Featured panelists include Toni Muzi Falconi (with 53 years of professional public relations experience in Italy, Europe and other continents), Dr. Maureen Taylor from the University of Oklahoma, and Dr. Elizabeth Avery from the University of Tennessee among others. Topics to be covered include:

·        Essentials of public relations in Italian political campaigns 1963-2013
·        Political Public Relations in the European Union
·        Political Public Relations in Advocacy: Building Online Influence and Social Capital

Overview: Public relations efforts are more pervasive in political communication today than ever before. Still, there is neither much theorizing nor empirical research on political public relations. Consequently, the goal of this post-conference panel is to bring together scholars at the crossroads of public relations, political communication, political science, and political marketing, and to serve as an initial forum to discuss various perspectives on political public relations. Political professionals will also be on the panel to offer an applied perspective on best practices in the field. The discussion will be based on studies in a forthcoming special issue of the Public Relations Journal edited by Spiro Kiousis (University of Florida) and Jesper Strömbäck (Mid-Sweden University).

For more information on the session, please visit, http://www.icahdq.org/conf/2013/confdescriptions.asp

To register, please follow the use the ICA online registration system at

https://www.icahdq.org/shopping/default.asp

Contacts:

Spiro K. Kiousis (skiousis@jou.ufl.edu) and Chiara Valentini (CHV@asb.dk)

Overview: Public relations efforts are more pervasive in political communication today than ever before. Still, there is neither much theorizing nor empirical research on political public relations. Consequently, the goal of this post-conference panel is to bring together scholars at the crossroads of public relations, political communication, political science, and political marketing, and to serve as an initial forum to discuss various perspectives on political public relations. Political professionals will also be on the panel to offer an applied perspective on best practices in the field. The discussion will be based on studies in a forthcoming special issue of the Public Relations Journal, edited by Spiro Kiousis and Jesper Strömbäck.

For more information, please register for the session at http://www.icahdq.org/conf/2013/confdescriptions.asp

Contacts: Spiro K. Kiousis (skiousis@jou.ufl.edu) and Chiara Valentini (CHV@asb.dk)

Special Issue Editor:Maureen Taylor, University of Oklahoma

What is the role of public relations in helping to make society a better place? Public relations can help all types of groups and organizations to participate in public debate.

This special issue will include the most current research and theory development about the role of public relations in building, sustaining, and advancing democracy and/or democratic interests. The concept of democracy for this special issue is intended to be quite broad and not limited to political campaign research. Papers addressing advocacy, community building, unions, lobbying, public formation, and social cause groups are encouraged.

The special issue will highlight a wide range of articles about public relations and democracy. Articles may apply any type of methodology (critical/rhetorical, case study, empirical) but public relations theory and literature need to be central to any piece. Topics may include but are not limited to the following:

1)    Measurement of public relations efforts in democracy

2)    Theory development of public relations role in democracy building

3)    Civil society and social capital research

4)    Research about political or social cause communication campaigns

5)    Theory-based case studies of public relations efforts in nation building

6)    CSR and community building

7)    Publics

The deadline for submitting a manuscript for review is July 1, 2012. All papers should be submitted to the Elsevier website found at http://ees.elsevier.com/pubrel/. All submissions must be noted for the Special Issue on Public Relations and Democracy in the pull-down menu.

Submissions can include full-length articles (no more than 25 pages of text) or research in brief submissions (no more than 7 pages and in our format).

All submissions will be blind peer reviewed for this special issue. Authors will be notified about the acceptance decision by Sept. 15, 2012. Articles that are accepted will need to be revised and resubmitted to the Elsevier system by Jan. 1, 2013 with final acceptance for publication by September 2013, for Vol. 39, No. 5.

For more information and submission contact: Maureen Taylor, Professor, Gaylord Family Chair of Strategic Communication, Gaylord College of Journalism and Mass Communication, University of Oklahoma, Norman 73019, Telephone 405-325-4015, E-mail mtaylor@ou.edu.

The special issue will be edited by Jesper Strömbäck and Spiro Kiousis, and submissions should make significant contributions to the profession’s development as well as offer theoretical and empirical contributions to further the scholarship of political public relations, broadly defined as above. Submissions from both scholars and practitioners are encouraged.

The deadline for abstracts is April 1, 2012. Decisions on which abstracts to accept will be made by May 15, 2012. The deadline for final manuscripts is January 1, 2013.

Abstracts and manuscripts for the special issue must conform to the requirements of regular submissions to the Journal, as detailed here. Abstracts and submissions are to be submitted to the guest editors, Dr. Spiro Kiousis, APR, at skiousis@jou.ufl.edu, or Dr. Jesper Stromback at Jesper.Stromback@miun.se with the subject line “PR Journal Political Public Relations Issue.”

– Nonprofit in Crisis: An Examination of the Applicability of Situational Crisis Communication Theory, by Hilary Fussel Sisco;

–  Are All Crises Opportunities? A Comparison of How Corporate and Government Organizations Responded to the 2009 Flu Pandemic, by Sora Kim & Brooke Fisher Liu; and

– Public Segmentation and Government-Public Relationship Building: A Cluster Analysis in the United States and 19 European Countries, by Hyehyun Hong, Hyojung Park, Youngah Lee & Jongmin Park.

As a consequence, today we have updated our list of articles in political public relations. If you miss any articles on that list, please let us know!

1. Introduction, by Grant Neeley and Kendra Stewart

2. Government Public Relations: What Is It Good For?, by Mordecai Lee

3. Media Relations, by Jerome Sadow

4. Government Websites, by Napoleon Byars

5. Public Information Campaigns, by Jenifer E. Kopfman & amanda Ruth-McSwain

6. Crisis Public Relations for Government Communicators, by Brooke Fisher Liu & Abbey Blake Levenshus

7. Web 2.0, by Leila Sadeghi

8. Strategic Communication Planning, by Diana Knott Martinelli

9. Ethics in Government Public Relations, by Shannon A. Bowen

10. Doing Right and Avoiding Wrong with the Law and Politicians, by Kevin R. Kosar

11. Internal Public Relations for Personal and Program Success, by Anne Zahradnik

12.Using Monitoring and Evaluation to Measure Public Affairs Effectiveness, by Maureen Taylor

13. Conclusion, by Grant Neeley & Kendra Stewart

The special issue will be edited by Jesper Strömbäck and Spiro Kiousis, and submissions should make significant contributions to the profession’s development as well as offer theoretical and empirical contributions to further the scholarship of political public relations, broadly defined as above. Submissions from both scholars and practitioners are encouraged.

The deadline for abstracts is April 1, 2012. Decisions on which abstracts to accept will be made by May 15, 2012. The deadline for final manuscripts is January 1, 2013.

Abstracts and manuscripts for the special issue must conform to the requirements of regular submissions to the Journal, as detailed here. Abstracts and submissions are to be submitted to the guest editors, Dr. Spiro Kiousis, APR, at skiousis@jou.ufl.edu, or Dr. Jesper Stromback at Jesper.Stromback@miun.se with the subject line “PR Journal Political Public Relations Issue.”