140 Public Relations Essay Topics & Examples

Looking for inspiring public relations topics? This field is really worth exploring!

  • 🔝 Top 10 PR Topics
  • 🏆 Best PR Essay Examples
  • 🕵 Current PR Topics to Research

👍 Interesting PR Topics to Write About

  • 🔥 Hot PR Assignment Topics
  • 🎓 Controversial PR Research Topics

❓ Public Relations Discussion Questions

In your public relations essay, you might want to focus on mass communication or media relations. Corporate PR is another current public relations assignment topic. In this article, we’ve gathered hot PR topics that will be suitable for essays, research papers, presentations, theses, and other projects. A collection of public relations essay examples is a nice bonus!

🔝 Top 10 Public Relations Topics

  • Public relations in business
  • History of public relations
  • Crisis management in political public relations
  • Public relations in non-governmental field
  • Ethical issues of public relations
  • Public relations and advertising: compare and contrast
  • Social media marketing as one of the key PR tactics
  • Audience targeting as a PR technique
  • Public relations campaign: the main stages
  • Classification of the publics in PR

🏆 Best Public Relations Essay Examples

  • Integrating Public Relations in Market Communication The objective of the public relations campaign was to communicate the value of Dawn to the customers as being a strong dishwasher.
  • Public Relations Plan for Regent’s College In Regent’s College case, the primary objective is to increase the visibility of the school to the public, as well as raise the profile of the institute.
  • The History of Public Relations The intention of these drives was to cultivate a favourable image in the eyes of the public and especially to the consumers and to the society in general.
  • Public Relations Strategies and Tactics The process of communication involves the sender encoding the message and sending it through a medium to the receiver, who is required to decode the message. The practitioners in this case are the senders of […]
  • Career Path Paper in Public Relations For an individual to successfully acquire a job opportunity in the field of public relation, the specifications depend on the level of the job.
  • Social Media and Public Relations In addition, Wikipedia has streamlined the process of information delivery on the internet because it allows individuals to add or delete unwanted information. The media has been accused of bias in almost every instance it […]
  • Public Relations Campaign To understand the problem at hand, it is important to give a brief overview of the project and the need to launch the campaign.
  • Fire and emergency public relations management The video publications are significant in the provision of information to the public and employees as well as educating the fire service employees on issues concerning fire and emergency management.
  • Impact of Social Media on Public Relations Practice Many organizations in the modern world have employed PR personnel to improve the company image and products to the public in a bid to improve the reputation and performance of the firm.
  • Public Relations and Relationship Marketing The organizers of the 2011 Mobile Research conference should consider using public relations and relationship marketing in order to ensure that the event promotion is successful.
  • The Effectiveness of Public Relations and Relationship Marketing Unlike the firms in the industries that deal with tangible goods, the firms in the service industry highly depend on their relationships with the customers in order to survive in the market.
  • Public Relations and Ethical Decisions Basing the discussion on the fact that public relations and ethics include “the client good that is served by professionals public relations, and the principle ordering the theoretical ground of public relations the public pledge […]
  • Regent College Public Relations This includes the definition of the problem, the definition of the audience, identification of the communication avenues and finally employing the best tactics and strategies to ensure that the project is successful.
  • Four Models of Public Relations So, the use of the press agentry model can be considered the most harmful when applied with the purpose of gaining money whereas the application of a two-way symmetric model is considered to be the […]
  • The Effectiveness of Public Relations and Relationship Marketing to the Successful Promotion of an International Event Due to the size and the caliber of the fair, the event attracts world renowned media houses such as BBC, The Telegraph, The Times, among others.
  • Public Relations However, it is important to understand that balancing the company’s need and those of the customer is a crucial step, and any strategy used by the company in the marketing process must be guided by […]
  • 2011 NBA Lockout: Public Relations Failure The NBA strike began on the 1st of July, 2011 and is still in effect until the time when the NBA owners and the National Basketball Players Association will make a deal.
  • Public Relations Plan – New Startup Company The revitalization of the image of the company will be helpful in attracting customers and improving the performance of the company. The chief objective of the company is to restore the image of the company […]
  • Public Relations and Crisis Management Link The significance of developing a CMP lies in the fact that it aids in the process of collecting the necessary information to deal with the crisis.
  • Public relations and sales promotion It will analyze them based on the regularity of the chosen strategy, the target audience which covers the customers, the potential customers and the community and also PR and its impact.

🕵 Current Public Relations Topics to Research

  • Strategic Planning for Public Relations BP oil’s public relations team had to work round the clock to disseminate information, answer questions and win the hearts and minds of the people closest to the site of the accident.
  • Propaganda, Persuasion and Public Relations For example in the case of the Australia’s cancellation of the Fuel Watch program Senator Xenaphon utilized propaganda stating that Fuel Watch was not an effective means of helping consumers stating the need to tackle […]
  • The Coca Cola Public Relations: PR Strategy and Examples — Case Study Example The Coca Cola Company is an international firm based in the United States and is one of the leading manufacturers of soft drinks and other related products.
  • Public Relations Campaign Strategy: Newlandia Education Foundation The aim of communication campaign among people in these regions will be to enhance public awareness of NEF activities, increase public participation in activities of NEF, outline the various ways donations and support for NEF […]
  • Essential Foundations of the Public Relations According to Curtin and Gaither, there exists four main criticisms of the paradigm of the public relations: “the definition of public relations as a management function; the reliance on functional, transmission models of communication; the […]
  • Discussion on Grunig and Hunt’s Public Relations Model In regard to this model, Grunig and Hunt propose that communication is two-way between the organization and the public. In these models, the writers present communication to the public and the organization and therefore the […]
  • Public Relations and Relationship Marketing in Business Organisations One of the factors behind this dynamism is the change in the means of communication, the rate of dissemination of information and the advancement of technology.
  • The Effectiveness of Public Relations and Relationship Marketing to the Successful Promotion of Winbeldon Championships This is referred to as the relationship marketing and is aimed at achieving the objective of creating customer loyalty for products offered by the company, interaction between the company and the market it serves, and […]
  • Effectiveness of Public Relations & Relationship Marketing to the Successful Promotion of Beijing 2008 Olympic Games To conclude, it is evident from the assessment that public relations and relationship marketing are effective to the successful promotion of international events.
  • A Public Relations Campaign Plan In the USA, for example, there have been complaints regarding increased healthcare costs, a lack of stringent rules to guide people, especially the young, on proper usage of prescribed drugs, inability to take care of […]
  • Public Relations Theory And Campaign These tools assist in conveying a message to the public, and in return, the public begin to act according to the influence of the communication.
  • Importance of Public Relations and Relationship Marketing The study also intends to incorporate relationship marketing theory to further the understanding of how the organization can manage to achieve the desired goal in a manner that would be convincing to all the stakeholders […]
  • Advertising, Publicity, and Public Relations Publicity is the act of drawing the attention of the media in order to improve the visibility of a brand, product or a company in the public. Second, publicity is cost-effective and provides a lot […]
  • Public Relations and Customer Loyalty When a firm has a strong brand image in the market, the perception of the public would always be influenced positively towards the firm, and this will increase loyalty of the customers towards the firm.
  • Strategic Communication in Public Relations Slogans, staged events, and being the first to reach the public and using a sustained approach to saturate the public with campaign messages are old tricks that have passed on from the informal forms of […]
  • Solving Ethical Dilemmas in Public Relations In the case study, the main problem arises from the client’s deceit concerning the independent nature of the scientist testing the products in a bid to ensure a favorable public image of the products to […]
  • Public Relations and the Big Brother Legislation The current developments in technology that have warranted the development of the internet has reduced the amount of money invested in communication as well as increased the number of people that are communicated to and […]
  • How Does Internal Public Relations Impact the Employee Productivity and Loyalty in Saudi Arabia? This study therefore intends to synthesize the issue of internal public relations and how it impacts the productivity and loyalty of employees in Saudi Arabia.
  • Apple and Samsung Companies Virtual Public Relations According to Gregory, a website is like an ambassador of the firm to the world, and the impression it gives will be assumed to be the real image of the firm it represents.
  • Breast Cancer Public Relations Campaign Audiences It is clear that the breast cancer campaign will target at women in their 30-40s as this is one of the most vulnerable categories of women as they often pay little attention to the […]
  • Public Relations: Omnicom Group Website Analysis It is also involved in the control of the flow of information from the client to the media or the public.
  • Public Relations in the United Arab Emirates The Middle East Public Relations Association is a not-for-profit establishment with the sole prerogative of securing the welfares of the public relations industry in the region.
  • Rex Harlow as a Historical Figure in Public Relations Rex Harlow is considered one of the most influential pioneers in the history of public relations. Harlow’s involvement in the Oklahoma City Chamber of Commerce and experience in publication provoked a public relations interest.
  • Public Relations in Not-For-Profit Organisations In the context of non-profit organisations, PR departments can be viewed as semi-autonomous systems that can make their independent decisions with regard to the type of information that should be shared with the public. It […]
  • Effective Writing Skills in Public Relations Writing Same as writing style, the length of a public relations writing is determined by the nature of the message in terms of content, and the need for an in-depth explanation.
  • Public Relations and Cultural Intermediation The significance of PR studies as such is both theoretical and practical; as for the narrow topic of the study, the primary importance of recognising PR as a cultural mediator, in the view of Edwards, […]
  • Photography Company’s Public Relations Campaign The accomplishment of each aim will be performed following the specificity of the targeted audience that is supposed to be composed of the middle-class population of the Seattle Area. In the meantime, they expect that […]
  • Wind Future Company’s Public Relations Plan In support of Windy City Council marketing objectives and community relations, the following objectives of its PR plans are: To increase the council’s recognition and credibility.
  • Etisalat’s Entrepreneurial Decisions and Public Relations The full title of the company is Emirates Telecommunications Corporation, its headquarters are situated in the UAE, and, at the moment, it appears to provide more than a half of all the telecommunication, mobile, and […]
  • Public Relations: Media Tools and Communication Technology The central goal of transparency is it to ensure that all the critical information about the company is available to consumers, and it helps to increase the level of trust.
  • Excellent Public Relations: Organizational Factors The chapter supports the view that PR is not only to be appreciated and valued by the C-suite but the representatives of PR departments should also be present in the dominant coalition.
  • Job Advert for a Public Relations Manager This paper, therefore, addresses the implications of the operational gap and provides a memo to a hiring manager to solve the issue.
  • E-Newsletters: Online Public Relations Further, the emergence of the internet has provided a wide variety of approaches that organizations can use to reach their customers and potential users of their products in the market.
  • The Online Public Relations Concept Organizational transparency can be measured by identifying the degree to which it shares the information and to which it allows contact with people who can provide this information.
  • Press Secretary Profession in Public Relations This study aims to research the history of the public relations industry and to examine the effects of government regulations, the internet, and the international community on the industry.
  • Public Relations and Marketing History: The Stages of Development and Progress It is reasonable to review the literature on this subject matter to get a better understanding of the stages of development and progress that was shown over the years.
  • Public Relations in Healthcare and Their Features Practically, healthcare PR has many objectives, the most vital of which are the improvement of the quality of care, the establishment of a good reputation, and the reduction of cost of care.
  • Public Relations: Ethics, Technology, Communication The study addresses the problem of ethics in public relations by proving that it is a global issue and is implemented worldwide.
  • Public Relations Practice Improvement by Public Opinion In order to understand how this happens, it is necessary to define a public opinion, examine its connections to public relations, describe what improvements in public relations mean, and explain the ways in which understanding […]
  • Augmented Reality in Public Relations Domain The rationale behind this suggestion has to do with the fact that the integration of AR into the very philosophy of PR is fully consistent with the most fundamental principles of the human brain’s functioning.

