Public Relations Roles and Media Choice Tom Kelleher School of Communications University of Hawaii at Manoa A national survey of Public Relations Society of America members (n = 267) was conducted to examine the relationship between public relations roles and media choice based on the integration of public relations theory and media richness theory. Respondents were identified as either public relations managers or technicians using confirmatory factor analysis, corroborating previous research. Managers reported spending more time in oral communication than technicians, whereas technicians spend more time using written communication. E-mail use in public relations and re- lated communities is discussed, and areas for future research on new media and media choices in public relations are explored. Theory-building research from the field of organizational communication offers a useful perspective from which to approach the question of how public relations people accomplish the range of communication tasks that comprise their life’s work. One provocative thread in this fabric of research, media richness theory, spe- cifically addresses the topic of individual media choice for various communication tasks. In the field of public relations, the range of communication tasks can be dis- cussed in terms of the basic roles of public relations practitioners. Manager and technician roles are among the most robust constructs in public relations research. This study seeks to achieve two goals. The first is to expand the scope of current public relations theory by connecting some of its central constructs with theory from a related discipline. Public relations roles theory and media richness theory are reviewed to develop hypotheses, which then are tested empirically. The second goal is to explore a newer area of inquiry—the media choices of public relations practitioners, including e-mail. To explore this area, preliminary research ques- tions are asked, and the resulting data are used to advance the line of questioning. JOURNAL OF PUBLIC RELATIONS RESEARCH, 13(4), 303–320 Copyright © 2001, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. Requests for reprints should be sent to Tom Kelleher, School of Communications, 2560 Campus Road, George Hall 309, University of Hawaii at Manoa, Honolulu, HI 96822–5396. E-mail: tkell@hawaii.edu