Paralleling the Practice: An Analysis of the Scholarly Literature in Nonprofit Public Relations

Abstract

Although analysis of public relations scholarly literature has become an ongoing topic of investigation, there has been little examination of how different areas of public relations have been studied, and no studies specifically on the nonprofit sector. Therefore, this study investigated scholarly articles about nonprofit public relations in the top public relations and international communications journals (n = 206). Employing a quantitative content analysis, we examined the selected articles in terms of theoretical perspectives, research topics, methodologies, data collection and types of nonprofit organizations. We conclude that, despite an overall paucity of published research, the last 6 years has evidenced a notable increase in the number and proportion of scholarly articles about this topic. If scholarly articles published in 2012 are any indication, then the future of scholarly study of nonprofit public relations looks to be more promising than ever.

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