This article is closely related to the continuation of the research project ‘Market analysis of PR agency services’ relevant to the pioneering and nationwide study of the entire public relations (PR) agency sector in our country. The project is conducted by Exacto’s research team in cooperation with the Faculty of Journalism, Information and Bibliology at University of Warsaw, Maria Sklodowska-Curie University in Lublin, and the Association of Public Relations Agencies. In the first part of the project (from November 2020 to July 2021), we have prepared a research operative that provides the opportunity for further analysis of the different methodological approaches. The 934-entity operative was based on the compilation of the many available data sources along with their cross-checking and processing. During the desk research work, ‘a categorization key dedicated to the agency database was developed, which made it possible to systematize knowledge about the PR agency market in Poland. The survey was population-based among all PR agencies in Poland, and one of its results was the preparation of the country’s first complete list of such entities based on the definition criteria developed’ (Tworzydło & Szuba, 2022). The research shows that the statistical agency has been in the market for nearly 10 years. Nevertheless, in the surveyed population, as many as 200 entities have been in operation for less than 5 years. An interesting conclusion drawn from the project is that 7% of the agencies are affiliated with a domestic sector organization for PR firms (the Association of Public Relations Agencies and The Polish Public Relations Consultancies Association). In the surveyed group, 85% of all agencies have the number 70.21.Z listed within their Polish Classification of Activities (PKD) codes, meaning human relations (PR) and communications. However, 532 companies (57%) indicate them as the main ones. These results formed the basis not only for an extensive analysis of the sector, but also for identifying other distinguishing parameters (Polish Press Agency, 2022).
Thus, for the first time in the history of the Polish PR industry, we made an analysis to identify the key areas from the industry’s point of view, with a special focus on one sector, which is PR agencies. The sector has not been diagnosed before in such scope as was undertaken by the researchers who coauthored this article. This research has become the basis not only for drawing conclusions in the above area, but also for guiding further research that can be undertaken by scientific research teams.
The premise of the next stages of the ongoing research is to further analyse the collected data and use them, among other things, in the context of ways of communicating and perceiving the essence of PR in relation to the theory of the linguistic picture of the world (LPW
The term Linguistic Picture of the World (LPW) is understood here as a verbal interpretation of reality contained in language, which manifests itself in the form of a set of judgments about the world (Bartmiński, 2006).
In this study, the quantitative-corpus analysis methodology was used. The fundamental theoretical assumption behind both quantitative-corpus analysis and all discourse analysis (using both quantitative and qualitative methods) is the belief that a relatively uniform distinguishable image of a given social object/fact/phenomenon is deposited in the language used by representatives of a given social group (speakers of a given language, or, as in the research presented here, a narrower group, such as a professional group) (Berger & Luckmann, 2020) in the communication strategies, metaphors, and more broadly, the discursive strategies this group uses. In this case, the analysed group is PR professionals and, more specifically, pertaining to selected communication strategies implemented by them in the context of self-description
The category of self-description is taken from the field of social and communicative constructivism theory, which assumes that the basis of functioning of societies are constructions of reality that arise and persist in the course of communicative processes, that is, processes that are fundamentally symbolic (Wendland, 2011).
Thus, the basis of the present research is the assumption that the language of a given social group (in this case, PR professionals) is a specific way of organizing social reality by the representatives of this group; it expresses a certain attitude to this reality, experience, a set of judgments and norms, and even a worldview (Mańczyk, 1982).
The basis of the methodology used here is, as mentioned, the methodological achievements of corpus linguistics and the lexicometric approach to language and discourse analysis (corpus-assisted discourse studies). The essence of this approach is the use of quantitative methods and computer tools (in this case, the Provalis software package) to reconstruct the linguistic worldview of the studied objects, the carriers and manifestations of which form a dedicated corpus of verbal expressions. Trying to explicitly define corpus linguistics is problematic; it basically deals with the principles and practice of using corpora in the study of language (Pawłowski, 2003; Stefanowitsch, 2020) with the tools of information technology (Sinclair, 1991). Corpus linguistics uses large collections of texts (corpora), which are selected according to established analytical principles and categories. Thus, actual language patterns are analysed. This approach draws on the apparatus of mathematical and statistical research, while the assignment of statistical analysis and the use of quantitative methods to study linguistic phenomena make it possible to isolate statistical groups in this matter for further analysis. According to Pawlowski (2001, 2003), the empirical and quantitative nature of the regularities under study implies the measurability and/or quantification of certain features of language.
