This article explores the relationship between trade media and the construction of occupational legitimacy in the context of professional projects, using the example of public relations. We suggest that the practices of trade journalism result in such media playing the role of an institutional sub-system within occupational fields such as public relations, helping to construct occupational archetypes that have disciplinary effects on practitioners and provide the basis for public claims to legitimacy. We illustrate our argument by presenting the results of a critical discourse analysis of PRWeek, the main trade publication for public relations in the UK, to demonstrate how jurisdiction, practice and practitioners are constructed through media discourses in ways that serve the professional project articulated by the powerful actors in the field.
AbbottA (1988) The System of Professions: An Essay on the Division of Expert Labour. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
2.
Anderson-GoughFGreyCRobsonK (2000) In the name of the client: The service ethic in two professional services firms. Human Relations53: 1151–1174.
3.
AnnisetteM (2003) The colour of accountancy: Examining the salience of race in a professionalization project. Accounting, Organizations and Society28: 639–674.
4.
BattaniM (1999) Organizational fields, cultural fields and art worlds: The early effort to make photographs and make photographers in the 19th-century United States of America. Media, Culture and Society21: 601–626.
5.
BensonR (2006) News media as a ‘journalistic field’: What Bourdieu adds to New Institutionalism, and vice versa. Political Communication23: 187–202.
6.
BoltonSMuzioD (2007) Can’t live with ‘em; Can’t live without ‘em: Gendered segmentation in the legal profession. Sociology41: 47–64.
7.
BoltonSMuzioD (2008) The paradoxical processes of feminization in the professions: The case of established, aspiring and semi-professions. Work, Employment and Society22: 281–299.
8.
BourdieuP (1991) Language and Symbolic Power. Cambridge: Polity Press.
9.
BourdieuP (1997) The forms of capital. In: HalseyAHLauderHBrownPWellsAS (eds) Education, Culture, Economy, Society. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp.46–59.
10.
DaviesN (2008) Flat Earth News: An Award-winning Reporter Exposes Falsehood, Distortion and Propaganda in the Global Media. London: Chatto & Windus.
DinanWMillerD (2007) Thinker, Faker, Spinner, Spy: Corporate PR and the Assault on Democracy. London: Pluto Press.
13.
Echo Research Limited. (2002) PR and the Media – Who is Spinning Whom. Godalming Surrey: Echo Research.
14.
EdwardsL (2011) Revealing whiteness in the professional project: The case of public relations in the UK. Paper presented at the 61st International Communications Association Annual Conference, ICA, Boston, MA.
15.
EkinsmythC (2002) Project organization, embeddedness and risk in magazine publishing. Regional Studies36: 229–243.
16.
EwenS (1996) PR! A Social History of Spin. New York: Basic Books.
17.
FaircloughN (1995) Critical discourse analysis: The critical study of language, Harlow, Essex: Longman.
18.
FaircloughN (2009) A dialectical-relational approach to Critical Discourse Analysis in social research. In: WodakRMeyerM (eds) Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis. Los Angeles: Sage, pp.162–186.
19.
FaircloughNWodakR (1997) Critical Discourse Analysis. In: Van DijkT (ed.) Discourse and Social Interaction (Discourse Studies: A Multidisciplinary Introduction, Vol. 2). London: Sage, pp.258–284.
20.
FaragoPJPeterF (1976) Science and the Media. London [etc.]: Oxford University Press.
21.
FournierV (1999) The appeal to ‘professionalism’ as a disciplinary mechanism. The Sociological Review47: 380–407.
22.
FreidsonE (2001) Professionalism: The Third Logic. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
23.
GreyC (1998) On being a professional in a ‘Big Six’ firm. Accounting, Organizations and Society23: 569–587.
24.
HallSCritcherCJeffersonTClarkJNRobertsB (1978) Policing the crisis: Mugging, the State, and Law and Order. New York: Holmes and Meier.
25.
HendersonJK (1998) Negative connotations in the use of the term ‘public relations’ in the print media. Public Relations Review24: 45–55.
26.
HirschP (1972) Processing fads and fashions: An organization-set analysis of cultural industry sub-systems. American Journal of Sociology77: 639–659.
27.