🔥 Hot Public Relations Assignment Topics

  • Public Relations in Canada and the United States Practicing public relations in Canada and the United States has both differences and similarities in terms of educational orientation, required skills, and constructs involved in communication and public relations integration.
  • Canadian Public Relations and Management Functions The functions within this specific field of study can make or break a particular person or corporation since it has been noted that the perception of the general public towards a particular entity can result […]
  • Sunrise Ltd.’s Public Relations Management In the aspect of the power of buyers, it is clear that Sunrise Ltd.is under threat, considering the value of the houses that are traded to the real estate clients.
  • Toyota Company’s Public Relations and Marketing The recall crisis has led to the development of a negative perception and public image of Toyota Company. The internal society within the Toyota Company forms the first and most important stakeholders in this campaign.
  • Public Relations Plan Implementation The interview is to be properly developed, the questions are to be directed at understanding why people still refuse to use the services of the company and to buy their products rather than search for […]
  • Australian Volunteers International: Public Relations The intention of this proposal is to endorse a conservation volunteer campaign that is aimed at reducing the pollution levels in China, which is among the countries that have high levels of environmental degradation in […]
  • Public Relations: Profession and Practice 2 This gives a good image of the company since the community feels part of the organization, and, therefore, the community supports fully the activities of the organization.
  • Public Relations Strategy and Campaigns The main aim of the strategy is to build a viable relationship between a company and its target audience. The main goal of the strategy was to increase the sales of soda globally.
  • Obesity: Public Relations Campaign It will aid in educating youths about the dangers of childhood obesity and the factors that expose them to the condition.
  • Public Relations and Sponsorships: Emirates Airlines and the NFL in 2020 Super Bowl Super Bowl is often held in the first week of February and it involves the winners of the National and American Football Conferences.
  • Effects of Public Relations in the United Arab Emirates Arguments made in the essay will support the premise that public relations are equally important in the strategic positioning of countries on both the global and regional levels.
  • Aramco Company’s Public Relations Department Considering this, the establishment of a public relations department in Aramco is important, and the present report aims to demonstrate why the launch of such a unit can provide the company with advantages in dealing […]
  • Public Relations: a Method to Organize and Boost Sales In any business situation, the public relations role is to harmonize the internal and external workings of an organization. To enhance the corporate image of the organization and boost the sales of the products and […]
  • McDonalds-Public Relations Practice in Global Contexts Like other retail organizations, McDonald’s believed that they have a social and moral responsibility for the people around the world to produce a positive impact to the stakeholders although the bottom line is the concern […]
  • Public Relations Efforts Evaluation Taking into account the objectives of the rideshare week, it is necessary to emphasize, that the increase of participants may be defined either using the registration data of Ohio Rideshare, or arranging surveys and questionnaires […]
  • Model of Excellence Theory in Public Relations Department For the public relations department, establishing good relationship with the clients and people associated with the company is most important and more important is the way to retain this relationship.
  • What the Public Thinks About Public Relations? Public relations is one of the marketing communications disciplines, best thought of as an arsenal of weapons employed to induce adoption of an advocacy position, trial or purchase of a product or service, and assent […]
  • Public Relations and Their Functions One of the common scenarios with organizations is the characteristic of any organization trying to influence the general public hence the public relations initiatives help the organization to develop a good understanding of the organization […]
  • Public Relations and Integrated Marketing Communications in Organization Under the globalization regime, with the availability of a wide variety of tools for marketing communication to cater to a diverse target segment located in geographically diverse regions across the globe, an integrated approach is […]
  • Public Relations and Crisis Plans for Schools The members of the school will develop a good reputation with the general community. The idea, operation and basis of the relationship should be well known by the community and school.

🎓 Controversial Public Relations Research Topics

  • Public Relations Law in Australia Defamation cases in Australia are said to be too expensive in terms of time, reputation and money. Defamation cases in Australia are said to be too expensive in terms of time, reputation and money.
  • Public Relations. Press Release of J.Sanisbury It is precisely for gaining a larger market share and serving more customers, that JS has launched its money-saving and discount voucher schemes, off the counter to add value to client purchases and offer a […]
  • The Role of Journalists and Public Relations Professionals in Information Sphere Hurst et al noted that journalists are usually concerned with the interests of the public and that they use the media to communicate to the public but for the public relation officers they usually release […]
  • Roe v Wade: Public Relations Industry Therefore, the burden of responsibility lies on this very industry to heal the wounds of the past and address the concerns of rights groups on both sides of the debate.
  • Public Relations and its importance in Modern Society Public relations is the procedure of checking the flow of information between an institution and its community. This became a success and thus led to creation of awareness to the Americans of the influence that […]
  • Public Relations Campaign Harbour Town Rural Council Green Gift group; why are the locals against or in support of the plan; what are the issues in conflict between the locals and the council, the green Gift and the council, the locals and […]
  • Public Relations: The Four Models This is because the three models involve use of a reciprocal communication method that enables corporations to understand the public’s worries while enabling the public to appreciate the firm as a well meaning entity.
  • Ethics in Public Relations in Three Big Companies Lastly, Facebook claims it enlisted the help of the PR company to verify people’s negative attitudes towards the inclusion of their Facebook data in Google’s Social Circles.
  • Public Relations Agencies in Business Development As for the opinions of the heavyweight people and organizations on the agency, they seem to be undivided, and this is a result of the hard work of public relations specialists from Iris PR.
  • Public Relations Representative Possible Strategies If Erickson decides to come to the governor, he will have to announce a request to stop the fertilizer production in order to clarify the circumstances and to address problem-solving methods.
  • Chemco Crisis Resolution and Public Relations In the real estate case mentioned in the case study, it is fundamental to note that the real estate company is in a crisis hence the need to resolve the conflict.
  • Public Relations Plan: Toyota In particular, the most significant among the dilemmas that have currently emerged around Toyota is in serious allegations on the level of quality of automobiles, produced by the company.
  • Careers in Marketing, Branding & Public Relations Among the competencies of marketing, a specialist is the way of presentation of the product, the methods of informing the target audience about it, and collecting and analyzing the data for evaluating the success of […]
  • Walmart: New Perspectives on International Public Relations Walmart is one of the largest multinational corporations, which uses its public relations in order to establish its brand and influence public opinion regarding the company.
  • Framing: Social Media and Public Relations Notably, the media echoed the impact of the government’s behavior on increasing students’ tuition fees, citing that it would limit the students’ ability to pay the debts amidst the prevailing economic problems.
  • Zappos Corporation Public Relations Zappos is one of the corporations that have handled the issue of public relations well in the past. Being a company that was in the limelight, it needed a way to give back to the […]
  • Public Relations Plan and Implementation Strategies The goal of the training will be to ensure the team develops the confidence to sell the brand to the consumers.
  • “Public Relations – Strategies and Tactics” by Wilcox A public relations practitioner of a company is supposed to identify the strategy with whom the company should have relationships. The department of public relations should assure the clients that Evergreen flooring system is committed […]
  • Burke’s Pentad: Public Relations, Social Theory, and Rhetoric On the example of one of Jeff Wall’s photographs, it is illustrated how the motivation of an actor in this paradigm can be described in different ways in terms of the viewer’s focus.
  • Public Relations Campaign for Hewlett-Packard’s Recycling Program in Britain Part of the activities of this program is the sensitization of consumers on e-waste and the recycling of computers and their components.
  • What Kinds of Objectives Can Be Accomplished Through Public Relations Research?
  • What Are the Practical, Ethical, and Legal Implications of Astroturfing for Public Relations Practitioners Under Current Australian Law?
  • What Are the Standard Tools of Public Relations?
  • What Is Secondary Research in Public Relations?
  • How Can the Dairy Farmers Use Public Relations Coursework?
  • How Has the Public Relations Changed Over the Past Decade?
  • Is Public Relations More Important than Marketing?
  • What Are the Weakness of Public Relations?
  • What Are the Types of Public Relations?
  • What Is the Main Aim of Public Relations?
  • What Are Public Relations Doing in a ‘Place’ Like Place Marketing?
  • Why Should Public Relations Professionals Use Facebook?
  • What Are Public Relations Research and Evaluation?
  • Public Relations: What Does This Job Entail?
  • How Do Luxury Fashion Brands Centralize Public Relations?
  • How Companies Use Public Relations to Launch New Products and Lessen the Effects of a Crisis?
  • What Is the Difference between Marketing and PR?
  • What Does a Career in Public Relations Look Like?
  • What Comes First Marketing or PR?
  • What Is the Difference between Journalism and Public Relations?
  • How Psychoanalysis Changed Society With Consumerism and Public Relations?
  • Did the Board Cover Any Guidelines Be a Public Relations Policy?
  • How Do Public Relations Programs Work?
  • What Are the Functions of Public Relations?
  • What Are the Three Dominant Approaches in Public Relations Research?
  • What Is Research in Public Relations and Advertising?
  • Why Honesty and Ethics Are Crucial for Public Relations?
  • How Can Teachers Motivate Students to Study Theoretical Modules in Public Relations?
  • How Can Public Relations Communications Theory Help Us Understand the Role of New Media?
  • How Gender Issues Affect Income in Public Relations?
  • Chicago (A-D)
  • Chicago (N-B)

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Public Relations Dissertation Topics

Published by Grace Graffin at January 4th, 2023 , Revised On August 15, 2023

Public relations is a communication process aimed at building a positive relationship between an organization and its audience. In other words, a public relations professional is responsible for using strategic communication to build a positive image of an organization or individual through unpaid and earned means. The earned channels leveraged to build a positive image include news and press, media outreach, and social media engagements.

Public relations is a lot different from advertising and is much difficult too. Using unpaid means and earned channels for image building is difficult than employing paid methodologies for creating brand awareness and image.

In essence, public relation is a significant part of an organization; it is the fundamental art and science of creating a goodwill relationship between an organization and its audience. The operations involve assessing and improving the two-way communication of an organization with its key audience.

Given its high importance for a company, a public relations professional has to be the master of his job. Choosing public relations as a career is deemed as a very excellent choice, as its demand and importance are gaining importance day by day.

You might have approached or just entered your final year of the public relations degree and may require to start working on the dissertation. If that is the case, you may be quite nervous and slightly clueless as to where to begin your work. Well, all of that process starts with choosing a topic, a worthy topic. If you are strangled in selecting the right topic for your public relations dissertation , here are a few topics along with their research aims for your guidance.

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2022 Public Relations Dissertation Topics

Topic 1: investigating the role of target marketing through public relations while confronting the increasing competition in digital marketing..

Research Aim: The research aim examines the significance of target marketing with the help of public relations while dealing with the rising competition in digital marketing.

Objectives:

  • To identify the use of public relations strategies for target marketing practices.
  • To analyse the way companies use PR strategies for target marketing to gain competitive advantages in digital marketing activities.
  • To suggest ideas about how PR strategies can be used in a better way for target marketing thereby confronting competition in digital marketing.

Topic 2: Examining the role of different PR tools in improving relations between brands and customers – a study on the usefulness of newsletters.

Research Aim: The research aims to identify and assess the usefulness of different PR tools to improve the relationship between brands and customers. For analysing PR tools, this study will specifically focus on the use of newsletters.

