FORK IN THE ROAD

The Fork in the Road of Media and Communication Study and Practice

Dr Jim Macnamara BA, MA, PhD, FPRIA, FAMI, CPM


Abstract

Industry and professional studies show that public relations and corporate communication practitioners continue to not use research to plan and measure their activities in a majority of cases (Xavier, Patel & Johnston, 2004), despite evidence of management demand (Test Research, 2000). The reasons advanced for this, according to studies among practitioners are, primarily, lack of budget and lack of time to undertake research (Gaunt & Wright, 2004; Watson & Simmons, 2004; Public Relations Society of America, 2001; Institute of Public Relations and PR Consultants Association, UK, 2001). Lack of knowledge is cited by a much smaller number of practitioners as a barrier to formative and evaluative research. A number of researchers and scholars have challenged these findings, pointing out that low cost and even no-cost methods of measurement are available but are also not widely used (Lindenman, 2005; Macnamara, 2005). This suggests that lack of budget and lack of time are excuses rather than reasons, and points to a need for further exploration of why the public relations and corporate communication sector continues not to embrace research. This paper argues that there are other more fundamental underlying factors that need to be recognised including a ‘fork in the road’ in the development of modern public relations and corporate communication practice that is a critical issue to address.

Background

Research for strategic planning and evaluation has been widely discussed and recommended to practitioners (Baskin and Aronoff, 1983; Baskin, Aronoff & Lattimore, 1997; Broom and Dozier, 1990; Cutlip, Center & Broom, 2006; Grunig and Hunt, 1984; Macnamara, 1999; 2002; 2005; Noble, 1995; Noble and Watson, 1999; Watson and Noble, 2005, and many others.

Notwithstanding several decades of urging, “measuring the effectiveness of PR has proved almost as elusive as finding the Holy Grail”, John Pavlik (1987) commented – and studies show little has changed since his frustrated pronouncement (eg. Xavier, Patel & Johnston, 2004). Numerous studies show that, despite some heartening signs of a take-up of research for planning and measurement, there seems to be a roadblock. PR practitioners just don’t seem to want to or be able to measure.

The primary reasons advanced for the relative paucity of research for strategic planning and evaluation of PR and corporate communication are (a) cost and (b) lack of time (Gaunt & Wright, 2004; Watson & Simmons, 2004; Public Relations Society of America, 2001; Institute of Public Relations and PR Consultants Association, UK, 2001).

However, Walter Lindenmann (2005) and others including myself (Macnamara, 2005) have pointed out that 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.

Lack of demand can hardly be advanced as a valid reason. Based on the influence of W. Edwards Deming (1986) who is credited with founding the quality movement and adoption of performance measurement in management, Howard Dresner (1989) who pioneered Business Performance Management (BPM), and others, modern management today widely utilises reporting systems based on measurement such as Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and Key Results Areas (KRAs), Balanced Score Cards developed by Robert Kaplan and David Norton in the 1990s, dashboards, and seek Return on Investment (ROI) measures.

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 take measurement to the street? 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

Modern communication theory and practice can be traced to many roots. A noteworthy early model was the Shannon and Weaver (1949) view that came to become known as the transmissional model or ‘injection model’ of communication. This, now almost totally discredited view, proposed that information and meaning were directly transmitted or ‘injected’ into audiences.

As anyone who has children or is married or living with a partner knows, what we try to communicate to even those closest to us is very often not received the way we intend or mean.

In mass media study, Marxist theory also held communication to be very powerful and the mass communication and mass manipulative views of media advanced by Marx and Marxist thinkers took a similar view of mediated communication as being like a powerful drug that worked on audiences who received it.

Neo-Marxist thinking, such as Maxwell McCombs’ influential ‘agenda setting’ theory of mass media, continued the view that mass media and mass communication had the capability to change people’s attitudes and even behaviour in a direct and often substantial way.

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.

As most in this room know, 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.

Psychology studies such as those of Leon Festinger and his theory of cognitive dissonance and the emerging field of cultural studies raised further questions over the alleged power of the media and mass communication. Roland Barthes’ famous adage, ‘death of the author’ signalled an end to early naïve thinking that authors, whether they be novelists and poets or corporate authors producing and distributing advertising and publicity, had the power to create meaning in the minds of audiences. Barthes, of course, was not talking about killing authors, but about recognising the power of audiences to filter information, decode it differently to that intended by the author – what Umberto Eco (1965) called ‘aberrant decoding’ – use information for their own purposes, and at times reject information altogether.

New focus on audience research in the 1970s and 1980s emanating out of cultural studies led to a critical view that mass media and other communication had limited and at times no effect.

