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Wednesday, October 20, 2010

Qualitative Research and PR NEWS

Qualitative research is extremely helpful in public relations. This type of research helps PR practitioners gain insight on people's attitudes, behaviors, and motivations. In order to do qualitative research, a PR professional needs to decide on the appropriate type of qualitative research. Will observation work well or should one use ethnographic research? In other words, should the researcher stay out of the research experiment or take part in the experiment as a participant? 


As we learned in lecture, there are many types of observation methods. Latent method gains insight on people's attitudes while manifest measures results. Participant observation requires the researcher to be part of the issue and non participant observation the researcher observes without getting involved. Structure method is research studied before and unstructured is new research. 


An article in PR News, More Than 30 Social Media Topics Headlined the PRSA Conference, But Influential Traditional Media Still Has Its Day observes the 2010 PRSA Conference held this past Sunday in Washington, D.C. PR News writer, Scott Van Camp, informs the reader that 1,900 people attended the event for many informative sessions. In order to write this article someone had to of been observing to calculate the number of people present. The article summarizes some important sessions in a few paragraphs. 


The highlighted sessions in the PRSA conference were Save the PR Industry: Support Traditional Media, PR Knowledge, Skills & Abilities Needed in 2015, and Speechwriting and Social Media. The conference urged attendees to continue to use print media. Social media is not in total domination. PR News says, "57% of the U.S. population—or 171 million people," still use print. I didn't expect to see more than half of the population still reading the daily newspaper.  Sharon Geltner, president of Froogle PR, advises communicators that students are still majoring in print journalism. This is a good sign for newspapers because it is not dead yet! 


The skills needed in 2015 is the most beneficial piece of information I read in the article. PR News says, "A new PRSA survey of more than 1,000 PR professionals finds that the skills that will be needed most by 2015 will be social media, crisis communications and reputation management." Although print media isn't dead, social media remains the newest up and coming form of communication. Students, teachers, businesses, and more need social media to stay connected. I was happy to see crisis communication because that is my next course of study at Quinnipiac University . Also, writing and listening are good skills to posses when communicating with social media. "Writing has always been the No. 1 request from companies searching for PR executives," said Lisa Ryan, senior VP  of of communications recruiting firm Heyman Associates. Executives want people to write well. This is a good skill to have in any career. 


The speech writing and social media session offered tips on how to reach target audience on Twitter, Facebook, Blogger, LinkedIn, and other social media outlets. LinkedIn Polls can provide communicators with research on people's concerns and issues. GET MOVIN! Use this tool in your next presentation. Instant audience polling is a great way to add social media to a meeting. The best part of this online tool is that it is cheap and easy. Furthermore, more people are using Twitter in their presentations to allow audience members to tweet their thoughts during the presentation. Twitter can also be used for research by using the search bar. If you search for a topic, then you will find all conversations about the topic. Social media is so important to know. There is so many new tools to use that it is imperative for communicators to keep on top of new media. 


The writer of this article most likely used qualitative research to report on the PRSA conference. Whether or not the reporter participated in the conference is not known. I would guess Scott Van Camp was sitting in the audience actively participating in the conference while observing the audience and speakers in Washington, D.C. 

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