  • To identify different PR tools and analyse their importance in marketing, especially newsletters.
  • To investigate the role of newsletters as a PR tool in improving relations between brands and customers.
  • To recommend strategies about how newsletters can be used more strategically to improve relations between brands and customers.

Topic 3: A study on the impact of the rising demand and trend of digital marketing on the radical changes in public relations strategies.

Research Aim: The research aim is to carry out a detailed discussion on the impacts of the growing demands and ongoing trend of digital marketing on the radical changes in public relations strategies in the modern age.

  • To describe how demand for digital marketing is increasing and the way it is being an important trend.
  • To examine how changes in PR strategies are driven by the trend of digital marketing and rising demands for advanced marketing practices.
  • To provide recommendations for advancing the PR strategies to respond to the increasing demands of digital marketing.

Topic 4: The impact of paid PR on the brand penetration of UK based tech startups through their social media platforms

Research Aim: The research aim evaluates the impact of paid PR on the brand penetration of UK based tech startups through their social media platforms

  • To shed light on the concept of brand penetration and paid PR
  • To examine the significance of brand penetration and paid PR in UK based tech startups
  • To analyse how brand penetration of UK based tech startups has been impacted by paid PR through their social media platforms

Topic 5: An investigation into the different ways paid PR is impacting the workforce and productivity of the UK based SMEs

Research Aim: The research aim concentrates on the different ways paid PR is impacting the workforce and productivity of the UK based SMEs.

  • To examine the concept of paid PR and its importance in SMEs
  • To identify different ways through which the workforce and productivity of the UK based SMEs can be improved
  • To evaluate how paid PR in different ways is impacting the workforce and productivity of the UK based SMEs

Topic 1: Impact of social media on public relations strategies

Research Aim:  Even since social media has been incepted, it is changing the patterns of communications in regular and corporate settings. Social media has inevitably changed how organizations interact with their audience since they are ensuring their presence on relevant platforms.

The main aim of the research will be to identify how social media has affected traditional public relations strategies.

Topic 2: The relationship between public relations and inbound marketing

Research Aim:  Inbound marketing uses multiple marketing tools and techniques such as content marketing, blogs, and social media to create brand awareness and attract new business. Inbound marketing aims to build a relationship of goodwill with the customers, consumers, and prospects which somehow relates to public relations.

The aim of the research is to identify how(if ) public relations and inbound marketing are related to each other by tracing their overlapping characteristics.

Topic 3: Can Public relations and advertising go hand in hand

Research Aim:  Most people confuse public relations for advertising, although they are two separate strategies employed to achieve similar goals for a business. In that regard, it is important to identify if public relations and advertising can go hand in hand and what outcomes they may cause.

Topic 4: Public relations and artificial intelligence

Research Aim:  The future belongs to artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence refers to technology   that can imitate human cognitive abilities and thus perform tasks that are ascribed to humans. Since artificial intelligence is going to take over, in fact, it already has, it will change the operation for public relations. The responses and communication generated by public relations professionals will be generated by bots geared with artificial intelligence.

The target of the research will be identifying how and in what capacity artificial intelligence will modify the practice of public relations.

Topic 5: Differences between traditional vs modern public relation practices

Research Aim: The aim of the research will be to compare and contrast the conventional and modern practices of public relations. The researcher will evaluate the key practices employed and the channels selected today versus a couple of decades ago and highlight the key differences. The researcher can identify as many variables as possible to perform a clear and broad comparison between both strategies.

Topic 6: The evolution of the PR agency model

Research Aim: The PR agency model today is not the same as what it used to be a couple of years ago. The researcher will study and evaluate the evolution process of the PR agency model and key changes that have occurred over the period.

Topic 7: Significance of public relations for social media influencers

Research Aim:  Social media influencers are gaining more importance as they are influencer marketing is reaching new heights. While they play a significant role in helping brands achieve their marketing goals, they need to build a public relation to keep themselves relevant, credible, and valuable to a particular niche. The aim of the research will be to identify how it is important for social media influencers to strengthen their PR strategies.

Topic 8: positive public relations- case study

Research Aim: Public relations is perceived in a negative connotation in general; although, it is not like that. The aim of the research is to study and highlight positive public relations through different case studies. The researcher can choose the very immediate examples or take global examples.

Topic 9: public relations strategy employed by brands in the pandemic

Research Aim: While pandemic was a shocking situation for all of us, the brands were having multiple problems in terms of managing health as well as the economic crisis at a time. During the pandemic, different responses of different brands were noted, which were a part of the public relations policy. The aim of the research is to identify how brands were able to execute their public relations strategy.

Topic 10: Public relations as an instrument to increase ROI

Research Aim: The main goal of public relations is to increase brand awareness, promote goodwill, and increase demand. The aim of the research is to identify if public relations campaign can be oriented to increase the ROI and, if it does, How?

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Topic 11: Effectiveness of public relations in the health sector- case study

Research Aim: Public relations is only associated with businesses, politics, and media, but it can be used for just every sector. The research will identify how necessary public relations are and how effective they can be for the health sector by conducting a case study.

Topic 12: Uses and abuses of public relations

Research Aim:  Although public relations strategies are useful and important, they have flaws of their own kind. The flaws lie in how the strategy is prepared and executed and the goals it aims to target.

The aim of the research will be to identify and analyze the uses and abuses of public relations. The researcher can evaluate in what ways public relations can be useful and in what ways they cannot.

Topic 13: Importance of public relations for political parties in the age of technology

Research Aim: The political parties rely on public relations to establish a relationship of goodwill and create a good image in front of the public. With the advent of social media, political parties have to be extra conscious as one act can ruin their established credibility. The study will aim to find out how it has become more important than ever for political parties to focus on public relations for their own benefit.

Also Read: Politics Dissertation Topics

Topic 14: Public relations and journalism

Research Aim:  The aim of the research is to identify how public relations is important in journalism and vice versa. The research will also identify the key similarities between public relations and journalism. The researcher can also point out to what extent public relations is misused by political leaders to influence journalism.

Also Read: Media Dissertation Topics

Topic 15: How PR programs have affected the government plans and decisions around the world

Research Aim: The research will analyze and evaluate how public relations programs run by state heads or governments have affected their decisions and plans. The researcher can take the example of successful and unsuccessful PR campaigns and their impact, respectively.

Topic 16: How technology has changed the strategies of public relations

Research Aim: The research will evaluate and figure out the changes that occurred to public relations strategies due to the technology. The researcher can evaluate the impact of different technologies to understand the impact.

Topic 17: Whistleblowers and public relations

Research Aim:  Whistleblowers are individuals responsible for reporting any wrongdoings that may cause a threat to society to those in authority to rectify them. The whistleblowers thus play an important role in helping public leaders in improving public relations. The aim of the research would be to find out the wide-ranging benefits of whistleblowers for making effective public relations plans.

Topic 18: Trends in advertising and public relations to look forward to

Research Aim: The aim of the research is to find out the trends in advertising and public relations today and in the future. The research will also find the potential of each trend to evaluate how long it is expected to remain relevant in their respective fields.

Topic 19: Importance of strategic communication in PR

Research Aim: Communication is the key tool of PR. The research will find the definition of strategic communication. It will also identify and explore the importance of strategic communication in PR and the ways to improve it.

Topic 20: Tourism and public relations

Research Aim:  The aim of the research is to identify the importance of public relations for tourism sectors for enhancing tourism. Tourism is not something about the tourists and destination, but it is a major sector of government, if focused on, that can help economic growth. It will analyze and evaluate the key elements essential for fostering tourism that is possible with public relations.

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To discover public relations dissertation topics:

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  • Analyze PR strategies’ effectiveness.
  • Explore ethics and social media’s role.
  • Consider cross-cultural PR issues.
  • Select a topic aligning with your passion and career objectives.

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Updated: Public relations dissertation topics

Its dissertation season for MA media and public relations university students. Here are more than 40 potential areas of study.

For the last four years I’ve been a Visiting Professor at Newcastle University, supporting the university and students through teaching and mentoring.

An MA dissertation is a 12,000-word document in which you make a reasonable argument, answering a research question, problem or hypothesis, based on evidence. That evidence is collected and the document written in a few short months.

A dissertation must be made of good, university-style writing, well-organised, consistently cited and formatted, and 12,000 words in length.

I'm frequently asked by public relations students at Newcastle and elsewhere for advice on choosing a dissertation topic.

Professor Benno Signitzer at the University of Salzburg wrote a chapter on this topic in Public Relations Research: An International Perspective . It’s worth seeking out. Thanks to Professor Dejan Verčič from the University of Ljubljana for the reference.

My answer is always to follow a passion and ideally use it as an opportunity to set yourself up for your career. The ideal is a topic aligned to a developing area of practice.

“I'd say to make it as specific to your dream career as possible. Even if career visions change in the future, you'll enjoy researching and writing it at the time and therefore won't get bored and find more motivation,” said Livi Wilkes, Digital Public Relations Consultant, Aira.

Avoid populist topics and go deep. The best dissertations are original and niche. They make a genuine contribution to the professional body of knowledge in public relations.

Your research question needs to be one that can be answered in a few short months. It needs to be simple and focused.

A good research question describes clearly exactly what you want to find out. It is self-contained, straightforward and logical. It should be modest, measuring only one or two variables with respect to your object of study.

“Explore a very small, easily defined area and use rigorous academic research methods to establish new knowledge or explore a topic from a new perspective,” said Liz Bridgen, Principal Lecturer, Department of Media Arts and Communication, Sheffield Hallam University.  
“What’s your elevator pitch? I want to understand the application of your research in practice – in three minutes or less,” said Ramona Slusarczyk, Lecturer in PR and Corporate Communications, Newcastle University.

In the past two years I’ve asked my network on Facebook for suggestions for areas of study. I’ve been called out by several people for short cutting an important area of the research process.

This wasn’t my intention. Instead I wanted to share issues that are challenging practitioners.

I’ve consistently said that we need to encourage better engagement between research, teaching and practice. If that’s not your view, please look away now.

Thank you to everyone who participated in the discussion. Each suggestion is a jumping off point for further investigation.

