Andi Narvaez: All of the above

This weekend, I read a few articles on public relations research that got me thinking (I think that’s what my professors were going for ) The general consensus is that public relations research is often limited to the evaluation of the products of short-term communication programs when what it should be doing is evaluating the products, processes, and the outcomes of both short- and long-term programs (Grunig & Grunig, 2001; Michaelson & Macleod; 2007). Of course, this statement assumes that organizations are conducting research in the first place…

It is here.

My first big project of my first semester as a public relations graduate student is here and I’m excited to dive right into it. The only problem is I need your help.

I will be conducting a single case study research on the topic of digital media and organization management. Specifically, I would like to study an organization that has seen its internal organizational structure change due to the addition of social and digital media-related functions to the organization’s communication department.

• Have organizational hierarchies shifted?

To mean to or not to mean to, that is the question

During my first class as a graduate student at University of Maryland, Introduction to Graduate Study in Communication, we discussed articles defining the field in general written by George Gerbner, Gerald Miller and Thomas Nilsen. Miller’s work in particular stirred the class into intense conversation about intentional and unintentional communication and whether the latter should be considered communication at all.

I’ll save you the suspense and say that for the purposes of communication research, the answer is mainly no.