| Chapter 1: | Introduction—Surveying the Cyberterrain of Developing Country Head of State Web Sites |
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This literature illustrates the diversity among public relations practice in Europe, and scholarship generally takes this variance into account. The emergence of the EU has increased the need for scholarship to account for differences in public relations scholarship and other cultural factors. The spread of new technology is greatly influencing many countries in Europe, particularly those with the economic means to support technological advancement. This progression holds great promise to public relations practice in Europe, but many gaps still exist in the research, including the need for more literature focusing on developing countries, non-EU countries, and non-English speaking countries.
Asia
In their 2003 book chapter, Chen and Culbertson likened the growth of public relations in China to that of an adolescent struggling through growing pains. The same metaphor might be satisfactorily applied to the entire continent. The growth and understanding of the practice is uneven, matched by a sporadic but growing base of public relations research. There is a marked pattern of applying the Grunig and Hunt (1984) models7 to various Asian countries and adding new concepts, such as cheong and Confucian dynamism in South Korea (Rhee, 2002), guangxi in China (Chen & Culbertson, 2003), and ko(u)-ho(u) in Japan. In the latter country, Inoue (2003) observed there is no word for “public relations” per se, and that term in Japanese literally means “public information.”
The influence of Hofstede’s dimensions of culture and power distance (1984, 2001a) is prominent in much Asian public relations literature, probably due to hierarchical societal norms (Taylor & Kent, 1999). Hofstede’s landmark study examined power distance, individualism, masculinity, uncertainty avoidance, and long-term orientation to categorize cultures and organizations around the world. Hofstede’s dimensions are broad enough to take into account the fabric of Eastern cultural beliefs, where culture is often built around reputation, age, respect, gender, and uniformity.