Research project: PR in the time of Covid-19
Dr Alenka Jelen-Sanchez is gathering practitioner stories to record the impact of Covid-19 on the PR industry. Could you help?
Dr Alenka Jelen-Sanchez from the University of Stirling is looking for PR and communication practitioners based in the UK, who would be willing to participate in the study about their lived experience during the current Covid-19 pandemic.
With social distancing policy and lockdowns in place in several countries, including the UK, most of us will likely experience weeks that we might find challenging, or in some cases exciting.
The current situation will put many areas, including PR, strategic communication and crisis communication, to the test and perhaps reshape and transform them for years to come.
We will remember this pandemic for a long time. However, as psychological studies show, memory tends to twist events as they happened to us – we might remember things as if real although they never happened to us, or we forget things that are essential at the time. The more we minimise the time between the events and recall, the more accurate account of events we are likely to get.
The objective of this study is to explore how PR and strategic communication practitioners experience, observe, reflect on, live through and cope with the situation and how it affects their daily lives.
The participants will be asked to write a diary for one month. The study is interested in exploring the following issues:
How does the pandemic influence practitioners’ professional and everyday lives?
How do they work and what do they do?
What concerns do they have?
What challenges are they facing?
How do they cope with uncertainty?
What do they think of communication of the government and other organisations as well as media reporting in this pandemic?
How do they observe the role of PR and strategic communication in general?
The participants can, of course, write about other relevant aspects and events related to PR.
It would be good to also reflect on the context in which they are, daily changes that are happening as the government and organisations come up with new policies, measures and strategies and how these impact both, PR and our daily lives.
The study is looking for around 300 to 500 word long entries (in a written, audio or video format). Relevant links, materials and photos can be included, if the participants wish to do so. The entries should be preferably produced daily or at least five times a week.
The entries will be analysed using thematic analysis based on grounded theory approach, disseminated to participants and published in an academic journal. Anonymous sections of diaries might be used as illustrations.
This study would like to contribute in terms of how we remember these days with a particular focus on PR and strategic communication. It will be a valuable resource for those who will be looking for an account of these weeks that comes directly from practitioners and is not affected by the inaccuracies of our memories.
If you are interested, please email Dr Alenka Jelen-Sanchez at alenka.jelen@stir.ac.uk