The only way is ethics

How does post truth or fake news change the way public relations operates and how does it sit alongside codes of practice? Jane Crofts

Should social media be held to the same journalistic standards as other media outlets? Lauren Oldy

How important is the truth versus storytelling. Ged Caroll

We've always believed good public relations should be open, transparent etc. But what if we're wrong? What if good public relations is actually as dishonest, ugly and brazen as you can make it? Jemima Gibbons

How should practitioners ensure that messages resonate in an era of fake news and post truth? Rob Bruce

The importance of trusted brands in a post-truth world. In other words why the claims about your cornflakes are held to a higher standard than the claims of political candidates. Nick Jones

What does transparency in public relations look like? Aly Sandhaus Saxe

Does anyone have the right to be forgotten? Claire Thompson

Data and the science of measurement

How can public relations be measured more effectively; focusing on whether public relations campaigns should be treated the same as marketing ones; using the same tools such as Salesforce and Marketo. Paul Wooding

Measuring the effectiveness of video as a means of communication in the social sphere. Dan Slee

Test measurement frameworks for Paid, Earned, Shared and Owned (PESO) communications and content. Michelle Goodall

How can data be used to improve the impact of campaigns? Is this a route to improving the perception of public relations in society? Rob Bruce

Data visualisation looking not just at economist infographics and similar but a historical review of people such as Florence Nightingale who understood the importance of conveying a story succinctly in an as easy to understand form as possible. Rob Ashwell

Does reputation have a monetary value? Ella Minty

The business of influence

Study the behavioural economics aspects of the science of influence –influencing perceptions in order to influence market behaviour – how individual minds work, as well as the collective. Steve Schuster

What does influence look like for the next generation? Becky McMichael

What’s the role of social media influencers as part of a modern public relations campaign Stephen Waddington

Reputation wars

What makes a brand invincible? How and why do some brands die due to reputational harm, while others seem to shrug off a crisis and carry on regardless? Joe Hanley

Evidence based research showing how trust in the conventional [media] has been eroded over the past decade and the impact this has on society and business. Andy West

How do bots propagate and what are potential defensive strategies? Dan Howarth

Characterising the public relations profession

Explore the lack of diversity in the public relations profession; LGBT, women at the top, disability, ethnicity and social mobility. Sarah Stimson

How do CEOs perceive public relations and what needs to be done to improve understanding of the strategic value it can add? Sarah Hall

What skills and understanding does the communications advisor to the board need to be credible? Should reputation sit above sales and marketing in the corporate hierarchy? Patrick Blewer

Why are ethnic minorities under-represented in public relations? Liz Bridgen

Why do so many women leave public relations? Liz Bridgen

Is social media helping to reduce inequalities – or is everything staying the same? Liz Bridgen

Is public relations dead? We tend to work in wider communications roles now and need knowledge and skills to survive. Michelle Atkinson

How do you build mental resilience in journalism and public relations, particularly post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) through exposure to traumatic events and materials, as well as the wider issues around the job and its impact on mental health? Bridget Aherne

Personal versus professional expectations: where does a job and public persona end and personal life begin? Ella Minty

Is the news cycle dead? Matt Muir

Does the connected economy increase the need for niche specialism? Adrian Bridgwater

Characterise the rise of online and social echo chambers and the impact they have on decision-making. Julio Romo

Media platforms

How low can production values be? We're in the social media age, with Facebook Live, YouTube live streaming as video-based platforms, and Facebook and LinkedIn and lots more as type-based platforms. So how garbled can the sound be, how fuzzy can the video be, how distorted can the speakers be, and so on? Brian Kilgore

How can global, US-run social networks effectively deal with personal attacks, death threats or even define trolling, when they have a US President that is normalising [trolling]? Jemima Gibbons

Explore emerging strategies as companies increasingly need to market to an algorithm [rather than a human being]. Rob Flaherty

Future of public relations

What is the role of paid media in public relations programmes? Ged Caroll

The impact of artificial intelligence on content creation and distribution. Explore ethics, impact on jobs, and the relationship between the quality and quantity of content and the role it plays in manipulating the human brain. Helen Keegan

Explore digital as a means of genuine business transformation, compared with when it is used as a bolt on or stick plaster. Dan Purvis

What is the likely impact of voice search and home automation devices on brand reputation? Matt Anderson

What’s the impact of artificial intelligence on skills and workflow in public relations? Stephen Waddington

What’s the impact of artificial intelligence on media and public discourse? Stephen Waddington

Public relations education

Are we teaching students the necessary skills to succeed in the industry locally, nationally, and globally? Ai Addyson-Zhang

How do leading public relations companies and agencies perceive the value of public relations education? Ai Addyson-Zhang

Public relations in practice

Explore the fundamental changes of internal communication due to internal social media. Holger Sievert

Explore the use of social media by parties in a political campaign. Paula Clare Keaveney

Explore the application of social media in hospitals as part of the patient journey. Alexander Verstappen

What role should public relations play in a hostile takeover? How can it be justified, and used as a positive promotion of the business? Ella Minty

Should public relations practitioners own or participate in the company narrative or content strategy as part of an integrated public relations approach? Ruth Jones

Here's my blog post from last year .

research paper topics on public relations

Tech in marketing and PR: more than shiny objects searching for problems

Agencies as a foundation for entrepreneurs.

118 Public Relations Topics

If you are writing a paper on public relations, you will need to explore the dynamic world of communication, reputation management, and strategic messaging. On this page, we’ve gathered an outstanding compilation of public relations topics that you can use for an essay, research paper, or project. With the help of our PR topics, you could reveal how public relations shape the perception of organizations in the public eye.

🏆 Best Public Relations Essay Topics

  • 📰 Interesting Public Relation Topics

🎓 Catchy PR Topics

💡 simple public relations research topics, ❓ questions for a public relations research.

  • Public Relations Theories and Models
  • Public Relations in the Hair and Beauty Sector
  • Role of Women in Public Relations
  • Lululemon Athletica Company’s Public Relations
  • Coca-Cola Light: Public Relations and Marketing
  • Public Relations and Photography
  • ABC Company’s Public Relations: Strategic Plan

📰 10 Interesting Public Relation Topics

  • Public Relations, Marketing, and Advertising In this paper, three close concepts, which are public relations, marketing, and advertising, will be compared and contrasted to identify similarities and differences.
  • Effective Public Relations in the Fashion Industry The influence of public relations on other aspects of marketing, as well as on the perception and attitude of potential buyers to the promoted product.
  • Healthcare Marketing and Public Relations This paper discusses the marketing strategy of health care, including dealing with the negative reviews and managing long-term mutually beneficial relations.
  • Alibaba Group’s Public Relations and Responsibility Alibaba Group also pays attention to the development of such two fields as the marketing and corporate social responsibility or the corporate citizenship.
  • The Art of Persuasion and Public Relations The art of persuasion appears almost in the fields related to human interactions, such as advertising, TV, the Internet, and mass media.
  • Public Relations in Organizations: Article Response Communication affects all aspects of an organization including management, public relations, marketing and political communication, technical communication.
  • Role of Public Relations Staff in a Sports Organization This paper highlights this very function and role of a PR staff in managing a crisis in a sports organization through his skills in effective communication and modern media management.
  • Public Relations Campaign A public relations campaign’s objectives, target audience, organization’s goals, and required communication medium must all be defined in a complete Media Plan.
  • Sea Shepherd: Public Relations Proposal The proposal suggests the alternatives the Sea Shepherd organization can adopt in responding to future accusations or when effectively wants to communicate to its publics.
  • Optus Company: Organizational Public Relations Problem This report presents an analysis of the organizational PR problem of the company “Optus” based on media articles that followed particular “crisis” situations providing recommendations on managing those issues.
  • What Is Public Relations? As a PR professional, I expect to play an active role in monitoring public opinion over specific issues that affect the organization or client that I represent.
  • Corporate Communications and Public Relations Corporate communications involve both internal and external information that the company’s management addresses to its employees, target audiences, and partners.
  • Emerging Technologies in Public Relations The work reveals that PR experts are presently utilizing emerging technologies to complete their research works successfully and maximize productivity.
  • The 2008 Beijing Olympics: Public Relations Issues Advertisement China did during and at the close of the Olympics was a life-changing that was able to convince the entire world that things were not as earlier thought.
  • Alcohol and Drug Foundation’s Public Relations The campaign conducted by Alcohol and Drug Foundation is a vivid example of how the theories and practices of PR can help alter people’s behavior.
  • Public Relations: Preparing for a Job Preparing for a job in public relations requires developing and mastering skills related to public relations. In particular, soft skills present one of the top requirements.
  • Measuring Public Relations and Advertising Efforts Advertising programs should be measured primarily by the organization’s internal experts. It is because “advertising is one of the main ways companies generate business”.
  • Cyber and Public Relations in an Organization The paper states that public relations professionals are essential to an organization. Modern technology has introduced digital corporate PR.
  • Larry Summers’s Public Relations Advisor: Case Study This paper will analyze and discuss the final decision on whether to fire or hire Summers, which rests with the Harvard Board.
  • What Is the Role of Rhetoric in Public Relations Practice? In public relations, rhetoric helps PR managers and administrators to appeal to the emotions of the target audience and their internal feelings.
  • Commercial Law: Sprod v Public Relations Oriented Security In Sprod v Public Relations Oriented Security, the plaintiff was found lying in a pool of blood at the northern side of the Great Western Highway at St Marys.
  • DM Public Relations’ Business Proposal to Agency-net DM Public Relations will assist Agency-net in emphasizing the Strategic Thinking Process. This is not the same as strategic planning.
  • Race and Gender in Public Relations The project evaluates the role of gender and race diversity in the field of public relations by exploring the experience of women and black people in building their careers.
  • Race and Gender in Public Relations Field This capstone paper examines the impact of race and gender diversity on building careers in the sphere of public relations.
  • Chess Girls DC Organization’s Public Relations The key challenge encountered by Chess Girls DC is the lack of constant funding that creates a shortage of coaches and equipment for appropriate training.
  • Hospital’s Image Recovery and Public Relations In the long-term perspective, it will be significant to concentrate on the employees’ performance and the conditions to recreate the image of the hospital.
  • The Public Relations Practices of Tesla Motors
  • Public Relations and Other Corporate Functions
  • The Public Relations Industry
  • Science, Technology, and Public Relations
  • Public Relations Ethics Code Ethical
  • Southeast Asia Tourism and Public Relations Problems
  • New Media and Public Relations Practice
  • Health Care Public Relations
  • Public Relations Professionals Are Strategic Communicators
  • Difference Between Marketing and Public Relations
  • Hypothetical Public Relations Campaign
  • Education and Public Relations Within the United States
  • Big Business Affects Public Relations Ethics
  • Global Public Relations and Multicultural World
  • The Public Relations Firm of the Lake Anna Nuclear Power Plant
  • Grunig and Hunt’s Four Models of Public Relations
  • DIX and Eaton Public Relations Firm
  • Toyota Solara Public Relations Plan
  • Relationship Between Politics and Public Relations
  • The Burson-marsteller Public Relations Scandal
  • Public Relations and Relationship Marketing
  • The Subjectivity and Objectivity of Public Relations
  • Crisis Management and Public Relations Strategies
  • Public Relations and University Entrepreneurship
  • The Role and Importance of Public Relations at Non-Governmental Organizations
  • Global Public Relations Trends
  • The Many Different Functions in the Field of Public Relations
  • Marketing, Advertising, and Public Relations
  • Advertising and Public Relations in America
  • Effective Internal Public Relations
  • The Role and Importance of Public Relations in the University Environment
  • Journalism, Advertising, and Public Relations
  • The Relationship Between Public Relations Professionals and Journalism
  • The Differences Between Public Relations and Marketing
  • Understanding the Activities, Methods, and Importance of Public Relations
  • The Role and Importance of Public Relations in a Company
  • Successful and Unsuccessful Spin Doctoring Case in Public Relations
  • Toyota’s Accelerator and Public Relations Crisis
  • Propaganda and the Public Relations Industry
  • Internal Public Relations Action Plan
  • Public Relations Between Healthcare Organization Crisis
  • Advertising and Public Relations in the United States
  • Public Relations and the European Constitution for Greece
  • Historical and Contemporary Figures in Public Relations
  • Public Relations and Professionalism
  • Internal Public Relations Action Plan at Burt’s Bees Inc.
  • Effective Public Relations for Your Business World
  • Social Media and Public Relations
  • Science and Public Relations
  • Public Relations Contemporary Approaches
  • Connection Between Public Relations and Public Option
  • International and Intercultural Public Relations
  • The Demand for Public Relations Specialists
  • Public Relations Campaign for New York Animal Rescue Shelter
  • The Societal and Organizational Functions of Public Relations
  • Public Relations and Organizational Listening
  • Skills Needed for the Public Relations Profession
  • Transmedia Marketing and Re-invention of Public Relations
  • The Public Relations Practitioner as Cultural Intermediary
  • Media and Public Relations Campaigns
  • Why Public Relations Professionals Should Use Facebook?
  • What Are the Common Tools of Public Relations?
  • What Models of Public Relations and Communication Are There?
  • What Are Postmodern Values in Public Relations?
  • What Guidelines for Measuring Relationships in Public Relations Are There?
  • What Are the Definition, Dimensions, and Domain of Public Relations?
  • What Is the Relationship Between Culture and Public Relations?
  • How Do Diversity Issues Influence Public Relations?
  • Is Using Social Media “Good” for the Public Relations Profession?
  • How Did the Evolution of the Manager Role in Public Relations Practice Go?
  • What Does Excellence Theory in Public Relations Mean?
  • What Is the Organization of the Public Relations Function?
  • What Are Perceptions of Public Relations Education?
  • What Are Critical Perspectives on Public Relations?
  • How Feminist Values Are Changing Public Relations?
  • What Are the Differences Between Public Relations and Corporate Social Responsibility?
  • What Is the Effect of Worldviews on Public Relations Theory and Practice?
  • What Is the Paradigm Struggle in Public Relations?
  • What Is the Role of Theory in Public Relations?
  • How Public Relations Practitioners Actually Are Using Social Media?
  • What Are the Ethical Obligations of Public Relations?
  • What Is the Key to Successful Public Relations and Corporate Communication?
  • What Cultural Values Influence American Public Relations Practitioners?
  • Why Civil Society Is Considered as a Rhetorical Public Relations Process?
  • What the Public Thinks About Public Relations?

