Accessing PR expertise: methodological considerations

Abstract

The nature of public relations expertise and knowledge has been rather under-researched. In particular, practitioners' perspectives and, more to the point, their voices, have been given little attention. Consequently, we have begun to redress this lack through a twelve month funded project .

The study was originally designed from the perspective that academic research could identify conceptual or knowledge gaps in practice that could be filled through the transmission of useful knowledge/cognitive skills, an assumption that has dominated much of the literature. During the progress of this research we came to appreciate that a deeper and more complex challenge existed in understanding how practitioners learn. Consequently, our study evolved from a deficit model of professional development into a series of iterative interventions. These took place during a longer term research relationship aiming to elicit practitioners' ideas about their daily work and the underpinning expertise and knowledges accumulated through learning and over time. We were particularly interested in the work of experienced practitioners who were recognised as such by their professional peer group and identified as 'senior'.

In this article we provide a brief synopsis of relevant literature and outline the rationale and approach taken to our empirical work, foregrounding the methodological challenges entailed in accessing the ideas of practitioners about the nature of their expertise, knowledge and learning. We begin with a discussion of insights from the public relations literature and then proceed to draw on sociological, cultural studies and educational theory to indicate useful lines of analysis and future inquiry