The Development of Public Relations Research in the United States and its Status in Communication Science

Abstract

Three times in my 25-years of research on communication and public re lations, I have been asked to review the status of public relations research. Each time, I found that little research was being done on public relations, that the research was not being done by public relations scholars, or that the research had generated little theory. In general, then, we Americans must be modest about our research on public relations-at least about the quantity of studies we have done. On the other hand, a relatively small but growing “invisible college” of researchers has developed in the United States in the last 20 years. At the beginning, this group consisted of fewer than five people. Now it probably approaches 50 people.

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