Bibliometric analysis to identify an emerging research area: Public Relations Intelligence—a challenge to strengthen technological observatories in the network society

Abstract

Nowadays within the global economy, organizations of all kinds require strategic information to ensure that their decision making is competitive in uncertain complex environments. This is a key factor for knowledge-intensive companies insofar as this has an impact on their capacity to anticipate, influence and collaborate. Specialized literature is beginning to connect two disciplines such as strategic intelligence and public relations from an enterprise management approach, proposing concepts such as “Public Relations Intelligence”. This paper aims to explore their research areas using bibliometric analysis to uncover how those disciplines evolve in order to propose future research fronts relating to technological observatories. Firstly, a systematic review was carried out to identify and systematize available scientific information between 2006 and 2016 in publications with international impact from common topics. Secondly, it employed bibliometric analysis based on patterns of co-citation and the co-occurrence of keywords to focus on assessing impact and maturity. The main findings suggest that there is an already potential emerging research field between strategic intelligence and public relations which is highlighting common topics such as strategy, issue management, reputation and the American countries-territories being the dominant literature. This work provides evidence to claim a need to foster the conditions for consolidation of this field as a topic of research and it might well be a valuable opportunity to enhance technological observatories in the networked society.