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StudyCorgi . 2022. "118 Public Relations Topics." March 1, 2022. https://studycorgi.com/ideas/public-relations-essay-topics/.

These essay examples and topics on Public Relations were carefully selected by the StudyCorgi editorial team. They meet our highest standards in terms of grammar, punctuation, style, and fact accuracy. Please ensure you properly reference the materials if you’re using them to write your assignment.

This essay topic collection was updated on January 3, 2024 .

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research paper topics on public relations

Public Relations Dissertation Topics (26 Examples) For Research

Mark Aug 15, 2021 Aug 16, 2021 Public Relations No Comments

Public relation is a practice of deliberately managing the spread of information between the organization and the public. The ability of a company to relate to the public has an impact on its reputation and position. We have listed down some of the most impressive public relations dissertation topics that you can practice on. The […]

research paper topics on public relations

Public relation is a practice of deliberately managing the spread of information between the organization and the public. The ability of a company to relate to the public has an impact on its reputation and position. We have listed down some of the most impressive public relations dissertation topics that you can practice on.

A list Of Public Relations Dissertation Topics

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How Companies Should Weigh In on a Controversy

  • David M. Bersoff,
  • Sandra J. Sucher,
  • Peter Tufano

research paper topics on public relations

Executives need guidance about managing their organizations’ engagement with societal issues—including hot-button topics such as gender, climate, and racial discrimination. Success in this realm does not mean avoiding public controversy or achieving unanimous support among key stakeholders, the authors write. Rather, it results from adhering to certain processes and strategies, which they have derived from recent global survey research along with examples from managerial best practice.

They offer an approach that is anchored in data but sensitive to values and context. It can be helpful in figuring out which issues to address and how; in ameliorating disappointment among stakeholders; and in managing any potential blowback.

Data can tell you what your various stakeholders care about, they write, but judgment is necessary to act in careful consideration of conflicting preferences while being consistent with your company’s values.

A better approach to stakeholder management

Idea in Brief

The challenge.

Given today’s widespread social and political polarization, executives need better guidance as they navigate hot-button topics such as gender, climate, and racial discrimination.

The Insight

Success at handling these subjects does not mean avoiding public controversy or achieving unanimous support among key stakeholders.

Executives can take stands on issues and skillfully address both internal and external pushback if they acquire a more sophisticated understanding of their stakeholders’ concerns.

On April 1, 2023, just as the March Madness college basketball tournament was getting underway, the transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney uploaded a sponsored post to Instagram to promote Bud Light. The backlash was immediate and cut deep. The beer brand was condemned by social conservatives across the United States, who launched a boycott.

  • DB David M. Bersoff is the head of research at the Edelman Trust Institute, a think tank dedicated to advancing the study of trust in society.
  • Sandra J. Sucher is a professor of management practice at Harvard Business School. She is the coauthor of The Power of Trust: How Companies Build It, Lose It, and Regain It (PublicAffairs 2021).
  • PT Peter Tufano is a Baker Foundation Professor at Harvard Business School , senior advisor to Harvard’s Salata Institue for Climate and Sustainability, and a former dean of Said Business School at the University of Oxford.

research paper topics on public relations

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Sat / act prep online guides and tips, 113 great research paper topics.

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One of the hardest parts of writing a research paper can be just finding a good topic to write about. Fortunately we've done the hard work for you and have compiled a list of 113 interesting research paper topics. They've been organized into ten categories and cover a wide range of subjects so you can easily find the best topic for you.

In addition to the list of good research topics, we've included advice on what makes a good research paper topic and how you can use your topic to start writing a great paper.

What Makes a Good Research Paper Topic?

Not all research paper topics are created equal, and you want to make sure you choose a great topic before you start writing. Below are the three most important factors to consider to make sure you choose the best research paper topics.

#1: It's Something You're Interested In

A paper is always easier to write if you're interested in the topic, and you'll be more motivated to do in-depth research and write a paper that really covers the entire subject. Even if a certain research paper topic is getting a lot of buzz right now or other people seem interested in writing about it, don't feel tempted to make it your topic unless you genuinely have some sort of interest in it as well.

#2: There's Enough Information to Write a Paper

Even if you come up with the absolute best research paper topic and you're so excited to write about it, you won't be able to produce a good paper if there isn't enough research about the topic. This can happen for very specific or specialized topics, as well as topics that are too new to have enough research done on them at the moment. Easy research paper topics will always be topics with enough information to write a full-length paper.

Trying to write a research paper on a topic that doesn't have much research on it is incredibly hard, so before you decide on a topic, do a bit of preliminary searching and make sure you'll have all the information you need to write your paper.

#3: It Fits Your Teacher's Guidelines

Don't get so carried away looking at lists of research paper topics that you forget any requirements or restrictions your teacher may have put on research topic ideas. If you're writing a research paper on a health-related topic, deciding to write about the impact of rap on the music scene probably won't be allowed, but there may be some sort of leeway. For example, if you're really interested in current events but your teacher wants you to write a research paper on a history topic, you may be able to choose a topic that fits both categories, like exploring the relationship between the US and North Korea. No matter what, always get your research paper topic approved by your teacher first before you begin writing.

113 Good Research Paper Topics

Below are 113 good research topics to help you get you started on your paper. We've organized them into ten categories to make it easier to find the type of research paper topics you're looking for.

Arts/Culture

  • Discuss the main differences in art from the Italian Renaissance and the Northern Renaissance .
  • Analyze the impact a famous artist had on the world.
  • How is sexism portrayed in different types of media (music, film, video games, etc.)? Has the amount/type of sexism changed over the years?
  • How has the music of slaves brought over from Africa shaped modern American music?
  • How has rap music evolved in the past decade?
  • How has the portrayal of minorities in the media changed?

music-277279_640

Current Events

  • What have been the impacts of China's one child policy?
  • How have the goals of feminists changed over the decades?
  • How has the Trump presidency changed international relations?
  • Analyze the history of the relationship between the United States and North Korea.
  • What factors contributed to the current decline in the rate of unemployment?
  • What have been the impacts of states which have increased their minimum wage?
  • How do US immigration laws compare to immigration laws of other countries?
  • How have the US's immigration laws changed in the past few years/decades?
  • How has the Black Lives Matter movement affected discussions and view about racism in the US?
  • What impact has the Affordable Care Act had on healthcare in the US?
  • What factors contributed to the UK deciding to leave the EU (Brexit)?
  • What factors contributed to China becoming an economic power?
  • Discuss the history of Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies  (some of which tokenize the S&P 500 Index on the blockchain) .
  • Do students in schools that eliminate grades do better in college and their careers?
  • Do students from wealthier backgrounds score higher on standardized tests?
  • Do students who receive free meals at school get higher grades compared to when they weren't receiving a free meal?
  • Do students who attend charter schools score higher on standardized tests than students in public schools?
  • Do students learn better in same-sex classrooms?
  • How does giving each student access to an iPad or laptop affect their studies?
  • What are the benefits and drawbacks of the Montessori Method ?
  • Do children who attend preschool do better in school later on?
  • What was the impact of the No Child Left Behind act?
  • How does the US education system compare to education systems in other countries?
  • What impact does mandatory physical education classes have on students' health?
  • Which methods are most effective at reducing bullying in schools?
  • Do homeschoolers who attend college do as well as students who attended traditional schools?
  • Does offering tenure increase or decrease quality of teaching?
  • How does college debt affect future life choices of students?
  • Should graduate students be able to form unions?

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  • What are different ways to lower gun-related deaths in the US?
  • How and why have divorce rates changed over time?
  • Is affirmative action still necessary in education and/or the workplace?
  • Should physician-assisted suicide be legal?
  • How has stem cell research impacted the medical field?
  • How can human trafficking be reduced in the United States/world?
  • Should people be able to donate organs in exchange for money?
  • Which types of juvenile punishment have proven most effective at preventing future crimes?
  • Has the increase in US airport security made passengers safer?
  • Analyze the immigration policies of certain countries and how they are similar and different from one another.
  • Several states have legalized recreational marijuana. What positive and negative impacts have they experienced as a result?
  • Do tariffs increase the number of domestic jobs?
  • Which prison reforms have proven most effective?
  • Should governments be able to censor certain information on the internet?
  • Which methods/programs have been most effective at reducing teen pregnancy?
  • What are the benefits and drawbacks of the Keto diet?
  • How effective are different exercise regimes for losing weight and maintaining weight loss?
  • How do the healthcare plans of various countries differ from each other?
  • What are the most effective ways to treat depression ?
  • What are the pros and cons of genetically modified foods?
  • Which methods are most effective for improving memory?
  • What can be done to lower healthcare costs in the US?
  • What factors contributed to the current opioid crisis?
  • Analyze the history and impact of the HIV/AIDS epidemic .
  • Are low-carbohydrate or low-fat diets more effective for weight loss?
  • How much exercise should the average adult be getting each week?
  • Which methods are most effective to get parents to vaccinate their children?
  • What are the pros and cons of clean needle programs?
  • How does stress affect the body?
  • Discuss the history of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.
  • What were the causes and effects of the Salem Witch Trials?
  • Who was responsible for the Iran-Contra situation?
  • How has New Orleans and the government's response to natural disasters changed since Hurricane Katrina?
  • What events led to the fall of the Roman Empire?
  • What were the impacts of British rule in India ?
  • Was the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki necessary?
  • What were the successes and failures of the women's suffrage movement in the United States?
  • What were the causes of the Civil War?
  • How did Abraham Lincoln's assassination impact the country and reconstruction after the Civil War?
  • Which factors contributed to the colonies winning the American Revolution?
  • What caused Hitler's rise to power?
  • Discuss how a specific invention impacted history.
  • What led to Cleopatra's fall as ruler of Egypt?
  • How has Japan changed and evolved over the centuries?
  • What were the causes of the Rwandan genocide ?