The extracted corpora were subjected to quantitative-corpus analysis (Gries, 2014)
It is worth noting that the analyzed corpora are not large. This is a limitation that cannot be avoided, since the texts that are included in the corpora essentially exhaust the collection of such texts present in circulation (in terms of the state of the public relations market in Poland as of the date of the study). In this context, it should be emphasized that the analyzed corpora have a specialized character. It was also assumed that even those lexemes whose presence is limited (in terms of percentage representation values) can point to important phenomena in the context of the conclusions of the analysis (this applies, for example, to the lexeme ‘ethics’). It was also assumed that the ratio in terms of the frequency of lexemes within the analyzed corpus is essential. Previously, this type of research in Poland was generally not conducted, with the exception of studies that were pilot in nature (Stasiuk-Krajewska, 2017).
The initial assumption of significant communication differences between K1 corpus agencies and K2 corpus agencies was confirmed by the data presented below. Agencies classified as K1 corpus are characterized by:
a greater number of tabs on the website (the main menu is more fragmented, the internet user has more choices), as the average for K1 was 5.80 versus 5.40 in K2 (p = 0.049); a more detailed offer, as 82% of the websites include additional information beyond indicating just the name of the service/area of operation. In contrast, for K2, the above percentage was 73%, which suggests the generality of the offer (p = 0.040); a more PR–oriented self-description. The content on websites significantly more often includes terms indicating that the company sees itself through the prism of PR, for example, ‘we are a public relations agency’, ‘we have been operating in the PR services market since’. In the K1 corpus, 87% of such cases were observed, while in K2, the percentage for such positioning was twice as low (p < 0.001);
The activities in the possession of other communication tools (in addition to the website), through which the company can present content to the wider environment, are shown in Figure 1. In general, it can be seen that agencies from the K2 corpus are slightly more likely to have profiles on the analysed sites, although the results of statistical tests were not significant (p > 0.05).
In addition to the communication factors listed above, it is also worth noting the selected factors of a demographic-market nature. Agencies from the K1 corpus are almost twice as likely to operate as sole proprietorships. This legal form is found among 43% of agencies from K1 and 25% from K2 (p = 0.005). Also, agencies with lexemes related to communication and/or PR in their name are significantly more likely to have the PKD code 70.21.Z—meaning interpersonal relations (PR) and communication—86% versus 75% in K2, indicating logical consistency in the way the company is organized and named. There are also significant differences in accessibility to financial statements (which correlates with legal form), as it is easier to find this type of information for agencies in the K2 corpus (p < 0.001), for example, 52% of K2 companies have posted information for 2019, while in the K1 corpus, it was 38%. Meanwhile, the two compared corpora obtained similar statistics when it came to duration of operation in the market, frequency of membership in a sector organization, and location of the company’s headquarters in a given province (the lack of significant differences is evidenced by p > 0.05).
The above data indicate that companies in the K1 corpus, therefore, those that refer in their name to communications/PR conduct more elaborate and detailed communications as well as consistently and unambiguously locate their self-description in the area of PR—not only in the name, but also in the more elaborate self-presentation texts on websites and even in the PKD codes.
We analysed text corpora, created from textual materials taken from the websites of PR agencies. These were texts posted in the ‘About Us’ tab or in tabs with similar specificity and communication function, where PR companies put information about their business profile and what they consider to be their strengths, specificity, and differentiator in the market. The similar function of the texts determines the similarities in the way communication is carried out on the agency–environment line and methodologically legitimizes the comparison of these texts. For the purposes of the study, we used the database of the Exacto agency, which owns a systematically updated database of PR companies and conducts periodic research projects on the environment of PR professionals in Poland (Polish Press Agency, 2022).
The motivation for such constructed corpora (based on tabs containing references to the identity, mission, vision, or profile of the companies) was the assumption that such texts most fully represent the self-construction (self-description) of the agency in the context of offering PR services (Stasiuk-Krajewska, 2012). As mentioned, these are texts that present both the agency’s offerings (thus indicating the defining framework, scope of categories, and PR competencies) and also name what distinguishes the agency, by its own declaration, in the market. It is also important to indicate why its offerings are attractive and/or of high quality (thus, agencies point to the qualities constructed as desirable characteristics of professional PR).
The analysis included two text corpora of these agencies that met the input criteria. First, at the time of the study, they had a functioning company website, and second, the site had an ‘about us’ or functionally related tab. Agencies that only have a social media profile were not included, as it was considered that the medium of communication (in this case, Facebook) models the content posted there in a specific way, so texts from there cannot be considered equivalent to those from websites. The final unit of analysis was 415 companies—or 44% of the total PR agency database in Poland. The stated assumptions imply the need to infer only within agencies with higher information potential. This is an important observation, which also points to the underdeveloped communications background of a significant number of Polish PR firms, since as many as 56% of such entities do not meet the two above-mentioned input criteria—that is, they do not have the final basic tool for acquiring potential clients online
The fact that the presence of a company website and its proper/correct functioning is a matter of interest to Internet users is indicated, among others by (Umpirowicz, 2001; Zborowski, 2013).
