Web Site Public Relations: How Corporations Build and Maintain R ...

Preface

This research was completed in July 2004 and its focus was online relationship building between organizations and their publics. The research produced a conceptual framework of the relationship building online experience and an associated research protocol for analyzing this experience. Besides the framework and research protocol, the main contribution this research made to the public relations literature is the theory-based, experience-centered approach to studying online relationship building. The experience-centered approach is a much needed complement to message-focused, exploratory, and often atheoretical existing literature.

Unfortunately, not much has changed in public relations Web site research since the summer of 2004. Exploration of Web site content and features is still the dominant paradigm of public relations Web site research, and content analysis is still the dominant methodology.