Introduction to Public Relations: Strategic, Digital, and Socially Responsible Communication presents a comprehensive introduction to the field of public relations (PR) with a focus on new media and social responsibility. Recognizing that the shifts in technology, business, and culture require a fresh approach, authors Janis Teruggi Page and Lawrence J. Parnell show students how today′s PR professionals create persuasive messages with modern technologies while working in line with the industry′s foundations. The authors balance this approach with a focus on understanding communication theory, history, process, and practice, and how all these concepts can be applied to strategic PR planning. The Second Edition features new and refreshed content throughout, including cases, chapter-opening scenarios, and profiles of both young and senior practitioners with tips and career guidance for student success. Included with this title: The password-protected Instructor Resource Site (formally known as SAGE Edge) offers access to all text-specific resources, including a test bank and editable, chapter-specific PowerPoint® slides.

This volume presents a historical and objective overview of the field of public relations in the past century. It discusses some of the landmark cases in public relations, critiques the philosophies of innovators such as Ivy Lee and Edward Bernays, and explores how corporate public relations has affected economic and political trends. The author concludes by offering long-term alternatives for the future of public relations valuable to both practitioners and corporate executives.

From the start, women were central to a century of westward migration in the U.S. Community Building and Early Public Relations: Pioneer Women’s Role on and after the Oregon Trail offers a path forward in broadening PR's Caucasian/White male-gendered history in the U.S. Undergirded by humanist, communitarian, critical race theory, social constructionist perspectives, and a feminist communicology lens, this book analyzes U.S. pioneer women's lived experiences, drawing parallels with PR's most basic functions – relationship-building, networking, community building, boundary spanning, and advocacy. Using narrative analysis of diaries and reminiscences of women who travelled 2,000+ miles on the Oregon Trail in the mid-to-late 1800s, Pompper uncovers how these women filled roles of Caretaker/Advocate, Community Builder of Meeting Houses and Schools, served a Civilizing Function, offered Agency and Leadership, and provided Emotional Connection for Social Cohesion. Revealed also is an inevitable paradox as Caucasian/White pioneer women’s interactional qualities made them complicit as colonizers, forever altering indigenous peoples’ way of life. This book will be of interest to undergraduate and graduate PR students, PR practitioners, and researchers of PR history and social identity intersectionalities. It encourages us to expand the definition of PR to include community building, and to revise linear timeline and evolutionary models to accommodate voices of women and people of color prior to the twentieth century.

My uncle criticized my judgment for leaving the Bell System and taking a job in the stogy old dying railroad industry. It proved to be an exciting time to make the move with the introduction of new technologies into railroading. When railroads introduced computers into their business, information gathering and transfer was met by the communications department through rapid expansion of the means to transmit this data for analysis of the railroad business to meet competition from other entities. Airlines and highway eliminated the early monopoly the railroads enjoyed in commerce moving people and goods. This book was written to document much of this change and the leadership in the Union Pacific Communications Department which set in motion the implementation of new technologies. Two way radios on locomotives for communications to dispatchers and between train crews, improved efficiency in operations. Microwave systems expanded the capacity for telephone and data service. Mobile telephone radios released desk bound division engineers and trainmasters to the field, to observe and direct operations. SCADA systems eliminated traditional pole lines, and fiber optic cables increased capacity of communications. The book also documents the departments interface with government agencies and support of Union Pacific subsidiaries.