Paradigm lost? A historical review of the application of systems theory to public relations since 1975
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This study traces the formative application of systems theory to public relations and its consideration as a promising paradigm framework for the field, through a rich array of critical perspectives, and more recent analyses that examine public relations as a social phenomenon. The principles of grounded theory are applied to the selection and assessment of a representative sample of academic literature published between 1975 and 2016. A categorization framework emerges from the thematic analysis of the data that re-evaluates the historical application of systems theory. Two main insights emerge from the study. First, even in cases where a specific systems theory is not directly invoked, systems concepts are evident throughout the data of this period. Second, although systems theory has been applied extensively in the analyses of the organization, and more lately in the analyses of the impacts of public relations on the social world as a whole, analysis of the individual as a system actor as a central unit of analysis was not apparent in the data. Accordingly, a reflection on the individual as a system actor is undertaken, along with an updated visual model of the public relations system. Concluding remarks summarize the case for the ongoing relevance of systems theory to public relations research, practice, and education.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.005 | 0.009 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.007 | 0.012 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.005 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.004 | 0.006 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.004 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".