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  • Why did Martin Luther decide to split with the Catholic Church?
  • Analyze the history and impact of a well-known cult (Jonestown, Manson family, etc.)
  • How did the sexual abuse scandal impact how people view the Catholic Church?
  • How has the Catholic church's power changed over the past decades/centuries?
  • What are the causes behind the rise in atheism/ agnosticism in the United States?
  • What were the influences in Siddhartha's life resulted in him becoming the Buddha?
  • How has media portrayal of Islam/Muslims changed since September 11th?

Science/Environment

  • How has the earth's climate changed in the past few decades?
  • How has the use and elimination of DDT affected bird populations in the US?
  • Analyze how the number and severity of natural disasters have increased in the past few decades.
  • Analyze deforestation rates in a certain area or globally over a period of time.
  • How have past oil spills changed regulations and cleanup methods?
  • How has the Flint water crisis changed water regulation safety?
  • What are the pros and cons of fracking?
  • What impact has the Paris Climate Agreement had so far?
  • What have NASA's biggest successes and failures been?
  • How can we improve access to clean water around the world?
  • Does ecotourism actually have a positive impact on the environment?
  • Should the US rely on nuclear energy more?
  • What can be done to save amphibian species currently at risk of extinction?
  • What impact has climate change had on coral reefs?
  • How are black holes created?
  • Are teens who spend more time on social media more likely to suffer anxiety and/or depression?
  • How will the loss of net neutrality affect internet users?
  • Analyze the history and progress of self-driving vehicles.
  • How has the use of drones changed surveillance and warfare methods?
  • Has social media made people more or less connected?
  • What progress has currently been made with artificial intelligence ?
  • Do smartphones increase or decrease workplace productivity?
  • What are the most effective ways to use technology in the classroom?
  • How is Google search affecting our intelligence?
  • When is the best age for a child to begin owning a smartphone?
  • Has frequent texting reduced teen literacy rates?

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How to Write a Great Research Paper

Even great research paper topics won't give you a great research paper if you don't hone your topic before and during the writing process. Follow these three tips to turn good research paper topics into great papers.

#1: Figure Out Your Thesis Early

Before you start writing a single word of your paper, you first need to know what your thesis will be. Your thesis is a statement that explains what you intend to prove/show in your paper. Every sentence in your research paper will relate back to your thesis, so you don't want to start writing without it!

As some examples, if you're writing a research paper on if students learn better in same-sex classrooms, your thesis might be "Research has shown that elementary-age students in same-sex classrooms score higher on standardized tests and report feeling more comfortable in the classroom."

If you're writing a paper on the causes of the Civil War, your thesis might be "While the dispute between the North and South over slavery is the most well-known cause of the Civil War, other key causes include differences in the economies of the North and South, states' rights, and territorial expansion."

#2: Back Every Statement Up With Research

Remember, this is a research paper you're writing, so you'll need to use lots of research to make your points. Every statement you give must be backed up with research, properly cited the way your teacher requested. You're allowed to include opinions of your own, but they must also be supported by the research you give.

#3: Do Your Research Before You Begin Writing

You don't want to start writing your research paper and then learn that there isn't enough research to back up the points you're making, or, even worse, that the research contradicts the points you're trying to make!

Get most of your research on your good research topics done before you begin writing. Then use the research you've collected to create a rough outline of what your paper will cover and the key points you're going to make. This will help keep your paper clear and organized, and it'll ensure you have enough research to produce a strong paper.

What's Next?

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Christine graduated from Michigan State University with degrees in Environmental Biology and Geography and received her Master's from Duke University. In high school she scored in the 99th percentile on the SAT and was named a National Merit Finalist. She has taught English and biology in several countries.

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Public Relations Ethics Research Paper

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Public relations ethics has much in common with the wedding tradition in which the bride wears “something old, something new, something borrowed, and something blue.” Although the “something blue” is problematic, the “something old” is ethics, the study of which dates to the dawn of philosophy. The “something new” is public relations itself. Unlike older, related professions such as advertising and journalism, public relations wasn’t recognized as a distinct discipline until the 20th century. The “something borrowed” has been the ethics codes of other professions: As public relations practitioners have struggled to find the ethical foundations of their young profession, they have looked to disciplines such as journalism and the legal profession for guidance. And—for better or worse—the union of something old, something new, and something borrowed has created a sometimes stormy marriage between public relations and ethics.

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Part of the dawn of philosophy that introduced the concept of ethics occurred in classical Athens—the Athens of Plato and Aristotle. Both of those philosophers began their intellectual explorations by defining key terms. In a discussion of public relations ethics, for example, each might ask us, “What do you mean by public relations? And what do you mean by ethics?” By public relations (defined elsewhere in this book), we generally mean the management of relationships between an entity (an organization or individual) and the publics essential to its success. By ethics, we mean the concept of identifying and acting on our core values. In fact, Aristotle defined ethics as an activity: He believed that ethics was the process of defining our most important values and ensuring that our actions reflected those values.

Public relations ethics, then, involves identifying the profession’s core values and, subsequently, acting on those values. The ordeal of how to develop and where to find those values, however, has led to continuing debate and uncertainty about the concept of public relations ethics. Traditionally, values exist at five sometimes-overlapping levels:

  • International: For example, the Caux Round Table, an organization of international business leaders, has drafted a set of international business standards that rests on two values: human dignity and kyosei, a Japanese word that means cooperating for the good of all.
  • Societal: For example, the Pledge of Allegiance, which many readers of this book would have recited every day in grade school, specifies values that ideally motivate U.S. citizens: liberty and justice for all.
  • Professional: For example, the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) specifies six values for the profession of public relations: advocacy, honesty, expertise, independence, loyalty, and fairness.
  • Organizational: For example, Levi Strauss and Company, the maker of Levi’s jeans, asks its employees to act on four values: empathy, originality, integrity, and courage.
  • Personal: These are the particular values that motivate individuals. In fact, the English word ethics comes from the Greek word ethos, which means moral character.

The Search for Values: Journalism and the Law

In its search for values during the 20th century, the young profession of public relations turned to two related professions: journalism and the law. Many of the earliest practitioners of public relations had begun as journalists who, of course, communicated ideas to separate groups, so the logic of adapting journalistic values to public relations seemed obvious. Likewise, many of the earliest practitioners of public relations saw themselves as advocates, so the logic of embracing the values of the legal profession also seemed reasonable. Unfortunately, the objectivity of journalism and the advocacy of the legal profession had all the compatibility of fire and water, and those conflicting values struggled to control public relations ethics in the early decades of the profession.

Journalistic values informed Ivy Lee’s 1906 “Declaration of Principles,” in which that journalist-turned-publicrelations-practitioner (1877–1934) declared,

We aim to supply news. This is not an advertising agency. . . . Our matter is accurate. Further details on any subject treated will be supplied promptly, and any editor will be assisted most cheerfully in verifying directly any statement of fact. Upon inquiry, full information will be given to any editor concerning those on whose behalf an article is sent out. In brief, our plan is, frankly and openly, on behalf of business concerns and public institutions, to supply to the press and public of the United States prompt and accurate information concerning subjects which it is of value and interest to the public to know about. (Guth & Marsh, 2009, p. 67)

The advantage of journalistic values is credibility: If public relations could have the reputation of delivering the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, the profession and its communications functions might gain almost unrivaled respectability among targeted publics. However, the disadvantage of journalistic values is practicality: Few, if any, organizations or individuals can afford to tell the whole truth. For example, should organizations reveal legitimate trade secrets? Should individuals disclose embarrassing information that no one has a right to know? And does all the communicated information have to be balanced, like the best stories in journalism? Are public relations practitioners responsible for telling all the relevant sides of a story, even those that oppose their employer’s viewpoint? Furthermore, are public relations practitioners storytellers—or are their duties more diverse? On close examination, journalistic values don’t seem wholly appropriate for public relations ethics.

Competing with journalistic values for a key role in forming public relations ethics were the values of the legal profession, primarily advocacy. If we cast public relations practitioners as advocates for their employer/client’s viewpoint, the relevance of legal values seems logical. And just as we presented Ivy Lee as the symbol of a journalistic ethos within public relations, we do no great harm to accuracy by presenting Edward L. Bernays (1891–1995) as the symbol of a legal/advocacy ethos within the young profession. As the author of the books Propaganda and The Engineering of Consent and part of the husband-wife team that coined the term public relations, Bernays (1947) offered this definition of “the engineering of consent”:

This phrase quite simply means the use of an engineering approach—that is, action based only on thorough knowledge of the situation and on the application of scientific principles and tried practices to the task of getting people to support ideas and programs. Any person or organization depends ultimately on public approval and is therefore faced with the problem of engineering the public’s consent to a program or goal. (p. 114)

In fairness to Bernays, he also advocated reverse engineering— the process of helping an employer/client to change in order to help win consent from a recalcitrant public.

Just as lawyers are advocates for their clients, striving to engineer consent within the courtroom, public relations practitioners—in the legal/advocacy view of the profession— engineer consent within the broader court of public opinion. In fact, if public relations practitioners are advocates for their employers/clients, several passages from the Model Rules of Professional Conduct of the American Bar Association (2008) might be adopted as governing values and principles for public relations ethics:

  • [A] lawyer shall abide by a client’s decisions concerning the objectives of representation and . . . shall consult with the client as to the means by which they are to be pursued. . . . (Rule 1.2)
  • A lawyer shall not knowingly: (1) make a false statement of fact or law to a tribunal or fail to correct a false statement of material fact or law previously made to the tribunal by the lawyer. (Rule 3.3)

In the mid-1990s, a thought-provoking and controversial article in Public Relations Review contended that public relations had indeed adopted the values of the legal profession and thus had little obligation to help society discover large truths on particular issues. Instead, the article argued, public relations practitioners had acknowledged that they were simply one of many adversaries in the struggle for control of public opinion. Although they could not ethically lie, they could ethically present selective facts, withholding (within the limits of the law) any facts that might weaken their arguments. The responsibility for creating a fully accurate, comprehensive assessment of a situation rested with the public, which should gather information from many adversarial sources. After all, the article argued, lawyers are in an adversarial profession, and they don’t attack their own cases. The article concluded that, for public relations, advocacy was a greater value than truth.

Among public relations practitioners and scholars, however, reaction to that article showed that public relations was not entirely comfortable with the values and adversarial nature of the legal profession. Four arguments in particular seemed to challenge the importation of values from the legal profession:

  • In many organizations, public relations practitioners serve as counselors on ethics and social responsibility. If, however, they have the reputation of withholding damaging facts, their credibility as counselors is at risk.
  • Not all publics are external. Within the subset of public relations known as employee relations, why would employees trust the claims of a colleague who was known to ignore or downplay damaging information?
  • For more than 2,000 years, teachers of persuasion theory have taught Aristotle’s belief that the persuasive value of a speaker’s good character (ethos) is more powerful than appeals to logic or emotion. If public relations practitioners damage their perceived characters by focusing only on employer/client interests and perspectives, they may sacrifice their most potent means of persuasion: their ethos.
  • Finally, the importation of legal values seems to rely on the notion that the purpose of public relations is to advocate an employer/client’s viewpoint and to engineer consent. However, if we return to the definition of public relations presented at the beginning of this research paper, advocacy seems a secondary concern. Many practitioners believe that, properly understood, public relations is the profession of building relationships with particular publics that possess the needed resources. In that view of public relations, advocacy is not the goal and end of the profession; rather, advocacy is a means—one of many— that may be involved in building productive relationships.

