Academic Theories in Public Relations - J.P. Cornelissen

Here is a conclusion/my opinion about the first article written by Cornelissen. 
His article explores the relationship between academic PR and proffessional PR.

Good point: A good deal of Public Relations work appears to have been based on intuitive or experimental learning rather than grounded in or drawing an academic knowledge.
It is argued that academic PR theories might not be used in real PR practice as the way they were suppose to work. In this sense PR practitioners use their own intuition more than the academic theories taught.

Cornelissen writes about different thories. For example: practical experience and common sense knowledge in preference for academic knowledge which is seen more sophisticated and rational. PR practitioners are face to face with many different problems every day in their PR work, which are not all put in to theories, but might be fixed also with common sense or creativity.
In the same time another theory says that these academic PR theories are not used in a direct way, but looking at the bigger picture, the solution for one problem can be for example a segment of one academic theory.

In my opinion the academic theories and actual PR practice work in favour of one and another, because, we can use the theories in these problems/issues that the theory is made for (or looking at the big picture again-maybe a theory can only be useful by not looking the whole theory, but only part of it), and in the other way, make new theories about new uprising issues, which are seen in practice every single day. In the same time every situation fortunately or unfortunately is different and therefor should be handeled differently. But, the more experience we have the better we can solve different problems.

"In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. But, in practice, there is." (Jan L.A. van de Snepscheut and/or Yogi Berra)

 

 

 

PR Theory III lecture

The reaseon why I'm starting with the third lecture is that it was the first one for me. No worries though, I will make it up with my next posts :) This Tuesday we talked about Social Construction of Reality! We started defining "Theory". In my opinion it is something that would make sense of the things that maybe otherwise would not make sense. Of course there are some theories that we think it is OBVIOUS, but..I think we might not think about it like a Theory on our own, but when we hear/see it, it's kinda "yeah right, I knew it". Theory puts the facts together and finds a result which from we can draw a conclusion.

Also there are these great PR people, like Castells, Focault, Luhmann, Beck, Bordieu, Habermas - These guys made some real difference in PR.

Social Constructionism. Knowledge is created in social process and reality is a result of the previous. We also found out what is Bruté realism and institutional realism. The first one is always there, lik a mountain that is not created by society/human beings, and the second one is socially constructed, like for example a police.

We also made a mindmap..do you know what's a mindmap? For other people it may seem very confusing blurry scheme, but the one who makes a mindmap for oneself, for them it makes perfect sense. Just look at our groups mindmap and you'll see :)

This is something that it looks like.