Following this, the corpus was divided into two distinct segments (Table 1). The first was created based on texts that come from the websites of agencies that have the word communication or PR in their names (K1). The other—on the basis of texts from the websites of agencies that do not have the above-mentioned words in their names (K2). Since the study focused on communicative reality (the construction of social reality or the LPW), it was assumed that the communicative factor of the agency’s name was also worth considering as a differentiating criterion. It was assumed that the decision to include the terms
The K1 corpus was based on texts from 167 functioning websites. The K2 corpus, on the other hand, was based on texts present on 248 eligible websites. Among the texts that made it into the corpus
It is worth noting that we considered the title to be the text that appears when you enter the site and expand the top menu. There were situations in which the texts had different titles on the menu and after entering the tab.
Structure of K1 and K2 corpora—comparative analysis
Participation of the corpus in the unit of analysis | 40.2% | 59.8% | |
Average number of words in the text | 125 | 119 | |
Average number of characters in the text | 831 | 806 | |
Titles of texts that were included in the corpus | About us | 64% | 40% |
Company, About the company, Agency, About the agency | 10% | 16% | |
Who we are | 7% | 7% | |
No title
This category included texts that appeared immediately upon entering the Web site, without expanding the menu. |
0% | 20% | |
Company’s own name | 3% | 0% | |
Different title, but analogous function
For K1: ‘operating philosophy’, ‘why us’, ’resume’, ‘us’, ‘get to know us’, ‘our strengths’, ‘our mission’, ‘what makes us different’, ‘mission and history’, ‘two words about us’; for K2: ‘what’s important’, ‘us’, ‘our story’, ‘welcome’, ‘this is us’, ‘our team’, ‘Hi!’, ‘from us’, ‘ideas’, ‘get to know us’, ‘why us’, ‘benefits of cooperation’. |
16% | 17% |
In addition, K2 proved to be a less informative corpus, as evidenced by a lower average of words (six fewer words) and characters (25 fewer on average). On the other hand, the more common corpus was by far K2 (60%), meaning that fewer specialized lexemes appeared in this corpus, or those explicitly targeting the agency’s communications and PR area, although it would seem that such an arrangement could be an element of competitive advantage and a nod to the classical approach to PR. Meanwhile, research has confirmed that emphasizing, using linguistic means, a particular specialization is not a dominant phenomenon. Presumably, it will increasingly disappear over time, bearing in mind, for example, the tendency of PR companies to build the image of a full-service agency. Following this, the corpus was divided into two distinct segments (Table 1).
The data already presented above show significant differences in the linguistic construction of PR in the two groups of agencies. As it seems, K2 included texts that can be considered a bit more diverse, individualized, and ‘creative’. Despite the fact that the percentage of texts with titles classified in the ‘other’ category (the last row of the table) is comparable for both corpora, the very collection that these texts form is more homogeneous in the case of K1. In addition, the K1 corpus is characterized by the occurrence of more standard titles like ‘About Us’, as well as duplication of the company’s own name. In the case of K2, on average one in five texts did not have a title, although this group of companies compensates for this lack most often with visual communication (photos, graphics, or videos). It is also worth noting that in this corpus (K2), as soon as the user enters the site, short texts appear to attract the attention of the internet user, often correlated with the image. This type of feature should also be considered as a manifestation of the desire for a certain unconventionality in communication, and therefore, a kind of ambiguity in terms of self-description, avoiding placement within a particular professional field, in this case, the field of PR.
The lexical structure of the K1 corpus—which included texts from the websites of agencies that use the term
As can be seen, the lexeme with the highest frequency in K1 is the lexeme
The lexeme
The data presented above also clearly indicate that PR is understood essentially as communication, which is strategic in nature and implemented in a project model. This communication should be effective, while the most significant competitive advantage in the self-description of agencies from the K1 corpus is, as most often emphasized,
It is worth noting the high frequency of the set of adjectives in the highest grade (most—0.82%); agencies like to brag directly, incorporating the language of (self) promotion and direct persuasion into their self-descriptions. In the context of the expected competencies of PR industry professionals, this conclusion may be somewhat disturbing. Categories such as
In the case of the K2 corpus (generated from texts posted on the websites of agencies that do not have the terms PR, PR, or communication in their names), some of the observations that were made about the K1 corpus remain valid. An essential part of the linguistic worldview is the construction of the relationship between the agency and the client, it is still important to act and work for clients. Looking for common denominators, it can be seen that agencies continue to communicate themselves as teams that identify strongly with what they do (here, additionally, there is a high frequency of the form This form was not lemmatized precisely because of its significant frequency in the analyzed corpus.