At the end of the 20th century, then, this much could be said for public relations ethics: It was a work in progress, certainly not comfortable with the values of journalism and not entirely comfortable with the values of the legal profession. The evolving nature of public relations ethics was (and is) evident in the evolving ethics code of one of the world’s largest public relations organizations: PRSA.

The Advocacy Debate

PRSA was created in 1948 through the merger of the National Association of Public Relations Counsel and the American Council on Public Relations. The new organization adopted its first ethics code in 1950 and then—indicative of the profession’s struggle to find its ethical foundations— revised the code in 1954, 1959, 1963, 1977, 1983, 1988, and 2000. The current version of the PRSA ethics code, as noted above, specifies six core values for the profession:

  • Independence

Similar values are inherent in the ethics code of the Global Alliance for Public Relations and Communication

Management. Formed in 2000 through the joint efforts of PRSA, the International Public Relations Association, and other organizations, the alliance created a global protocol for the practice of public relations that rests on five values: advocacy, honesty, integrity, expertise, and loyalty. Clearly, the concept of advocacy continues to play a significant role in the evolution of public relations ethics. The title of one of the few books devoted solely to public relations ethics is Ethics in Public Relations: Responsible Advocacy (Fitzpatrick & Bronstein, 2006).

Again, the controversy regarding the ascendance of advocacy as perhaps the dominant value in public relations ethics relates to the definition of public relations itself: Are public relations practitioners primarily advocates for their employers/clients? If so, then the value of responsible advocacy would seem to be the logical primary value of public relations ethics. However, if public relations practitioners are relationship builders, striving to build and maintain the relationships that deliver essential resources to their employers/clients, then perhaps the primacy of advocacy—at least in the one-way, legal-profession sense—should be downgraded somewhat. This debate over the definition of public relations and the role of advocacy as a core value is evident in the constructive tension between two dominant, competing visions of the nature of public relations: excellence theory and contingency theory. Though the two philosophies are not entirely mutually exclusive, excellence theory is closer to the relationshipbuilding view of public relations, while contingency theory is closer to the legal/advocacy view of public relations.

Excellence Theory

Excellence theory has grown out of an ongoing research project begun in 1985 by the Research Foundation of the International Association of Business Communicators. Led initially by Professors James E. Grunig, Larissa A. Grunig, and David M. Dozier, the project has, essentially, studied the practices of organizations known for excellent public relations and communication management— particularly as those practices relate to four different philosophies of public relations. Identified by James E. Grunig and Todd Hunt, the four philosophies, or models, of public relations are as follows:

  • The press agentry model, which has only one mission, positive publicity for the employer/client
  • The public information model, in which practitioners act almost as in-house journalists, distributing unbiased information about an employer/client
  • The two-way asymmetrical model, which uses research to create messages that will engineer consent, winning essential publics over to the employer/client’s viewpoint
  • The two-way symmetrical model, which uses research to create, maintain, and improve dialogue-based, mutually beneficial relationships with essential publics

The excellence project, as the research study came to be known, concluded that the most effective model of public relations was not the two-way asymmetrical model, with its value of one-way advocacy. Rather, the most effective model was the two-way symmetrical model, with its values of mutual understanding and two-way advocacy. In the two-way symmetrical model, practitioners not only advocate on behalf of their employer/client, they also may advocate on behalf of the public, urging their own employer/client to change in the interests of creating, preserving, or improving a relationship.

Significantly, although the excellence project determined that the two-way symmetrical model was the most effective philosophy of public relations, the project did not assert that excellent public relations and communications departments unfailingly used two-way symmetry. Instead, the project maintained that excellence often involved a “mixed-motive” model that preferred and predominantly used two-way symmetry but that occasionally also employed two-way asymmetry.

Also significant for public relations ethics is the excellence project’s conclusion that the two-way symmetrical model incorporates an idealistic social role that rests on a simple core value: the public interest and social good. Therefore, if the dominant philosophy of public relations is the two-way symmetrical model with its mixed-motive option, the fuzzy picture of public relations ethics clears up a bit: If ethics means acting on core values, then public relations ethics involves ensuring that the profession works for the public interest and social good.

As studies of two-way symmetry have continued, that particular model has accumulated a set of core values that, ideally, should motivate the actions of ethical public relations practitioners. Those values tend to fall into two overlapping categories: values that guide relationship-building activities and values that characterize good, productive relationships. In addition to mutual understanding, two-way advocacy, and public interest/social welfare, values of relationship-building activities include loyalty to the employer/client (not simply acquiescing to whatever a public wants) and openness, in the sense of being willing to listen to and seriously consider a public’s requests.

Regarding the values that characterize good relationships, the public relations scholars Linda Childers Hon and James E. Grunig have identified six core concepts:

  • Control mutuality, meaning that each party believes it has some control over the quality and future of the relationship
  • Satisfaction
  • Exchange, in the sense that benefits are given and received by each party
  • Communal feeling, in the sense that each party would act for the benefit of the other without any immediate idea of reciprocation and payback

In brief, public relations ethics within the two-way symmetrical and mixed-motive models would involve acting, as much as possible, on these public-interest and relationship values.

Contingency Theory

As the dominance of excellence theory with its inherent two-way symmetry has grown, contingency theory has become an increasingly important reaction to that influence. One difficulty with excellence theory is that some critics believe that it describes and champions only a pure, undiluted form of two-way symmetry; they overlook the mixedmotive model that, according to the excellent project, characterizes excellent public relations departments. Other critics believe that two-way symmetry means acquiescence and radical accommodation, with an employer/client’s public relation practitioners essentially taking orders from targeted publics. This mistaken belief overlooks both the mixed-motive model and two-way symmetry’s core value of loyalty to the employer/client. Though contingency theory does not lapse into these errors, it does address the concerns they represent.

Contingency theory challenges the core values of twoway symmetry by offering a more situational model; contingency theory resists the idea that there is one best way to practice public relations, even if that one way has the flexibility of the mixed-motive model. The theory asks practitioners to imagine a spectrum with accommodation at one end and advocacy at the other. Unlike two-way symmetry and the mixed-motive model, contingency theory maintains that no one spot on that continuum is perpetually the best; instead, the best position on the continuum varies from situation to situation. In fact, contingency theory has identified more than 80 separate variables that can affect which point on the accommodation-advocacy continuum seems best for a particular situation.

For public relations ethics, a crucial difference between contingency theory and excellence theory is that contingency theory places a higher value on one-way, asymmetrical advocacy, especially when that approach may benefit the employer/client. And compared with excellence theory, contingency theory seems to place greater value on loyalty to the employer/client, placing lesser—though not insignificant— emphasis on the values of public interest, social responsibility, control mutuality, and exchange. Contingency theory, therefore, offers a different set of values for public relations ethics—a set that may actually be closer to the core values of PRSA, which, again, lists its first value as advocacy. Some proponents of contingency theory argue that it is more realistic than excellence theory; after all, employers/clients may not always be eager and willing to pay their public relations departments to sometimes advocate outside, competing ideas and viewpoints.

Some critics of contingency theory maintain that— perhaps like PRSA—the theory diminishes the nature of advocacy by defining it as a one-way process, with the practitioner being an advocate only for the employer/client. The PRSA ethics code, in fact, includes the phrase responsible advocates for those we represent. Absent in this notion of advocacy, responsible or not, is a practitioner’s advocating the interests of an important external public to the leaders of his or her own employer/client. That expanded view of advocacy is more consistent with two-way symmetry and the mixed-motive model.

Another criticism of contingency theory is that it sometimes seems to mischaracterize two-way symmetry as being synonymous with uncritical accommodation of the wants and needs of key publics. Advocates of two-way symmetry note that because the model tempers the value of a public’s well-being with the value of loyalty to the employer/client, the model is not synonymous with uncritical accommodation.

As frustrating as the clash between excellence theory and contingency theory may be for those who seek a clear understanding of public relations and the ethics of that profession, the debate is healthy: It focuses on finding the best definition of a young profession as well as identifying the values that must be inherent in that profession’s ethics. Again, if ethics means identifying and acting on core values, ethical public relations practitioners must begin by defining what those values are.

Challenges to Ethical Behavior in Public Relations

The concept of public relations ethics begins with the identification of values—but the concept remains incomplete until public relations practitioners act on those values. Challenges to ethical behavior in public relations tend to emerge from seven broad areas:

  • Ignorance: Some practitioners, new or otherwise, are unaware of the values and even the laws that guide the profession of public relations; perhaps they have even failed to identify their own values and are unaware of the values of their employer/client. For example, a practitioner unaware of the core value of loyalty to one’s employer/client might easily commit actions that his or her employer would view as unethical.
  • Overwork: Hard work is certainly a value for many public relations practitioners. However, when a workload becomes so overwhelming that it allows no time for reflection on the connection of core values and current actions, then hard work becomes a potential cause of unintended unethical conduct.
  • Legal/Ethical Confusion: Illegal conduct often is unethical because it tends to violate social values. But the converse—all legal actions are ethical—is, of course, untrue. For example, an employee of Levi Strauss and Company who did not act on that organization’s core values of empathy, originality, integrity, and courage would probably not be guilty of illegal conduct. In the eyes of the company, however, that employee probably would be guilty of unethical behavior. Legal/ethical confusion also can extend to the troubling notion that an ethical action might be illegal. The concept of “civil disobedience” involves the intentional, peaceful breaking of laws by those acting on what they believe to be higher values.
  • Cross-Cultural Situations: Related to ignorance, this source of possible unethical conduct occurs when members of different cultures interact—an increasingly common occurrence in public relations. Acceptable behavior in one culture might violate important values in a different culture. For example, a non-Muslim practitioner who values sensitivity to other cultures may mean no disrespect by unthinkingly wearing shoes into a mosque, but in doing so, he or she has violated an important cultural standard.
  • Short-Term Thinking: Aristotle was among the first to identify this challenge to ethical conduct when he condemned individuals who opt for immediate pleasure or relief at the expense of long-term pain. For example, a member of PRSA might violate that organization’s value of honesty by telling a lie to resolve, seemingly, a difficult, embarrassing situation. Because that action would go against a core value, it would be unethical. Furthermore, if the lie were revealed, the practitioner would have done long-term damage to his or her reputation, as well as the reputation of his or her employer/client.
  • Virtual Organizations: These entities are temporary groups of, usually, far-flung associates, perhaps united only by online media, who come together to complete a project. For example, to produce a corporate annual report, a freelance public relations practitioner hired to oversee the project might commission freelance writers, editors, photographers, illustrators, and printers. The group might never meet in person, and because it is temporary, it almost surely would lack a written ethics code and any sustained discussion of core values that might unite its members. At worst, the actions of some members might seriously violate other members’ core values.
  • Dilemmas: Dilemmas are problems that lack painless, win-win solutions. In ethics, dilemmas involve clashing values; they arise from situations in which no matter what course of action an individual takes, his or her actions will be inconsistent with at least one core value. Of all the challenges to ethical behavior, dilemmas can be the most painful. For example, a public relations practitioner who embraces the concept of two-way symmetry might experience an unpleasant clash of values if he or she believed that the actions of the employer/client—actions the practitioner had tried to change—were unfairly damaging to an important public. That practitioner might be torn between the values of loyalty to the employer/client and the values, as noted above, of trust, exchange, and, in a broader sense, the public good.

