The chapter discusses impact of mobile technologies on public relations practice and scholarship by tracking the historical development of public relations as a distinct field, thus mapping a structural framework for the further discussion of new trends and areas of academic and industry research. Moving from functional to co-creational perspective, public relations enters the conversation age in which the nature of mobile technologies forces practitioners to adopt the dialogic approach to build trust and nurture relationships. Existing theoretical frameworks are supplemented with industry examples within the field of crisis communication, corporate social responsibility and customer and employee relations. An overview of some of the latest trends in social media research, public segmentation and video marketing applied to co-creational perspective of public relations organizes new trends around a more fundamental paradigm shift. This structure places industry practices within broader academic research, providing both tactical and strategic views on public relations in the mobile age.
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In the last few decades public relations have undergone a considerable transformation from a narrowly instrumental practice of organizational communication to a more strategically oriented co-creational perspective. The tremendous impact that technology has exerted on public relations was actively discussed in business and academic circles.
Already in the end of 1990s experts (Ross & Middleberg, 1999; Crawford, 1999; Holtz, 1999; Witmer, 2000, cited in Hurme, 2001) started making bold statements that those public relations practitioners who fall behind the Internet hype would have to leave the game.
As an array of new communication channels is burgeoning and the speed of communication rises rapidly, public relations practitioners (James, 2008) faced a sharp need for more technical skills, including search engine optimization (SEO), web analytics, web publishing, database management, and analytic software operation. New media forms are to be taken into consideration with video content proliferating and going mobile too. Forbes (Trautman, 2014), citing an eMarketer study, reported that in 2018 more than 70% of all online videos will be watched on a tablet.