Editor’s essay: Thoughts on theory
Abstract
JOURNAL OF PUBLIC RELATIONS RESEARCH 2018, VOL. 30, NOS. 1–2, 1–4 https://doi.org/10.1080/1062726X.2018.1472726 EDITORIAL The primary purpose of the Journal of Public Relations Research, since its founding, has been to help create, test, refine, or expand theory in public relations. Since commencing my editorship of this journal (work year 2015, credit year 2016), I have come to the chagrined realization that our journal’s very purpose is misunderstood by some authors, reviewers, and readers, for whom the phrase “theory in public relations” may not be quite clear. What is theory? At the most basic level, a theory is an idea or an explanation about how things work. As such, theories might come from a variety of sources that tell us what we know; these methods of knowing originally were articulated as tenacity, authority, taste, and science (see Pierce, 1877), with the method of taste now referred to as the method of intuition (see Wimmer & Dominick, 2014). The point of scientific endeavors (including social scientificefforts, as might be found in public relations) is to offer a method of knowing that is grounded in being public, objective, empirical, systematic, cumulative, predictive, and self-correcting (cf. Wimmer & Dominick, 2014). According to Reynolds (2007),