Abstract:

It is known that the knowledge accumulation in the field of public relations in Turkey has seen a great development in the past twenty years and that the public relations profession has demonstrated its rush as a strong management function in private sector or non-profit institutions and organizations. Public relations education, which began to be provided from the middle of the twentieth century in order to meet the demands of qualified elements of the public relations field/professional defined as a strategic communication management, has become mature by the end of the century and has great development in the first quarter of the twentieth first century. In Turkey, the nature of public relations education provided within the faculty of communications in the universities is also among the topics frequently focused and criticized in recent years and continues to take. From here on this study, a general assessment of public relations education provided in both the bachelor and graduate level in Turkey was first done, then the quantitative content analysis of the doctoral theses written in the field of public relations between 2008-2017 years was placed. The work has two main objectives. The first of these is to identify the current status of public relations education given at the bachelor and graduate level in Turkey in terms of quantity, and the second is to identify the contribution of these theses to the field by making the classification of the doctoral theses written in the field of public relations. In this context, the 240 doctoral theses written within the remaining ten years have been studied by quantum content analysis technique. In the theses studied within the framework of the research, the subjects, the year-by-year distribution, the universities where the theses were written, the institutions, the main disciplines of science and the disciplines of science, the language, the gender and other elements were addressed. According to the research, the number of universities in the field of public relations in Turkey has increased significantly in recent years. While the number of undergraduate education provided in public relations is equal in state and foundation universities, it has been found that state universities are in the forefront of postgraduate education. It has been found that almost all of the examined doctoral theses were written as a result of doctoral studies in public relations given in state universities. According to the findings of the research, considering the subject distribution of the doctoral theses examined, the conclusion is that the topics related to the implementation of public relations are most emphasized.

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