Sources of Citizens’ Experiential and Reputational Relationships with Political Parties

Abstract

Strömbäck and Kiousis’s (2011) definition of political public relations stresses that both reputation and relationship management are important to the practice of public relations within a political context. Acknowledging this proposition, we sought to integrate concepts related to reputational relationship management into Seltzer and Zhang’s (2011a, 2011b; Zhang & Seltzer, 2010) model of political organization-public relationships (POPR). Using a national marketing panel, we conducted a survey of US citizens 18 and older balanced to US Census data (n=451). Respondents were asked about possible sources of information regarding political parties including indirect experience via second-hand reports and direct experience via exposure to the strategic communication efforts of the two major political parties. Perceptions of reputation and of POPR with both parties were also assessed. For both parties, strategic communication emerged as the primary influence on perceptions of POPR while indirect experience had little to no influence on POPR or reputation. The findings strengthen the POPR model by including concepts related to experiential and reputational relationships suggested by Grunig and Hung (2002) and provide an empirical test of the proposed reputationrelationship continuum within political public relations.