The Actualities of Public Relations Practice at an Eastern Ontario University: A Quasi-ethnographic Study
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Although various studies have used ethnographic techniques to examine different concepts, contexts, and practices in public relations (Sriramesh, 2000; Daymon & Hodges, 2009), none of these studies ethnographically examined the culture within which public relations is practiced, and discourse is produced in a college or university context. This quasi-ethnographic study aims to: (1) produce an account of the core aspects of the culture within which public relations is practiced at a university in Eastern Ontario and (2) identify what PR model best represents the PR practice there. To collect data for this study, I conducted e-mail interviews with five public relations participants at the university under investigation to collect data for this study. The data collected was about the groups’ routines, practices, and behaviors that shape their experience and facilitate producing relevant discourse. I also collected some genres and documents. The findings showed that (1) collaboration characterized the culture within which PR performs its duties and activities and produces relevant discourse, and (2) the two-way asymmetrical model best represents the PR practice in the university examined. Besides filling the gap identified here, the study contributes to theory and practice in the field. It benefits those who teach public relations writing and the institution itself as it evaluates how excellent the PR practice in that institution is.
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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 | 0.006 | 0.008 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.017 | 0.009 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.004 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
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".