One of the messages that we are getting from our faculty at the University of Tennessee in the Ph.D. program is to be interdisciplinary in our research and in our teaching. What this means is that it is important for scholars and researchers to be aware of the different perspectives and fields involved in the communication field, and be able to collaborate with other professionals in campaigns and research projects. I believe that this is where academic and research will be going in the next decade – more partnerships between researchers and professionals from various disciplines working together on projects and studying a particular phenomenon.
So, in being interdisciplinary, I have been working on several projects with professionals outside of the public relations field. My first line of projects involves the Information Sciences discipline, with my friend and fellow doctoral student Monica. We have been working on several projects, and one will be presented at the ALISE (Association for Library and Information Science Education) conference in January in Boston. We will be presenting during the poster session on a case study we did in looking at Google Books and the impact that it has on academic libraries and their reputation as the main source for knowledge in the academic community. I will not be able to attend the conference, but I know that Monica will do a fabulous job in presenting our project! 🙂
The other field that I am also collaborating with fellow researchers is in Psychology. I actually started off as a Psychology major in college before moving into Public Relations. Public relations as a whole has been influenced significantly by the theoretical contributions of Psychology with its work on persuasion, attitudes, behavior, and influence to name a few. In May, I will be presenting during the poster session at APS (Association for Psychological Science) along with fellow psychology researchers on a project titled “Leaders or Snakes in Suits: Perceptions of Today’s CEOs.” This project focuses on how individuals perceive the role of the CEO in relation to what has happened this past year with the current economic crisis and how these individuals influence the business and ethical practices of the corporations they represent.
In both projects, there is indeed a collaborative effort and partnership – we are taking various perspectives from different disciplines in looking at a specific phenomenon. In the Google Case Study, Monica is looking at the impact of Google Books on academic libraries, while I am looking at the reputation management and crisis communications (and risk) elements of the case study. With the CEO case study, while there are some clear perception issues that psychology researchers are interested in, as a public relations researcher – I am interested in what attributes people are associating with one individual, and how that influences how people perceive the organization and role that the individual CEO represents. This is something that researchers in public relations professionals need to recognize and be aware of to do proactive crisis communication efforts.
These are just a few research projects that I am working on at the moment. I am looking forward to more projects that involve collaboration between different disciplines and with researchers from other universities. I believe that this is a growing trend in the social sciences field, and I think that this is very exciting and beneficial to researchers by contributing to the overall body of knowledge.
Hope you all are having a great day. 🙂
Best Wishes,
Karen
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