More recent research has found that this limited or no effect view somewhat over-stated audience factors – or under-stated the influence of media and communication – and this strand of thinking lost sway and has petered out to a large extent.

Drawing on all of these theories, including political economy thinking, uses and gratifications theory and other views, a new way of thinking about mass media and communication evolved and gained widespread acceptance in the 1990s. This view, in summary, holds that the effects of mass media and communication are conditional and contextual – they depend on a wide range of factors. It is not possible to summarise this large body of research and knowledge here, but it is significant to note that most well-researched views on media and communication today conceive an integrated model where authors and audiences interact in a two-way process that is complex and variable in its outcomes.

This is the view of modern academia and media and communication researchers. In my model which illustrates the ‘fork in the road’ that I posit as a significant turning point in communication thinking, rigorous academic study and research have charted a course that deviates substantially from the early direct linear concept of communication.

Now let’s turn to media and communication practitioners.

Advertising began firmly rooted in early mass communication views of the media as powerful and its effects direct. However, the advertising industry, faced with John Wannamaker’s famous claim that “half of my advertising is wasted; the only trouble is I don’t know which half”, looked for explanations of why communication often did not have effects and, while coming from an applied practice background, turned to research and social science. For instance, modern advertising has drawn on psychology as well as cultural studies to inform its practices. Direct marketers have, to a significant extent, embraced modern media and communication thinking, as have some specialist campaigns – for instance, the National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign in US which has drawn on social cognitive theory and health belief models and the Health Communication-Behaviour Change Model which integrates media communication, face to face communication and community programs. While not occurring universally, modern advertising and marketing campaigns have turned away from early direct injection thinking.

Let me now turn to other areas of communication practice including journalism and where I believe public relations and corporate communication are placed in this evolution of knowledge and social science.

Journalism evolved with a strong practical focus. In the main, journalists did not see it as their job to persuade or change audiences – indeed, it is still considered an anathema in many areas of journalism to depart from a simple public information model – the ‘provide the facts, let the public decide’ school of journalism thinking. While advertisers seek audience impact and effects, journalists to this day seek an independence from the messy, commercial world of audiences and their proclivities and seek to avoid responsibility for effects they might create (eg. in relation to violence, portrayals of gender, etc) – some say to the point of irresponsibility. Journalism has focussed on practice and media production and largely ignored the debate over media effects – whether direct or conditional.



Public relations began and established its foundations in early transmissional and direct effects thinking and continued its formational growth through the period of Neo-Marxist ‘agenda setting’ thinking. The practice also developed in a close relationship with journalism. Indeed, many if not most PR practitioners for many decades came from journalism.

Early public relations development missed or ignored radical limited effects theory (it was a notion too disconcerting to embrace) and, by the time the major advancements in psychology, cultural studies and post-structural thinking took hold, PR was already well-established as a practice and formulating its own theory.

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 (eg. 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 focussed 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.

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.

This fork in the road is not absolute or universal. There are progressive public relations and corporate communication firms and individuals who embrace modern communication and media knowledge and employ a research-based approach. There are many excellent universities teaching communication theory, media effects, audience reception studies, social learning theory, and so on.

But many courses for public relations through the 1980s and 1990s focussed on writing press releases, dealing with journalists, producing newsletters, making videos. In fact, I know of several universities that still offer a range of undergraduate subjects in media production as a key component of communication and public relations degrees.

Professional development programs are heavily orientated to practical skills development. Very importantly, we must remember that a large proportion of practitioners transition to PR from other fields and do not have degrees in public relations or communication. As a result, a high proportion of practitioners have never heard of W. J. McGuire; Joseph Klapper; Peter Drucker’s “it’s more important to do the right thing than to do things right”; Roland Barthes “death of the author”; Leon Festinger’s Theory of Cognitive Dissonance; Umberto Eco’s theory of aberrant decoding; social cognitive theory – and, unfortunately, some have not heard of Jim Grunig or other modern scholars in the public relations field.

A recent reiteration of this approach which illustrates my argument is the approach to new media within public relations and corporate communication. A large part of the PR industry has not yet engaged in any substantial way with new media and concepts such as Web 2.0. Of those that have, the primary focus is how to produce Web sites, produce blogs, produce podcasts. Yet more outputs; more focus on process and practice. It is comparatively rare to find practitioners monitoring and analysing the use, impact and effects of blogs, for instance, and it is rare to find them at the forefront of policy making and planning, advising their organisations on the implications of new media.

The practice route down which public relations has travelled 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.