Dilemmas demonstrate the need for critical-thinking tools within the broad field of ethics. When core values clash, we sometimes surrender to stress and confusion, and our thinking can become muddled. Ideally, critical-thinking systems can combat that confusion by providing structure.

Critical thinking is characterized by four qualities: It is (1) goal oriented (we seek the best solution to the dilemma), (2) objective (we try to temporarily set aside our personal biases), (3) comprehensive (we draw on many opinions and sources of information), and (4) systematic (we have a specific procedure to guide our thinking). The acronym COGS—comprehensive, objective, goal oriented, and systematic—can be used to describe critical thinking.

One well-known critical-thinking tool in ethics is the Potter Box, designed by Ralph Potter, a retired professor of social ethics. In essence, the Potter Box consists of four quadrants: (1) definition, in which we establish what we know and don’t know; (2) values, in which we identify and evaluate the values inherent in the dilemma; (3) principles, in which we seek guidance from philosophers such as Aristotle and Immanuel Kant as well as from ethics codes; and (4) loyalties, in which we evaluate the involved publics and consider which ones deserve our loyalty. Using the Potter Box, public relations practitioners can help ensure that their attempt to resolve an ethics dilemma is comprehensive, objective, goal oriented, and systematic.

In 2004, PRSA began to issue Professional Standards Advisories, describing specific ethics challenges of particular concern to its members. To date, the advisories have included these challenges to ethical behavior:

  • The overbilling of clients
  • The creation of so-called front groups, which don’t acknowledge their true creators and financial sponsors Truthfulness in war-related activities
  • Disclosure by seemingly independent commentators of any payments that might represent a conflict of interest
  • Disclosure of the true sponsorship and authorship of blogs

The inclusion of full disclosure of blog sponsorship and authorship demonstrates how technological innovations can pose new ethical challenges for public relations practitioners.

Case Study: Starbucks Coffee Company

Ethics, as we know, involves identifying and acting on core values. In the difficult days that followed the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the Starbucks Coffee Company proved itself to be a positive example of an organization that strives to integrate its core values and its actions.

In the chaotic aftermath of the collapse of the World Trade Center towers, a Starbucks employee in New York City sold bottled water to a paramedic. Starbucks had intended to donate the water, but in the turmoil of that unprecedented day, a company employee made a mistake.

When word of the sale reached Orin Smith, thenpresident of Starbucks, he contacted the paramedic’s employer to apologize and return the money. Smith then contacted New York employees to reinforce the company’s decision to donate supplies to rescue workers, and Starbucks issued a news release—a key tactic of media relations—apologizing for the action and announcing its donation policy.

One beneficiary of those supplies was the Emergency Room staff at St. Vincent’s Hospital, only blocks from the rubble and smoke of the World Trade Center. Days later, Smith received a letter from a St. Vincent’s nurse that included this passage:

I wasn’t scheduled to work, but I needed to go to the ER and help. . . . Hours passed and the staff was getting tired. I told my co-worker Jay, “I would love to have a cup of Starbucks right now.” We didn’t want to leave the ER, not knowing what would come through the doors. An hour later, I noticed my co-worker Karen with a cup of Starbucks! She informed me that the Starbucks on Greenwich Avenue brought fresh coffee and water for the ER staff. Mr. Smith, I cannot tell you how much that cup of coffee meant to me. . . . I want to thank you personally for your generosity and support. (“New Yorker Shows Support,” para. 3)

“I have never been more proud of Starbucks [employees] than I am right now,” Smith responded in yet another news release, but he still had not forgotten Starbuck’s initial, unintended departure from its values. “The decision [to charge the paramedic] is not defensible and is totally inconsistent with what we stand for,” he said (“Starbucks President,” para. 1). As order gradually returned to New York and Washington, D.C., Starbucks donated $1 million to relief efforts in those cities.

Going the extra mile to ensure that it is acting on its values has become characteristic of Starbucks’s corporate behavior. When protestors rallied at Starbucks’s 2001 annual stockholders meeting, company officials offered to meet with the protestors to evaluate Starbucks’s policies on food additives, which was the issue in question. The protestors, however, were not as accommodating: They refused to meet unless Starbucks agreed in advance to their demands.

Starbucks’s values-driven behavior has helped the company earn a perennial spot on Business Ethics magazine’s annual list of “100 Best Corporate Citizens.” In the past decade, the company has won more than a dozen national and regional awards for ethical behavior. Starbucks also issues an annual corporate social responsibility report.

At the core of Starbucks’s values-driven behavior is a mission statement that includes six guiding principles. The succinct statement reads as follows:

Starbucks Mission Statement: Establish Starbucks as the premier purveyor of the finest coffee in the world while maintaining our uncompromising principles while we grow. The following six guiding principles will help us measure the appropriateness of our decisions:
Provide a great work environment and treat each others with respect and dignity.
Embrace diversity as an essential component in the way we do business.
Apply the highest standards of excellence to the purchasing, roasting, and fresh delivery of our coffee.
Develop enthusiastically satisfied customers all of the time.
Contribute positively to our communities and our environment.
Recognize that profitability is essential to our future success. ( https://www.thebalancesmb.com/starbucks-mission-statement-2891826 )

Starbucks also has an environmental mission statement that pledges “environmental leadership in all facets of our business.”

The principles in Starbucks’s mission statement virtually ensure conflict. Emphasizing profits, quality, and corporate citizenship can simultaneously stretch a company in at least three different directions, as Starbucks learned in 2000, when protestors charged that the company paid poverty-level prices to coffee growers in developing nations. A key demand of the protestors was that Starbucks purchase Fair Trade coffee beans. Fair Trade involves paying individual farmers in developing nations a living wage for their crops. Crops grown by large corporate farms cost less and can force individual farmers into poverty.

Starbucks’s response to the situation underscored the creative tensions within its mission statement and principles. Company officials acknowledged that Starbucks had earlier sought Fair Trade beans but had not located any that met Starbucks’s standards—a direct reference to the company’s mission of supplying “the finest coffee in the world.” However, the same officials promised a more rigorous search—a direct reference to the company’s principles of excellence in purchasing and building better communities. Soon after announcing the new search, Starbucks bought almost 80,000 pounds of Fair Trade beans, and it promised to purchase more if it could locate crops that met company standards. Within a year, Fair Trade coffee became part of Starbucks’s worldwide product lines.

Starbucks’s repeated willingness to evaluate whether its actions incorporate its values earns respect even from potential critics. “The company is often grudgingly considered by many social activists to be a ‘socially responsible’ company,” said one analyst (Maloy, 2001, para. 26). A college journalist offered the same idea in slightly less formal language: “Even though Starbucks exemplifies corporate ickiness, the giant coffee company [has begun] selling Fair Trade Certified Coffee” (“100% Fair Trade Coffee,” 2000, para. 1).

Case Study: Front Groups

Front groups present a continuing challenge to public relations ethics. Such organizations often have noble names and seem independent; however, they receive secret support from a silent partner that hopes to benefit from the group’s advocacy efforts. In the late 1990s, the Associated Press (AP) published evidence suggesting that international pharmaceutical giant Glaxo Wellcome had quietly supported a front group in the hope of influencing federal health care policy in the United States.

Are front groups unethical? If they violate the values of involved individuals, organizations, or professions, the answer almost certainly is yes. By embracing values such as honesty, accuracy, and the public interest, public relations organizations throughout the world have strongly suggested that front groups are inconsistent with the values of the profession. The current PRSA ethics code specifically includes “front groups” among its examples of “improper conduct” for ethical practitioners.

In 1996 and 1997, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) received almost 10,000 letters asking it not to ban a particular kind of asthma inhaler known as an MDI. Because those inhalers contained ozone-damaging chlorofluorocarbons, environmental-defense organizations wanted them removed from the market. In many of the letters, opponents of the possible ban referred to information received from the Committee to Protect MDIs.

According to the AP, the Committee to Protect MDIs was a front group secretly sponsored by Glaxo Wellcome, which had fallen behind its competitors in developing environmentally friendly inhalers. The public relations consultant who oversaw the Committee to Protect MDIs told an AP reporter that she couldn’t recall how her involvement with the organization began, nor would she answer the reporter’s questions about the committee’s members and financing.

Ironically, in the early days of the MDI controversy, a pharmaceutical-industry newsletter reported that Glaxo Wellcome denied conducting any lobbying efforts to delay a ban on MDIs. The same story, however, noted the aggressive lobbying of the Committee to Protect MDIs, and the story ended with a quotation from the head of the committee— the same consultant who later would not discuss the committee’s financing and membership.

To its credit, Glaxo Wellcome answered the AP’s questions about its involvement, acknowledging that it did, indeed, finance the Committee to Protect MDIs. And many of the company’s later public relations tactics in the battle to preserve the inhalers seemed both legal and ethical: Its representatives spoke with reporters about problems with non-MDI inhalers, and the company openly financed a survey by an independent inhaler-users group.

Repercussions from the AP exposé were few. Glaxo Wellcome endured a handful of negative stories in the news media, but the Committee to Protect MDIs vanished from the headlines almost as quickly as its Web site went dark.

If the end always justifies the means (a dubious notion in ethics), then the Committee to Protect MDIs may have been a public relations success. The FDA delayed its ban on the inhalers, and Glaxo Wellcome won time to continue its development of environmentally friendly alternatives. The company later merged with another pharmaceutical giant and now regularly reports annual sales exceeding $40 billion.

The public relations practitioner who supervised the Committee to Protect MDIs went on to represent another multinational pharmaceutical company and has been frequently quoted in the news media.

Unfortunately, it’s impossible to document the damage to the public relations profession in the minds of those who may have felt deceived or perhaps betrayed by the Committee to Protect MDIs.

Public Relations Ethics: Values in Action

As a relatively young profession, public relations continues to seek the core values that are essential to any concept of ethics for the discipline. Despite the occasional frustrations inherent in the ongoing debate, many participants— practitioners as well as scholars—have come to realize a significant advantage in viewing public relations ethics as a work in progress: Passionate, sustained discussions about values and values-driven actions in public relations help keep those topics at the forefront of the profession. And voices from many viewpoints must be welcomed to the debate—feminist perspectives, postmodern perspectives, international perspectives, and more. After all, an enduring, high-profile discussion of how public relations can honor the most important values ranging from the international level to the personal level is surely good for a profession that seeks credibility and an honorable reputation.

Bibliography:

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Smooth Diagnostic Expectations

We introduce “smooth diagnosticity.” Under smooth diagnosticity, agents over-react to new information defined as the difference between the current information set and a previous information set. Since new information typically changes not just the conditional mean, but also the conditional uncertainty, changes in uncertainty surrounding current and past beliefs affect the severity of the Diagnostic Expectations (DE) distortion. Smooth DE nests the baseline DE of Bordalo et al. (2018) and implies a joint and parsimonious micro-foundation for various properties of survey data: (1) over-reaction of conditional mean to news, (2) stronger over-reaction for weaker signals and longer forecast horizons, and (3) over-confidence in subjective uncertainty. We embed Smooth DE in an analytical RBC model. The model accounts for over-reaction and over-confidence in surveys, as well as three salient properties of the business cycle: (1) asymmetry, (2) countercyclical micro volatility, and (3) countercyclical macro volatility.

We thank Joel Flynn, Spencer Kwon, Karthik Sastry, Andrei Shleifer, Stephen Terry, as well as conference participants at the ASSA 2024 Annual Meeting. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research.

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