2012 PROCEEDINGS - Public Relations Society of America

interaction, connectedness, personalization, playfulness) in their attempt to operationalize the
concept and likewise found that corporate websites were not as interactive as they could be.
Galloway (2005) approached the concepts of dialogue and interactivity when he proposed
that public relations practitioners should focus more on designing virtual experiences as part of
relationship building with publics. He drew upon psychology and ergonomics to argue that
―dynamic communicative touch‖ (p. 573) was not limited to the physical realm and could be
achieved online through cyber-haptics, or experiences that stimulate ―feelings such as
connectedness, involvement, appreciation, and meaningfulness‖ (p. 573). He suggested that
cyber-haptics could occur through venues such as online polling, games, voice and video
messaging, email, or live chats. He acknowledged his article as an initial step in what he hoped
would be the beginning of continuing research into actual applications of this approach. Cyberhaptics,
per se, was not the primary focus of any other articles in the dataset, however.
It was Seltzer and Mitrook (2007) who suggested that weblogs, more commonly known
as blogs, were potentially more effective for relationship building than websites because of their
inherently responsive design. Kent (2008), too, recognized the potential of blogs, but mainly for
research, framing, persuasion, issue monitoring, and environmental scanning. He discussed the
dialogic and interactive nature of blogs, but also highlighted ―the exaggerated significance‖ (p.
37) associated with blogs as a public relations tool as well as the risks involved with blogging.
Kent concluded: ―A blog will only be useful to an organization if it has someone to maintain it,
someone trained in effective dialogic communication, and someone who has the trust of
individuals and publics‖ (p. 39).
Yang and Lim (2009) proposed and empirically tested a theoretical model of Blog-
Mediated Public Relations (BMPR) that included relational trust as an outcome of effective
blogging practices. They found that bloggers who exhibited a ―dialogical self‖ (p. 345)
enhanced interactivity, which, in turn, enhanced trust. A dialogical blogger, they explained,
focused on mutual understanding rather than persuasion. Yang and Kang (2009) validated a
four-dimensional scale to measure blog engagement and found that interactivity positively
enhanced one‘s connection to, attitudes toward, and word-of-mouth intentions about a company.
In her analysis of mommy bloggers, Stansberry (2011) suggested social network analysis as a
means to increase understanding of online publics.
Interestingly, Xifra and Huertas (2008) found that although most public relations blogs
were written by public relations professionals, they lacked development in interactive resources,
and research was rarely addressed. Similarly, Xifra and Grau (2010) observed that Twitter
discourse related to public relations contributed more to practice than theory. Wakefield (2008)
called for a reconstruction of international public relations theory in light of Internet-based
effects on communication.
Hickerson and Thompson (2009) suggested that wiki sites were untapped sources for
dialogic communication and relationship building but were somewhat risky in that creation of
content is a shared process. In their investigation of health wikis, sites perceived by respondents
to be more dialogic were also perceived to be more valuable. Respondents additionally
expressed ―a significantly higher commitment to future usage for wikis than non-wikis‖ (p. 8).
Waters, Amarkhil, Bruun, and Mathisen (2012) introduced two theoretical frameworks (i.e.,
entertainment persuasion and PodCred) to assess the communicative purpose and design of
podcasts.
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