Online Public Relations, Publics and Values Systems; This was the title of the dissertation that I presented this last friday. It was a work that had the invaluable assistance of David Phillips as my supervisor and that focuses on what can be a new arena for public relations: mapping and identifying publics based on the demonstration of values. I was also lucky to have Anne Gregory accept the invitation to participate in the formal discussion, with whom it was a pleasure to exchange ideas.
The reason why I put a stop to my blogging hiatus with this information is quite simple, it is a subject that will be somewhat recurrent in this blog. Not only when it comes to presenting my findings, also in regards to pursuing the theme a bit further.
However, the perspective on this blog will not be limited to the values that guide corporate communication, instead it will include both economical (a utilitarian definition of values) and psycho-sociological values as well as the relationships formed as a result of these values. PR’s approach to values and values systems tends to focus on the psycho-sociological definition, as a means to assure that corporate communication is coherent and credible. Recently, a post on the blog PR Conversations discussed the issue of values applied to PR while reviewing Jon Iwata’s plan for IBM which is a great example on psycho-sociological values applied to corporate communication.
The dissertation on Publics and Values systems takes the whole concept of values a bit further, supporting that values and values systems can be used to map and identify publics while at the same time providing a way to measure communication efforts in a quantifiable way across any number of communication instruments.
