What is Public Relations? An Analysis of Turkish Public Relations Job Advertisements Discourses

From Barnum’s publicities on his circus to Bernays’ studies with its emphasis on research, and to modern and contemporary practices, public relations has been transformed. As strategic communication process, public relations uses research, planning, implementation and evaluation. In a modern sense, its affiliations are corporate social responsibility, stakeholder management, corporate citizenship, corporate governance, crisis and risk communication, media relations, image, reputation and perception management. In today’s Turkey, public relations have often been confused with customer relationship and marketing for many years. This confusion is also reflected in job advertisements. In this study, public relations job advertisements discourses on human resources network will be analyzed. The paper aims to answer the following questions: How academicians define public relations? What are the differences between public relation’s job advertisement discourses and public relations academician’s descriptive discourses? What is the image of public relations profession reflected by job advertisement discourses?