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Research Methods and Techniques in Public Relations and Advertising

by Bayram Aydin (Volume editor) Emine Sahin (Volume editor)
©2017 Edited Collection 224 Pages

Summary

The authors in this volume present a new point of view related to research methods and techniques in public relations and advertising. The book seeks to provide a research guide that covers topics including selecting and writing a research subject, data collection, and analysis selection for beginner researchers. The articles focus on various methods such as netnographical analysis, experimental study, case analysis, discourse analysis, Delphi method, survey, etc.

Table Of Contents

  • Cover
  • Title
  • Copyright
  • About the author(s)/editor(s)
  • About the book
  • This eBook can be cited
  • Table of Contents
  • Scientific Advisory Committee
  • Introduction
  • Netnographical Analysis of Voting Preferences of Women in Online Communities in Terms of Basic Values (Bayram Oğuz Aydın)
  • Using Fear Appeal in Political Advertisements and its Effect on Audiences: An Experimental Study (Emine Şahin)
  • Case Analysis in Crisis Communication: Analysis of a Sample Case of News Titled “They did not Scan Testicle” which Turns Health Crisis into Political Crisis (Özlem Duğan / Ayhan Uludağ)
  • Discourse Analysis in Relation to a Social Movement (Habibe Akçay Bekiroğlu)
  • A Research on the Importance Grading of Public Relations Application Fields: Application of the Delphi Method (Özgür Selvi / Zülfiye Acar Şentürk)
  • Survey as a Quantitative Research Method (Salih Gürbüz)
  • A Focus Group Research (Emre Ş. Aslan)
  • Advertisement Ethics and Legal Regulations in Turkey from the Perspective of Advertisement Practitioners: A Grounded Theory Analysis (Emine Şahin)
  • Public Relations Perception of Undergraduate Students: Their Employment and Career Expectations (Bayram Oğuz Aydın)
  • Authors

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Scientific Advisory Committee

Prof. Dr. AHMET KALENDER, Department of Public Relations and Publicity, Faculty of Communication, Selçuk University

Prof. Dr. BAŞAK SOLMAZ, Department of Public Relations and Publicity, Faculty of Communication, Selçuk University

Prof. Dr. ERHAN EROĞLU, Department of Communication Design and Management, Faculty of Communication Sciences, Anadolu University

Prof. Dr. MUSTAFA AKDAĞ, Department of Public Relations and Publicity, Faculty of Communication, Erciyes University

Prof. Dr. ŞÜKRÜ BALCI, Department of Journalism, Faculty of Communication, Selçuk University

Assoc. Prof. Dr. Vesile ÇAKIR, Department of Public Relations and Advertising, Faculty of Communication, Uşak University

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Introduction

Our fundamental motivation in composing this book entitled “Research Methods and Techniques in Public Relations and Advertising” is to consider the role our chosen methods and approaches played in determining the scholars during the studies we undertook during our postgraduate educations and beyond. These approaches and methods which guide us in the pursuit of scientific study contain long-accepted, tried and tested practices, therefore it is a subject which every academician must consider within their own studies. The work at hand aims to provide a point of view on the methods and approaches in the sphere of public relations and publicity. In other words, this book seeks to present a research guide that covers topics including selecting and writing on a research subject, data collection, and analysis selection for beginner researchers.

The scientific study traditions typical in the field of public relations and publicity were analyzed. Afterwards, the applied methods and approaches are determined and the sections where each of them is explained occurred together with the sample applications. While some of the section authors present original research, some exemplify previous studies. Thus, presenting an analysis of qualitative and quantitative methods and approaches is accepted as the main aim of the book.

The book consists of nine articles. Each article has been checked by the editor and evaluated by the Scientific Advisory Board. We would like to mention that the board has made major contributions to the book with their meticulous reviews.

If we consider a general evaluation of the articles in the book:

In the study conducted by Bayram Oğuz Aydın entitled “Netnographical Analysis of Voting Preferences of Women in Online Communities in Terms of Basic Values”, values literature – one of many factors determining the lives of political actors – is presented by first examining voting behavior studies from the beginning of the 20th century and is formed by the research of three fundamental schools. The researcher then uses the internet-based netnography method, which is a new area for political mobilization and that uses ethnography as a basis for determining which values are preferred by women in their voting preferences as well as their online political participation experiences. Therefore, results can be obtained in relation to political communication language, which is one of the study fields of public relations. In this study, netnography is presented as a method that leads the way for online public relation studies, for the analysis of ← 9 | 10 → culture in online media, data collection, and deep and reliable analysis in terms of enforceable ethical values.

In her authentic study “Using Fear Appeal in Political Advertisements and its Effect on Audiences: An Experimental Study”, Emine Şahin focuses on the fear appeal that in recent years has mostly been used as a propaganda tool and a tool for drawing attention in political advertisements. She presents the effects of these advertisements that use fear appeals on the audiences by using an experimental model to discuss the literature and concepts such as fear, fear appeal and usage of fear appeal in political advertisements. Şahin collected her data via a questionnaire that measured the short-term effect of the fear appeals in video political advertisements on the voters’ attitudes after watching. She then made analyses with the appropriate statistical techniques. The analyses in the study show that while the fear appeal factor used in political advertisements draws the attention of the voters for a moment, it does not form a positive voting attitude among the viewers, nor does it encourage support for the political party or develop the voting, supporting behavior of the audience.

