tendency toward abstraction and generalisation. Recent growth in sociological approaches to researching public relations, however, has encouraged scholars to empirically challenge much of what we think we know about PR practices and their generalizablility across cultures. Critical researchers recognise that the challenge is to move away from ‘objective’ characterization and classification to more heuristic approaches, thus bringing ‘insights gained on the periphery back to the centre to raise havoc with our settled ways of thinking and conceptualisation’ (Marcus and Fischer, 1986: 138). The potential of these ‘insights’ will rest on the acknowledgement of the fact that, as researchers, we live in reality that is culturally constructed and we, therefore, cannot assume an authority in how we present the data. Research exploring international PR practice, which follows this approach considers PR within the context of cultural intermediation and raises questions about what it means to ‘do PR’ (Hodges, 2006; Curtin and Gaither, 2006, 2007).
As we expand our conceptualisation of public relations as a cultural practice, it is important to develop research models that can shed further light on the complex and dynamic communication processes at play within different international cultures. Drawing on the concept of ‘radical-reflexivity’ as presented by Cunliffe (2003, p. 991), this paper will argue that as researchers, we are ‘bricoleurs’ whose ultimate purpose and practice is “to ‘unsettle’ representation by constantly constructing meaning and social realities as we interact with others and share our experiences.” Reflexive inquiry can offer valuable insights into PR theory and practice by stimulating a critical exploration of how we constitute knowledge and enact our own practices as researchers (Cunliffe, 2003: 999). In doing so, it raises possibilities for different forms of inquiry and new ways of understanding experience.
Whilst authors in other disciplines have encouraged research designs and sampling that incorporate a diversity of perspectives across and within cultures, few have addressed the practical means by which this might be achieved within the field of public relations (Aldoory, 2005; Pompper, 2005). In the search to design reflexive, grounded, rich and interesting fieldwork, we are all called to manage complex relationships with research sites, constraints such as sample size, timings of data collection and analytical techniques for exploring or developing complex models. Furthermore, we often face mid-project changes to planned research designs as we seek to collect qualitative data opportunistically (Leung, Bhagat, Buchan, Erez, & Gibson, 2005; Edmondson and McManus, 2007). This paper will share first-hand experiences of the ‘messy realities’ (Edmondson and Mcmanus, 2007) of undertaking ethnographic research into the occupation of public relations in Mexico City and consider some of the difficulties faced by researchers when, as Van Maanan, Sorensen and Mitchell (2007: 1146) argue, publication forms do not favour the presentation of results or “require that the personal history of how the research process unfolded be revised or forgotten.
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Get PDFWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
koamabayili/VECTRON-author-checklist: VECTRON author checklist
No full textWe have done our best to complete the author checklist relating to the use of animals in the hut study. Note that the objective for the hut study was to evaluate the IRS treatment applications for residual efficacy against Anopheles mosquitoes, including the local An. coluzzii mosquito population. Cows were only used to attract mosquitoes into the huts and no tests were carried out directly on the cows. The author checklist is intended for use with studies where experiments are carried out on animals, which is why we have had such difficulty in completing this for the hut study, as many of the questions do not relate to how the cows were used
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