Just like many professional jobs, the field of public relations also relies heavily on research. This research can range from doing research on a product, to finding out what people think about the company, to finding the best way to reach the target market. They do research on their customers, but also on the business they are doing the PR for. Preforming research will insure they are doing the best possible idea out there, along with limit risks of back lash. According to Greg Leitchy and Jeff Springston, who both work for the Department of Communication at the University of Louisville, research is able to give researchers an insight to how managed communication influences the shape of the cultures it interacts with. This means that the way public relations acts in a community it can have a large effect on the people and culture it is taking place in. This is why it is important to research the culture of your target market to best communicate with them.
According to David Turier, a specialists in providing strategic counselling for large scale business, and Laurence Childs state, “Conducting Research is key to fully understand how to gain the attention of an audience when building a communications campaign. The last thing people want with a communications campaign is to find them selves screaming into the void…” This quote helps show that research is the reason that PR is able to reach the people they want to reach. With out research the PR will not reach anyone, and they will be talking to no one or “the void.” By doing research you are able to learn which media your target audience uses. Whether it is print, TV, or social media research will be able to figure it out. Research even goes beyond the media and sees what on that media they are looking for. If you are on the right media, but don’t get your targets attention then you are still not reaching them. Research will allow you to find and reach your audience.
With research being increasingly more important to PR, and other professional fields starting to do so much research, there have been new ideas of research. Some people believe that research can go too far and that there should be some rules you have to follow. This idea is supported by Don W. Stacks, the author of Primer of Public Relations Research Third Edition, when he stated, “With the increased reliance on research -both produced internally and framed out to professional firms- the question of data and research ethics has become more important than it was before.” There are laws and codes of ethics that keep research inline. They are there to keep the public safe from companies conducting unethical research. I think it is good to keep companies or firms within guide lines. It is also important for them to do things ethical and inform people what they are researching.
I am sure as time goes on the importance of research will only increase in PR. It is easy to see how important it is now, and there is no reason to believe it would ever back track. However, with research becoming more important it is also important to keep laws and regulations there to protect the public and keep companies ethical.
https://www.academia.edu/3792901/Importance_of_research_and_evaluation_in_public_relations
Why is research important in a communications campaign?
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/107769909607300215
Ryan Baldwin 