Crisis communication among the public relations applications is analyzed in the study conducted by Özlem Doğan and Ayhan Uludağ: Case Analysis in Crisis Communication: Analysis of a Sample Case of News Titled “They did not Scan Testicle” which Turns Health Crisis into Political Crisis. This study uses the analysis method by taking a crisis in the health field as a case study. The case study is an analysis form which provides answers to specific questions, organizes and analyzes the different findings according to the case/situation, gives the best possible answers to the research questions and summarizes and blends them. Throughout the study, a crisis situation which occurred in the health field is presented together with the experiences of public relations practitioners and newspapers. Through this analysis, the experiences, reactions and applications in the communication process become the subject of this text and bear relevance for the strategies of future crises.

Habibe Akçay Bekiroğlu examines the attitude of non-governmental organizations in conflict and tension points, its reflection of virtual platform, whether the social media discourses form within the power and power relations. In the study “Discourse Analysis in Relation to a Social Movement” Bekiroğlu applies the discourse analysis method to social media texts in order to analyze how the crisis, conflict, chaos subjects are explained and how reality is fictionalized in the Gezi Park movement. The author begins by presenting the discourse analysis in a conceptual manner for the macro and micro structures before the analysis itself, then details the messages given to the target audience by the TEMA foundation (the Turkish Foundation for Combating Soil Erosion, for Reforestation and the ← 10 | 11 → Protection of Natural Habitats). The author analyzes the discourses used in their online communication platforms via the discourse analysis method, a method employed frequently in the analysis of social relations. According to the research, the main elements in the discourses of TEMA foundation are “peace, right to live, ecological struggle, to fight for preventing the removal of the trees, association and protecting the environment”.

Another method which may be effective for implementation in the public relations field is the Delphi method. This method, which was developed by the Rand Corporation in the 1950s and 60s by Helmer et al., aims to give a decision agreed on by the opinions of public leaders or expert persons. This technique is still used in many fields such as program planning, needs evaluation, policy determination, developing resource utilization and is promoted in Özgür Selvi and Zülfiye Acar Şentürk’s study “A Research on the Importance Grading of Public Relations Application Fields: Application of the Delphi Method”. It can be argued that the Delphi technique may contribute to the planning process of the applications to be made in the field of public relations. In addition, the authors present a specific application sample which is appropriate to this process within this study.

The survey method is used by many researchers to collect data in a short time period due to its lower costs, ability to reach masses and easy application. In this volume, it is presented by Salih Gürbüz in the section “Survey as a Quantitative Research Method”. In this section, the stages in the survey development process, survey application types according to the purpose and application form, benefits and limitations of the survey, coverage error among the error resources in the survey research, sampling error, measurement error, non-response errors, preparation of the survey form, the number of questions that must exist in surveys, the order of the survey questions, questions types in surveys, pilot analysis and benefits of pretesting, descriptive statistics which are one of the analysis methods frequently used in survey researches, correlation, the T-test, variance analysis (ANOVA), and the chi-square test are mentioned. In the final section of the study, the case study “Russia’s image in the eyes of Turkish University Students” is analyzed.

Although data collection is considered to be one of the biggest problems in the field of social sciences, Emre Ş. Aslan highlights that the most important problem is in fact the need for research methods to include the real thoughts of the informant. In his study “A Focus Group Research”, Aslan presents focus group researches that aim to present the real thoughts of the informants and succeeds in solving this problem within the frame of group dynamics. He details how it is implemented and how the data is analyzed with a case study. The focus group ← 11 | 12 → method has some specifications derived from other research techniques such as revealing insight and manipulating the group. In this research method, the participants can express opinions which they would ordinarily abstain from stating when alone thanks to the effect of the group dynamics.

Grounded theory centers on creating theory from the data. When a study is patterned with grounded theory, the researchers can systematically present a theory from data. In the present volume, there are two studies that adopt this approach.

Emine Şahin’s study “Advertisement Ethics and Legal Regulations in Turkey from the Perspective of Advertisement Practitioners: A Grounded Theory Analysis” aims to conceptualize advertisement ethics by analyzing the data obtained from advertisement practitioners in accordance with grounded theory. Şahin posits that the foundation of advertisement ethics is formed by social values and that the statutory audit and penalization is seen as removed from society by the advertisers. Thus, ethics and the advertisement ethics concept is presented as theoretical in accordance with the analysis of the data obtained from the study group consisting of the advertisers who are determined in accordance with the purpose of the grounded theory approach. The study also seeks to determine how the studies of practitioners in the sector affect the decisions of the Board of Advertisement, which polices conformity to advertisement legislation and penalizes companies who are in violation of this legislation and the channels that broadcast their advertisements.

The second of these studies is “Public Relations Perception of Undergraduate Students: Their Employment and Career Expectations”, which highlights that the perceptions of public relations students are very important for ongoing applications and the practitioners of next generations. Bayram Oğuz Aydın uses the data collection and analysis processes of the grounded theory approach. Thus, the students’ point of view on preferring public relations education and their career expectations prior to their education are presented.

Details

Pages
224
Year
2017
ISBN (PDF)
9783631718773
ISBN (ePUB)
9783631718780
ISBN (MOBI)
9783631718797
ISBN (Softcover)
9783631718766
DOI
10.3726/b10899
Language
English
Publication date
2017 (May)
Keywords
Quantitative Research Qualitative Research
Published
Frankfurt am Main, Bern, Bruxelles, New York, Oxford, Warszawa, Wien, 2017. 224 pp., 15 tabl., 20 ill., 5 fig.

Biographical notes

Bayram Aydin (Volume editor) Emine Sahin (Volume editor)

Bayram Oğuz Aydın holds a PhD in Public Relations and Publicity from Selçuk University. His research interests include online communities, education in public relations, online reputation management and crisis management. Emine Şahin is Assistant Professor at Gaziantep University. She holds a PhD in Public Relations and Publicity from Selçuk University. Her research focuses on advertising, interculturality, interpersonal communication and image management.

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