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Research lies at the core of

the PR process.

A good PR plan has to be grounded in solid research, that offers the basis for

arriving at the problem statement.

A salient element of research lies in scanning the environment.

An environmental scan refers to data gathering directed at the broad of context

surrounding the organization.

Now, you have secondary data in your hand.

Analyzing secondary data is the first step in scanning.

For most organizations, scanning is a routine part of organizational functions.

This is also cheap, as in not really investing into carrying out

your own research and gathering new data.

Various kinds of secondary data may be analyzed by the research team.

For example, analyzing predominantly quantity to market trends

can be captured through A, pattern of sales and B return on investments.

Analyzing market trends are integral to the PR plan

as they can offer insights into the performance of the organization

in the broader environment comparing with broader industry trends.

Consider these trends carefully.

Are things going as planned?

Are there emerging crises you should be addressing?

Are there market opportunities for growth in specific scenarios and contexts?

If you are a manufacturer of cars for instance,

given the falling trends on the purchase of cars and the increasing price of oil,

what does that mean for you in terms of how you position yourself in the PR plan?

But more importantly, what you fundamentally do as an organization.

Identifying the key issues that are relevant to the organization and

tracking those issues are vital elements of research.

The identification and analysis of the issue needs to be situated that meant

a detailed consideration of the issue history in organizational life.

In addition to looking at secondary data from internal archives, such as your

annual reports and company documents, pay attention to news media coverage.

Communication researchers, for instance,

are trained to conduct what we called content analysis.

In a content analysis, the researcher looks for the presence or

absence of specific categories that are derived from the data.

Consider for instance the question, what is the extent of coverage

of green energy technologies in the global mainstream media?

Understanding the extent of coverage will help you,

the PR practitioner for a green energy company, strengthen your PR plan.

In addition, beyond counting the amount of coverage of an issue in the media,

as a researcher you can look at the frames around an issue.

How is green energy framed in the mainstream media?

Refer back to our lessons on framing theory, covered in module two.

Understanding the dominant frames around an issue, then help guide your PR plan.

How are you going to leverage these existing frames?

Are you going to shift the existing frames you need to bring about attitude change?

And if so, how you might do that.

Similarly, in a social media environment, analyzing public

sentiment around an issue can equip you with a better understanding of the issue.

You can conduct an analysis of the Tweeter feed of an issue

to gauge how members of the public are feeling about the issue.

What's there pulse?

What are they keep thoughts about the issue?

Analyzing likes, shares, comments and conversations through data

analytics will offer you insights for new media engagement,

will tell you how can you be listening in on developing your strategy.

Which issues are most likely to generate likes?

How are the most commented upon issues framed?

Let's revisit the green technology example.

What is the new media environment around green technology?

That means how are people talking about green technology?

What are the trends?

How are they talking about green technology on Twitter?

Google Trends, for instance,

offers you insight into the number of searches on a specified topic over time.

Here for instance, you have the trends in information seeking,

on green technologies on the internet.

I just actually did the search, and

found that this is sort of the pattern of the trends.

And what we observer here, is that the topic trended between 2009 and

2011 and then started declining.

Now, if I am a green technology manufacturer, this

is going to actually give me pretty good guidelines about where public opinion,

public interest lies at this point of time.

I can, of course, further narrow it down geographically.

I can think about okay, what are the trends in China right now, and

how can I leverage these trends?

Analyzing Twitter handles and

Facebook feeds can help you gauge social media conversations on green technology.

Listening in on these conversations can offer you vital information for

guiding the development of your objectives as well as your strategy.

Analyzing the social media networks of publics will help you identify

the influences and understand the conversations these influences are having.

For instance, klout.com, created in 2011, computes a score for

individuals based on 35 data points on influence drawn from Facebook and Twitter.

And it was score ranging between 1-100 describes the level of engagement

of an audience member based on retweets, likes, comments, etc.

The Klout Score in turn is highly correlated with re-tweets, likes,

comments generated by posts made by the individual.

My Klout Score page for instance tells you about my level of influence.

It also maps out how this influence has changed over the last few months.

But it also tells me what are the key points of interest,

so that I can actually look at the data and

figure out what is working in terms of the messaging strategies I'm using and

what is not working, so that I can continue to tweak my strategy.

In addition to monitoring social media,

you can look through existing datasets to gauge the public opinion on an issue.

Take for instance they show green technology that we discussed earlier.

Public opinion surveys will tell you how the public in a specific

geographic context feel toward green technology.

Consider the PEW survey that is done in the United States of Americans and

US public opinion.

And according to the PEW survey conducted in 2014, most Americans, for

instance, are favorable to the development of alternative sources of energy.

Similarly, the World Values Survey, which is another important data source, can

provide you with an understanding of broad patterns of human values across globes,

across different cultures, and you can really see how cultures are shifting.

You can understand the values of publics within these cultures and

then also figure out how to incorporate that into your PR planning process.

Now in addition to gathering and analyzing data on your own organization, and

the key issues surrounding your organization,

you will also need to examine company communication and performance and

the bad drop off competitor communication and performance.

Who are your key competitors?

What does the communication environment look like around this competitors?

Analysis of the communication environment

around the competitor is critical in guiding your PR strategy.

Now all of these elements, performance trends,

organizational history, issue coverage, media environment and

competitor communication form the basis of what becomes your situational analysis.

Through which you learn to frame what are your key problems and

what does the environment look like around these key problems.

In the next lecture, we will build on

what we have learned about secondary research to discuss primary research.

That is research that you yourself will do as a practitioner.

* Research Overview and Secondary Research

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