آیا تحقیقات در زمینه روابط عمومی دیجیتال نشان دهنده تغییر در الگو می باشد؟ تحلیل و نقد روندهای اخیر Does research on digital public relations indicate a paradigm shift? An analysis and critique of recent trends

The development of public relations (PR) practice has been closely associated with technological advancement. After rapid changes in Internet technology, the emergence of YouTube and Facebook between 2004 and 2006, Twitter in 2007 (Boyd, 2009), and the microblog platform in Mainland China in 2009 (Bobbitt and Sullivan, 2012) has drawn attention from PR practitioners and scholars. Academic and trade associations have recently held large conferences focused on the implications of social media for PR (e.g., the PRSA’s Annual International Conferences and the International public relations research conferences in the recent years). Recent evidence indicates that an increasing number of PR practitioners have adopted Internet applications (such as websites, social network services, etc.) as tools with which to communicate to stakeholders (Guillory and Sundar, 2014; Taylor and Kent, 2010). For example, in a survey of 283 PR practitioners, the average respondent reported using 5.98 different types of social media, such as blogs, social networks, etc. (Eyrich et al., 2008). Results of empirical studies also indicate that Internet applications, such as websites and social media, not only provide an additional way for PR practitioners to deliver information to stakeholders (e.g. Kent et al., 2003), but also facilitate direct interaction and the maintenance of favorable relationships with public constituencies (e.g., Guillory and Sundar, 2014; L’Etang et al., 2012; Rybalko and Seltzer, 2010). The emergence of new forms of digital media has also encouraged scholars to revisit the theorization of new media and its impact on the following aspects of PR practice: the specific features of media, the power relations that exist among stakeholders, and the forms of organizational-public interactions (Guillory and Sundar, 2014; Kent et al., 2003; L’Etang et al., 2012; Rybalko and Seltzer, 2010). Moreover, from a broad perspective of communication professionals’ practice, the use of digital media, especially social media, has been demonstrated to influence professionals’ leadership (Jiang et al., 2016) as well as organizational performance (Parveen et al., 2015). Several key communicative characteristics of new media have been identified in this emergent field: synchronization, asynchrony, interactivity, individualization, demassification, globalization, dialogicity, and equality (e.g., Hiebert, 2005; Huang, 2012; McAllister-Spooner, 2009; Smith, 2010; Taylor and Perry, 2005). Due to these distinct communicative characteristics and the recent proliferation of the digital platforms that convey them, it is necessary to ask: Is the impact Internet applications substantial enough to make digital PR research a subfield of PR research as it has been traditionally conducted? Do we ask the same questions of digital PR that we ask of traditional PR? Or, more fundamentally, have Internet applications shifted the paradigm of PR research? To address the above questions, this study depicts the landscape of digital PR research by analyzing relevant articles published from 2008 to 2014, including types of Internet applications, theories, methodologies, and research perspectives. Moreover, drawing upon the definition of paradigm and paradigm shift (Kuhn, 1969), we compare our results with those of previous studies that provide overviews of PR research in general (i.e., Sallot et al., 2003) and Internet PR research in particular (i.e., Khang et al., 2012; Ye and Ki, 2012), to explore whether digital PR has brought about a paradigm shift in PR research. Public relations is essentially about the ‘‘management of communication between an organization and its publics” (Grunig, 1992, p. 4). Particularly, the type of organization varies from profitable corporations and political organizations to social agencies, indicating PR’s interdisciplinary approach to studying organizational performance and effectiveness. Accordingly, an exploration into whether digital technologies have brought about a paradigm shift in PR research is expected to shed light upon how digital media have changed and shaped organizational practice across various social sectors. The findings of this study therefore profoundly contribute to academic understandings of the development of e-commerce and e-governance.