Institute for Public Relations

In 2006, an Institute for Public Relations survey identifying priority research topics put trust right at the top of the list. And what produces trust? The professional literature of our field suggests that transparency may be a key driver. Richard Edelman writes in the 2007 Edelman Trust Barometer that “continuous, transparent – and even passionate – communications is central to success” in today’s environment. The transparency/trust linkage seems to be everywhere – except in actual research. Up steps Dr. Brad Rawlins of Brigham Young University, seeking to either prove or disprove the connection. He presented his research as a work in progress ...

“Exploring the Link Between Share of Media Coverage and Business Outcomes,” the second of two papers by Angie Jeffrey (VMS), David Michaelson (David Michaelson & Company), and Don Stacks (University of Miami), builds on an earlier work that may be familiar to regular readers of this column. In that previous work, the authors convincingly demonstrated several things about media coverage and business results: volume matters, tone matters, and message matters. So, with a database of more than 10 million news articles, and appropriate business outcome data from a variety of sources, the researchers set out to look at correlations with ...