Key issues of public relations of Europe: findings from the European Communication Monitor 2007-2014

European Communication Monitor is the largest longitudinal research project in public relations practice in the world. Data collected annually from 2007 to 2014 show that practitioners perceive five issues as the most important for their work: linking business strategy and communication, coping with the digital evolution and social web, building and maintaining trust, dealing with the demand for more transparency and active audiences, and dealing with the speed and volume of information flow. Perception of the importance of various issues for the practice of public relations is largely dependent on the gender, geography (division between Northern and Western vs. Southern and Eastern Europe), and sector in which a practitioner works (corporate, government, NGO or agency). While gender and sectorial differences studied in academic public relations literature, divisions in public relations practice between North-Western and South-Eastern Europe are largely ignored.

Palabras clave: Relaciones públicas, comunicación corporativa, gestión de comunicación, European Communication Monitor, investigación longitudinal, asuntos clave of universities at which one can study and the quantity of academic publications, systematic empirical description, explanation and prediction in the field are rare. There are general overviews of public relations practice in Europe (van Ruler & Verčič, 2004a) and Asia (Sriramesh, 2004), and two editions presenting the situation around the world (Sriramesh and Verčič 2003a;2009). Switzerland has reports on the practice from 2010, 2011, 2013 and 2014, with a clear intention of making reviews annual (Lurati & Mariconda, 2014), and the USA has biannual longitudinal reports since 2002 (Swerling, Thorson, Tenderich, Yang, Li, Gee & Savastano, 2014).

METHODOLOGY
The research framework consists of variables about the personal characteristics of the European public relations or communication professional, the structure and culture of his or her organization, their communication function, the current communicative situation of the organization and the perception of the most important trends, challenges and issues of the profession.

Procedure and sample
The ECM is the Internet-based survey in English language. It is launched every spring and is

Questions and analyses
In every survey of the monitor from 2007 to 2014 respondents were asked to indicate the most important strategic issues in the public relations profession from their point of view.
In this period the same question was repeated every year and was formulated as follows: Here are some issues that might become relevant for public relations and communication management within the next three years, please pick those three which are most important from your point of view.
Based on literature strategic issues were identified and included in the survey as answer categories since 2007. In 2012 a new list of issues was made based on the empirical results of the previous years and literature. The best scoring issues were kept on the list, the ones that were not picked often were deleted as an issue. See table 2 for an overview of the issues included as answer categories in the surveys over the years.
To analyze the dichotomous data first a descriptive overview was made of the mentioned issues per year (per year yes or no). Next the most important issues were analyzed to determine possible differences in the perception of these issues between male and female professionals, professionals in different European regions and professionals working for different types of organizations, using cross tables per issue per year. ISSN: 2174-3681  Source: Authors' elaboration

RESULTS
The data show five strategic issues that consistently are considered important by the public relations professionals between 2007 and 2014. The two most important ones are linking business strategy and communication (on average 45%, ranging from 43% to 47% in the separate years) and coping with the digital evolution and the social web (on average also 45%, with a range of 39% to 55% over the years). These two are immediately followed by building and maintaining trust (35% on average, with a range of 30% and 43% over the years) and dealing with the demand for more transparency and active audiences (31% on average, ranging from 28% to 36% over the years). In 2014 a new strategic issue related to this scored also a high 34%; dealing with the speed and volume of information flow.
Summing up these five perceived most important issues it seems that the key strategic challenge for public relations professionals is how to link business to communication and to build and maintain trust for the business of the organization in a digital era where active audiences have their own social media, demand transparency and produce enormous volumes of information at high-speed.
The second most important group of issues (also above 30%) are matching the need to address more audiences and channels with limited resources (on average 33%, To find out whether there are differences between the perceived importance of the eight most important strategic issues overall, the answers of male and female professionals, professionals working in different European regions, in different types of organizations and with more or less experience in the profession were further analyzed using chi-square statistics.

Regional European differences
Over time dealing with the demand for more transparency and active audiences is

Organization type
The assessment of the importance of many issues differ along the lines of types of organization. There are many significant differences between the perceptions of public relations professionals working in joint stock companies, private companies, government

More or less experience
Professionals with more or less experience in public relations and communication management do not differ very much in their assessment of the issues for the profession.
Since 2011 people with less experience consider the issue of linking business to communication significantly less important than professionals with more than 10 years of experience. In 2012 they were also less worried about building and maintaining but in 2014 they were only more worried about the need to address more audiences and channels with limited resources than their colleagues with more experience.

CONCLUSION AND DISCUSSION
Perception of the importance of various issues for the practice of public relations is largely dependent on the gender, geography (division between Northern and Western vs. Southern and Eastern Europe), and sector in which a practitioner works (corporate, government, NGO or agency).
Of the top five issues, three are highly studied in public relations literature: linking business strategy and communication directly relates to the notion of public relations as a strategic management function (Grunig, 2006;Verčič & Grunig, 2000), dealing with the demand for more transparency and active audiences (Grunig, 1992), and building and maintaining trust (Bentele, 2003;Grunig & Hon, 1999) are extensively studied in academic research. Research in coping with the digital evolution and social web (Verhoeven, Tench, Zerfass, Moreno & Verčič, 2012) and dealing with the speed and volume of information flow is still in its infancy.
Gender is recognized as an important moderator of public relations practice (Grunig, Hon & Toth, 2013), and so are differences between social sectors -corporate, governmental and non-for-profit non-governmental sectors are studied and compared. But divisions in public