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. The dominant model of public relations I have pointed to has a body of theory and knowledge, but much of it is outdated and, in some cases, plain wrong. It’s not a lack of theory, but outdated and wrong theory that is holding public relations back.

If one prefers to adopt as Status Model, Competition Model or Personality Model of professionalism, as Frank Ovaitt (2005) outlines (drawing on the work of Betteke van Ruler), the fork in the road view that I have presented explains a number of things. Public relations has not gained the status it seeks because it has been heading down a road that it is tangential to mainstream management and communication theory. Competition, personality, ambition and enthusiasm, while commendable characteristics, are shared by celebrities, sports such as football and baseball, modelling and cheerleading.

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.

The Solution

The purpose of this critical view is not to be negative or condemn public relations, but to hopefully contribute to its rescue. The industry needs roadside assistance. What is the solution?

The answer lies in 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. They need to teach communication practitioners about audiences and audience reception theory, about social cognitive theory and social learning theory, about media effects, about semiotics, and about modern models of public relations such as Two-Way Symmetric views (Grunig, 1984). This is the knowledge that underpins our work.

As Adjunct Professor in Public Communication of a leading Australian university, I recently had the pleasure (and pain) of being Chairman of the Review Committee of the Public Communication Program which offers advertising and public relations majors as well as a Masters program. The review of the program revealed an enforced focus in the university to offer practical subjects that would help its graduates get jobs and a subjugation of broad-based social sciences knowledge. This pressure came from both commercial competition between universities and also from the industry which constantly calls for “graduates who can write and are practical – not theoretical”. Students could graduate with a double major in Advertising and Public Relations, knowing how to write ads, news releases and brochures, work with producers and designers and arrange an event – but with no understanding of what effects if any their work might produce within the hapless audiences that they targeted. I am reminded of Peter Drucker’s Six Pillars of Wisdom, one of which is that you need to know “the theory of the business” you are in. I question how many of the graduates in public communication today know the theory of the business they are in – communication.

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 fulfil their charter. I say that with some knowledge, having been National President of the Public Relations Institute in my country and a Councillor of the International Public Relations Association (IPRA) for a number of years. With the exception of the Institute for Public Relations in the US which publishes and promotes a wide range of research on highly relevant subjects and, to some extent the Chartered Institute of Public Relations in the UK, PR bodies worldwide have focussed largely on getting members jobs and running endless workshops at which editors and journalists launch tirades at PR and tell us what we need to do to get 10 paragraphs in The Smithtown Weekly.

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. Many practitioners admit they do not read books or even subscribe to valuable publications such as Katie Paine’s Measurement Standard. They don’t have time, they say. 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 is 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 – perhaps even moreso today in modern information overloaded societies with new media emerging that are changing the ways in which information, knowledge and experience are exchanged.

We are witnessing the beginning of a new era in public communication and the birth of new media as significant as, or even more significant than, the development of television. Web 2.0 applications, as they are called, such as blogs and collaborative Web sites like Wikipedia, YouTube, MySpace, Furl.net, Linkedin.com Writely.com, Ma.gnolia.com and others, represent a fundamental shift because they enable the long-held view that communication should be two-way. In Web 2.0 applications, the operative concepts are conversations and communities, occurring through online forums, chat rooms, blogs and collaborative Web sites. It is only a matter of time before we see Wikinews – a global collaborative news service that will potentially dwarf CNN, the BBC and global wire services in content and subscribers. These new networks are rewriting the rules of media relations, community relations and stakeholder communication. One-way media such as traditional newspapers, brochures, non-interactive Web sites and newsletters including static e-newsletters are side roads and, in some cases, dead-ends in communication.

New routes to audiences are being constructed; new social networks are being built. We face a necessity and a great opportunity to chart a new course.


*****


Jim Macnamara has a 30-year career in media and communication and is an international authority on research for planning and measurement of public relations and corporate communication. After an early career in journalism, he worked in government and corporate public relations positions before founding and heading his own PR consultancy for 13 years with offices in Australia, Singapore and Indonesia and clients including Microsoft, Vodafone, Sony and Singapore Airlines. In 1995, after completing his Masters Degree by research into the impact of public relations on the media, he established the Asia Pacific franchise of CARMA International, a leading media analysis firm, and following its acquisition by the Media Monitors Group, continues as Group General Manager – Research. In 2005 he gained his Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in media research and a book based on his research into how media are making and remaking male identity was published by Palgrave Macmillan, London in September 2006. He is the author of 11 books on media and public relations and was appointed an Adjunct Professor in Public Communication at the University of Technology Sydney in 2005.

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