Russian science of public relations: stages of formation, specifics, development formats

INTRODUCTION. Any social institution presupposes scientific reflection of its activities. The purpose of the study is to trace the history of the formation of Russian scientific knowledge about public relations (PRology) as a component of a social institution, to characterize various approaches to scientific reflection of PR activities; to identify its national specifics and to determine possible foresights.MATERIALS AND METHODS. General scientific methods of deduction and induction, synthesis and analysis were used. The rather small domestic literature on the theory and history of PR knowledge was studied and analyzed.RESULTS AND DISCUSSION. It is analyzed various points of view on the science of public relations – classifying, problematic and historical. The analysis of the development of the Russian theory of public relations is given and the main characteristics of the stages of formation of Russian knowledge about PR are revealed, which generally correspond to the periodization of public relations in Russia. In the last five years, monographs and dissertations on the theory of PR have not appeared, but a significant number of works on media communications indicate the vulgarization of scientific knowledge about public relations due to the lack of a single scientific view on the nature and specificity of media communications. The tasks of the current stage of development of scientific knowledge about PR are outlined: reflection of the state of the PR industry; creation and legitimization of a single professional glossary; registration and generalization of regional experience in the field of communications; comprehension of the experience of European public relations.CONCLUSION. Among the foresight directions, the following are named: characteristics of the “model” mechanism of scientific description of modern PR-activity on the example of the communication model of G. Lasswell, operationalization in the scientific continuum of the concepts of “communication product”, “communication technology”. The area of application of the research results may be issues of the history of communication disciplines. In the prospects of scientific research, problems of interdisciplinary interaction of communication disciplines and the advancement of foresight topics of scientific research, reflecting the reflection of practical activities in the field of integrated communications, may be identified.