Please answer two of the three questions based on the pdf. 250-300 words per question
Anderson et al.
Anderson et al.’s “Understanding Dialogue and Engagement Through Communication Experts’ Use of Interactive Writing to Build Relationships” (International Journal of Communication, pp. 4095 – 4118, 2016) is a qualitative study that looks at how PR professionals utilize interactive writing to build relationships and how they define terms such as “dialogue” and “engagement”. The researchers conducted in-depth interviews with “top digital public relations professionals” (Anderson et al, 2016, p. 4095). The study is based upon the previous findings that PR professionals neglect to fully utilize dialogue in their online communication, despite the fact that it is important to the field of public relations. The researchers point out the critical fact that there are many definitions both by scholars and PR professionals surrounding words such as “dialogue” and “engagement”. Thus, the study aims to help PR professionals, as well as scholars, better distinguish the difference between dialogue and engagement and create a model comparing the use of both that can then be further tested and refined by future studies.
In the literature review, Anderson et al. walk through the various definitions of the terms being studied and state how this study itself is choosing to define each word (2016). Despite this, I found that the authors failed to fully share their definition of dialogue as used within the study. I did find it interesting how in the literature review they point out that the current definition for engagement used by the public relations industry more appropriately falls under the definition of responsiveness. This is a clear reason for the need to understand the true definitions of these words more clearly to better comprehend how PR professionals can measure dialogue and engagement and fully understand how it impacts online relationship building. The study makes a unique argument that dialogue and engagement are two separate outcomes, and thus that you can have one without the other.
One problem I found with this study was that the authors failed to properly disclose and explain how they got their participants and who they were. For example, while they note that they “used rankings information to create a list of top PR firms” (Anderson et al., 2016, p. 4103) they do not disclose what ranking information they used. Further, while they listed a few of the agencies surveyed they do not share all 15. While it is stated that they found participants based on LinkedIn searches, it is not clear how they contacted them or what effort they made to recontact participants in order to fully achieve the goal of one participant per agency. Lastly, the authors did not disclose the age of the participants interviewed, which I believe could impact the results of the study. Convenience sampling was clearly used in this study, but I think that the study would be stronger if it was more clearly stated how the final list of 16 participants came together, in what format their interviews were conducted, and the demographics of who participated.
The conclusion of this study offers little conclusion and is vague in nature. The study concludes “that conversations with professionals do reflect some natural understanding and use of relationship initiation, responsiveness, and interactivity, but less use of engagement and dialogic approaches” (Anderson et al., 2016, p. 4113). The researchers do call out one significant limitation to their study, which was that they never shared a definition of the words being studied with the PR professionals in order to avoid influencing them. While we know researchers often use broad interview questions as it is an inductive process, I found this personally to be a significant flaw to the study, given that the whole study was built on the issue that there is a lack of clarity of these terms. The study also includes that further research is needed into the difference between dialogue and engagement and how it is utilized by PR professionals. I did find that while the study only seemed to dip its toes into providing new insights, the conclusion did offer ample ideas and intriguing suggestions on future research opportunities on the topic. Overall, I did not find the study very impressive or insightful.
Please answer two or more of the following questions and include references from the article in your response to each question.
This research study posed four questions to PR professionals but did not share clear methodology on how they developed the questions. How do you think the lack of explanation for how the researchers developed the questions impacts the study? Are there any questions you would have added or rephrased to better reach the desired data?
Anderson et. al note that one limitation to their study was that they never told the PR professionals set definitions of the words being studied. Do you believe the researchers’ strategy to not share their definitions helped or hurt the study? Why or why not?
Anderson et al. do not disclose the age of the PR professionals interviewed for this study. Do you think that information is important to know given the nature of the questions asked? Do you think the results would have changed significantly if they surveyed a younger generation vs an older generation of PR professionals? Why or why not?
Requirements: 250-300 Words Per Question Times New Roman Size 12 Font Double-Spaced APA Format Excluding the Title and Reference Pages
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