Besides the many similarities between the K1 and K2, there are also noteworthy differences. The table 2 shows a comparison of the results of the analysis of the two corpora. It includes a summary of only those lexemes for which the frequency clearly—by the terms of the presented study—differs by at least ± 0.15% points in the intergroup cross-section. The gradation used (in order from the largest to the smallest difference) allowed us to observe more than a dozen interesting cases (Table 2).
Deviations in the structure of K1 and K2 corpora—comparative analysis
1 | PR | 182 | 0.91 | 114 | 0.48 | 0.43 | Lexems that are more common in K1 |
2 | Most- | 131 | 0.82 | 142 | 0.50 | 0.32 | |
3 | Job | 155 | 0.83 | 142 | 0.54 | 0.29 | |
4 | Client | 275 | 1.39 | 270 | 1.12 | 0.27 | |
5 | Result | 76 | 0.43 | 63 | 0.21 | 0.22 | |
6 | Possible | 57 | 0.32 | 26 | 0.10 | 0.22 | |
7 | PR | 137 | 0.69 | 112 | 0.47 | 0.22 | |
8 | Journalism | 39 | 0.23 | 19 | 0.06 | 0.17 | |
9 | Effective | 96 | 0.52 | 88 | 0.36 | 0.16 | |
10 | Communication | 241 | 1.27 | 274 | 1.11 | 0.16 | |
11 | Our | 187 | 0.95 | 188 | 0.79 | 0.16 | |
12 | Image | 83 | 0.44 | 71 | 0.29 | 0.15 | |
13 | Solve | 41 | 0.22 | 98 | 0.37 | 0.15 | Lexems that are more common in K2 |
14 | Advertisement | 23 | 0.16 | 89 | 0.37 | 0.21 | |
15 | Marketing | 95 | 0.51 | 206 | 0.85 | 0.34 |
First of all, it is worth noting that the data presented confirm the assumption made as the basis for separating the corpora according to the criteria of presence (K1) or absence (K2) of the
At the same time, the frequency of the lexemes
Interestingly, agencies from the K1 corpus—that is, let us recall, those more clearly located in the PR field—communicate themselves in a more ‘marketing’ way, so to speak: persuasively, through far-reaching promises, while being less specific. Here we can clearly see a higher frequency of lexemes from the So the higher frequency of the lexeme our may be relevant here. This is because it is a possessive pronoun often used in marketing and advertising communications (‘our company,’ ‘our offer,’ ‘our product,’ etc.). One of the elements that make up the index of the condition of the PR industry in Poland is an evaluation of the aspect related to whether the expression ‘public relations’ evokes commonly negative or positive associations. The index is calculated systematically every two years, with the first edition taking place in 2017. The study involves PR specialists from all over Poland (Tworzydło et al., 2017).
Agencies more strongly attributed to the field of PR (K1 corpus) also communicate more clearly through the promise of the effectiveness of their actions (lexemes However, it should be emphasized here that the lexeme ‘organization’ also refers to the phrase ‘organizing something,’ so its relatively high frequency can be misleading. This issue would require additional investigation, but the limited volume of the corpus makes such an analysis (taking into account the dominant phrases in which the lexeme occurs) impossible.
The comparative analysis presented above also indicates that the narratives from the K1 corpus make more reference to authority and professional knowledge (obviously the lexemes
Separating the two text corpora according to the criterion of naming PR agencies, followed by a quantitative-corpus analysis, allowed us to observe differences in the communication self-description of PR agencies in Poland. Differences were also revealed in the website communication techniques used by agencies whose names belong to separate corpus (such as the number of tabs on the website or the detailing of the offer). The lexical analysis of the corpora also made it possible to identify those elements that—in the eyes of market practitioners—are considered important for professional PR.
Corpus one is formed by agency names that contain the word
Agencies that do not have
The lexical analysis of the two corpora also indicated some similarities between them, which can be considered relevant to the self-description of the PR industry in Poland. The self-description constructs the company mainly in relation to the customer and considers efficiency and strategic thinking as the essential qualities of good PR and experience and teamwork as competitive advantages in the industry.
The quantitative-corpus analysis thus identified two, significantly different, self-constructions of PR companies operating on the Polish market. Given the number of websites (and therefore market entities) whose content constituted both corpora (167 for K1 and 248 for K2), there is a reasonable assumption that, over time, PR agencies will increasingly move away from the use of the lexemes On the category of professional community cf. (Stasiuk-Krajewska, 2018).