Exploring the role of the Senate Majority Leader's political public relations efforts

Please cite this article in press as: Kiousis, S., et al. Exploring the role of the Senate Majority Leader’s political public

relations efforts. Public Relations Review (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.pubrev.2014.04.003

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Public Relations Review

Research in Brief

Exploring the role of the Senate Majority Leader’s political

public relations efforts

Spiro Kiousis a,∗, Ji Young Kimb, Ashley Carol Carnifaxa, Sarabdeep Kochhar a

a College of Journalism and Communications, University of Florida, United States b Department of Communication, Bradley University, 1501 West Bradley Avenue, Peoria, IL 61625, United States

a r t i c l e i n f o

Article history:

Received 23 January 2013

Received in revised form 28 August 2013

Accepted 3 April 2014

Keywords:

Agenda building

Political public relations

Social media

Policymaking

a b s t r a c t

Grounded in first- and second-level agenda building, this study explored the role of the U.S.

Senate Majority Leader in shaping the salience of issues and issue attributes in news media

coverage and policymaking in 2011. A total of 358 public relations messages, 164 newspa￾per articles, and 83 policymaking documents were analyzed. Significant correlations were

found supporting agenda-building linkages at both levels. Different types of information

subsidies were explored, including press releases, blog posts, Facebook posts, and Twitter

messages.

© 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction

According to Strömbäck and Kiousis (2011), political public relations is “the management process by which an orga￾nization or individual actor for political purposes, through purposeful communication and action, seeks to influence and

to establish, build, and maintain beneficial relationships and reputations with its key publics to help support its mission

and achieve its goals” (p. 25). Despite the impact of political public relations on the American political landscape, our

theoretical and empirical understanding of political public relations is underdeveloped when compared to other arenas

of public relations and political communication scholarship. Among the key objectives of political public relations efforts

are to establish and communicate the salience of political priorities in media coverage, public opinion, and policymak￾ing. As a result, agenda-building and agenda-setting theory offer germane conceptual frameworks for understanding the

role of political public relations activities in elections and governance given their emphasis on salience formation and

transfer.

At the national level, most research looking at the impact of political public relations has historically examined the role

of presidential communications (i.e., Lee, 2011), especially within an election setting. While important, the function of the

legislative branch of government, in comparison, has been underexplored. By looking atthe public relations efforts ofthe U.S.

Senate Majority Leader, the current inquiry aims to address this gap in the literature. Specifically, the current investigation

looks at several types of information subsidies to investigate their linkages with media coverage and policymaking activity.

∗ Corresponding author at: College of Journalism and Communications, University of Florida, 2096 Weimer Hall, P.O. Box 118400, Gainesville, FL

32611-8400, United States. Tel.: +1 352 392 0466; fax: +1 352 392 3919.

E-mail addresses: [email protected] (S. Kiousis), [email protected] (J.Y. Kim), [email protected] (A.C. Carnifax), [email protected]

(S. Kochhar).

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.pubrev.2014.04.003

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