HodgsonD (2002) Disciplining the professional: The case of project management. Journal of Management Studies39: 803–821.
28.
HuttonJG (1999) The definition, dimensions and domain of public relations. Public Relations Review25: 199–214.
29.
HuttonJG (2001) Defining the relationship between public relations and marketing: Public relations’ most important challenge. In: HeathR (ed.) Handbook of Public Relations. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, pp.205–214.
30.
JackallRHirotaJ (2000) Image Makers: Advertising, Public Relations and the Ethos of Advocacy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
31.
JohnsonS (2007) Why should they care? The relationship of academic scholarship to the magazine industry. Journalism Studies8: 522–528.
32.
JohnsonTJ (1972) Professions and Power. London: Macmillan.
33.
LarsonM (1977) The Rise of Professionalism: A Sociological Analysis. Berkeley: University of California Press.
34.
LeeM (2001) The image of the government flack: Movie depiction of public relations in public administration. Public Relations Review27: 297–316.
35.
LeeTA (1999) Anatomy of a professional elite: The executive committee of the American Accounting Associatoin 1916–1996. Critical Perspectives on Accounting10: 247–264.
36.
MickeyTJ (2002) Deconstructing Public Relations: Public Relations Criticism. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
37.
MillerDDinanW (2008) A Century of Spin: How Public Relations became the Cutting Edge of Corporate Power. London: Pluto Press.
38.
PieczkaM (2002) Public relations expertise deconstructed. Media, Culture and Society24: 301–323.
39.
PieczkaM (2006) ‘Chemistry’ and the public relations industry: An expoloration of the concept of juridiction and issues arising. In: L’EtangJPieczkaM (eds) Public Relations: Critical Debates and Contemporary Practice. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, pp.303–331.
40.
PieczkaM (2007) Case studies as narative accounts of public relations practice. Journal of Public Relations Research19: 333–356.
41.
PieczkaML’EtangJ (2006) Public relations and the question of professionalism. In: L’EtangJPieczkaM (eds) Public Relations: Critical Debates and Contemporary Practice. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, pp.265–277.
42.
Professional Publishers Association. (2010) B2B Market Trends: Publishing Futures 2011. Professional Publishers Association. Available at: http://www.ppa.co.uk/business/ (accessed 15 March 2011).
43.
PRWeek. (1999) Entrepreneur founds PRWeek with industry backers. PRWeek: 15 Years of PRWeek 1984–1999 (special issue): 5.
44.
Race for Opportunity. (2010) Aspiration and Frustration: Ethnic Minority Hope and Reality inside Britain’s Premier Careers. London: Business in the Community.
45.
RoperJ (2005) Symmetrical communication: Excellent public relations or a strategy for hegemony?Journal of Public Relations Research17: 69–86.
46.
RoweD (2004) Sport, Culture and the Media: The Unruly Trinity. Maidenhead: Open University Press.
47.
SampsupJ (2003) The portrayal of public relations in news media. Mass Communication & Society6: 397–411.
48.
SchudsonM (1995) The Power of News. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
49.
SchudsonM (2003) The Sociology of News. New York: Norton.
50.
SpicerCH (1993) Image of public relations in the print media. Journal of Public Relations Research5: 47–61.
51.
The Panel on Fair Access to the Professions. (2009) Unleashing Aspiration: The final report of the Panel on Fair Access to the Professions. London: Cabinet Office.
52.
ToledanoM (2010) Professional competition and cooperation in the digital age: A pilot study of New Zealand practitioners. Public Relations Review36: 230–237.
53.
TuchmanG (1978) Making News: A Study in the Construction of Reality, New York: Simon & Schuster.
54.
Van der WurffR (2005) Business magazine market performance: Magazines for the agricultural, business services, and transportation sectors in the Netherlands. Journal of Media Economics18: 143–159.
55.
Van LeeuwenT (2008) Discourse and Practice: New Tools for Critical Discourse Analysis. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
56.
WitzA (1992) Professions and Patriarchy. London: Routledge.
57.
WodakRMeyerM (2009) Critical Discourse Analysis: History, agenda, theory and methodology. In: WodakRMeyerM (eds) Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis (2nd edition). Los Angeles: Sage, pp.1–33.
