Abstract
This issue explores the multiple meanings and workings of public relations (PR) in diverse cultural and professional contexts. To fully apprehend why this is significant, the ‘tainted’ object of ‘public relations’ circulating within shifting normative contexts, and its mostly concealed power relations, must be established.
Closely allied to the economic sphere, the global public relations industry puts into motion, words, statements, and unities of ideas for political ends, on behalf of special, vested interest. For over a century, these encumbered language practices have brought about enormous communicative change in society, not just in turbo charging the globalisation delivering vast rewards to some, but to the extent that we are all now ‘speaking PR’ as a language. Despite its extraordinary impact in distributing both prosperity and inequity, Moloney and McGrath (2019) argue that ‘persuasion’, a core function of PR, is overlooked and rarely discussed when definitions are proffered. They state that: “Rather than simply accepting the definitions adopted by PR’s trade associations, a more productive approach is to identify PR productions by way of their goal of self-advancement for their principals, rather than by their multiple forms of display” (Moloney and McGrath 2019: 10). Looking then, not just at institutional rhetoric, but at the wider activities of leading global PR consultancies and their principals, that is the individuals that are part of the management team, such as directors and CEOs, and their political affiliations, donor relations, and links to media power, will lead to a better understanding of what is fuelling their campaigns and what is really going on.
But there is complexity that sets PR apart from other industries that confounds any simple definition. A PR campaign once set in motion within the public sphere may be unbounded from institutional sites like consultancies. This means that leading PR agencies like Edelman, Weber Shandwick, BCW, FleishmanHillard, Ketchum and Real Chemistry 1 generate both intended and unintended cultural effects. A good example is PR work for the fossil fuel industry which has produced widespread confusion, polarization, distrust in governments, rancour and disengagement around real climate science. Therefore, any client relationship PR has is significant, not just for the short-term goal, but for the wider potential for deleterious effects on public debate and deliberations. One public relations practitioner, Jim Hoggan, of James Hoggan & Associates, one of Canada’s foremost public relations firms, was so convinced that public relations was a powerful driver of climate change denial, that in 2006 he began a news platform DeSmog 2 to show how legitimate scientific opinion was being undermined by high level global campaigns of misinformation and deceit. Arguably the work at DeSmog has contributed to a growing trove of evidence that implicates public relations with climate change denial. 3
Given the PR industry’s past and present history in stymieing climate change action on behalf of some of the world’s biggest polluters, it is hardly surprising that Coombs and Holladay (2013: 4) suggest that “…when something is labelled by the media as a “public relations” action, it seems to be with a negative, disparaging tone (e.g., “mere public relations,” “PR spin,” “PR hype,” “PR rhetoric,” or “a public relations stunt”). As described in the media, virtually anything that a corporation or its representatives does may be labelled as “public relations” and treated with suspicion. Thus, PR may be understood as enormously powerful, but amorphous, ethically dubious, and with vocabularies that are complex and contradictory working in spaces defined by their relationship to upholding the common good. Yet despite these suspicions and misgivings, the PR industry is on the move and predicted to experience compound growth by more than five percent per year to 2027. 4
Establishing the tainted, contradictory, political ‘object’ of PR, begins to feel like an impossible task. But it is possible to develop an overarching sense of its diverse settings, purposes, and impacts. Broadly, the idea of public relations can be captured by a focus on its role in colonising language with market-based meaning-making, in and through a semblance of publicness (Demetrious, 2022). Whether for business, big government, and more recently other organisations like not-for-profits in community sectors, and even for individuals in digital contexts as self-entrepreneurs, PR is and has been used to manufacture discourse to control and manipulate the meaning-making process with market-based inflection, often working unseen in public debates (Demetrious, 2008). So despite the seemingly formless professional boundaries that public relations appears to have, there are some core attributes that can form the foundation of any definition. While some, such as mimicking publicness, may appear counterintuitive, it is embracing the contradictions within public relations, not shying away from them, that is necessary for critique, and critique is what we have for you in this issue.
Capturing important relational cultures both within and outside the domain of public relations as an occupation. Som Sengmany’s ‘Understanding Australian multiculturalism in PR practice through a Social Justice Lens’, shines a light on the deficiencies within PR scholarship, and advocates through a study of Culturally and Linguistically Diverse (CALD) communities that real inclusion means a greater level of cultural reflexivity that leads (unequivocally) to ‘redistributive equity’. In mapping this ‘blind spot’, Sengmany draws on interviews with practitioners in the multicultural sector and argues that despite the massive traction that CALD communities have in Australian government and public sectors, it is overlooked and even marginalised by domestic public relations practice. Moreover, scholarship within the academy is scant on this rich area of communication practice. Conceptualising multiculturalism as a kaleidoscope, he advocates for a social justice approach to authentically open new theoretical ground. Such a move may well energise and revitalise inward looking or dated tertiary PR curricula and offer wider scope for professional practice.
Building on the theme of diverse cultural contexts, Thu Luong Le and Elena Block’s ‘When communist propaganda meets western public relations: Examining Vietnam’s government pandemic communication’ provides a specific example showing the need to understand not just the nation-state context but shifting variables within that, for practice. The global pandemic response revealed the limitations of homogenous approaches to the communication of health messages, showing how unprepared most nations were. Analysing media texts and providing a case study, this article focuses on the lessons learned from the Vietnam government’s oscillating communication approach, from dialogic engagement to controlled messaging, and their public reception, over the pandemic at its different stages.
Based on a Swedish survey of public affairs consultants, Elin Helgesson’s paper ‘Folk devils and moral vigilantes – The occupational branding of public affairs consultants and the management of stigma’ looks at the complications of identity formation. ‘Tackling’ the subject of PR’s tarnished reputation, Helgesson takes the reader into the heart of workplace tensions. She asks how do public affairs lobbyists manage and understand this ‘taint’ personally, and at the same time build legitimacy, trust, and ethical values? One of the few researchers to focus on the stigma of ‘PR as dirty work’, Helgesson investigates the defensive strategies developed to respond – and how individuals cope. This is the beginning of an important conversation, daring to bring into the open what has been considered taboo in PR.
In a similar vein, Lee Edwards and Sundeep Aulakh’s paper ‘Public relations recruitment as boundary marking: The client, the ‘fit’ and the disposability of diversity’ explores the practices that have kept public relations resistant to diversity, by analysing how inequalities are produced and whether inclusion is gender, class or ethnically based. What is the thinking and the practices and ‘hinges’ that make public relations produce inequalities? The evidence for this is a study of PR recruitment in the UK – looking at the exclusionary dynamics of PR through its boundary work. Edwards and Aulakh ask the reader to look beyond the rhetoric of DEI (Diversity Equity and Inclusion) and question the assumptions that entrench inequity. Like Sengmany, they argue that the shield of rhetoric around diversity serves to enable people to carry on without questioning their own power or biases.
Lukasz Swiatek, Chris Galloway, Marina Vujnovic and Dean Kruckeberg’s short theoretical essay ‘Humanoid artificial intelligence, media conferences and natural responses to journalists’ questions: the end of (human-to human) public relations’ canvasses the imminent arrival of humanoid robots that will be working in media and PR related jobs. The essay responds to a highly staged and hyped media conference held as part of the United Nations’ AI for Good Global Summit in Geneva in July 2023, where nine humanoid robots (all but one were female) and their mostly male human creators ‘responded’ to journalists’ questions. However, the hype that surrounded these robots masked the reality of their abilities. Exploring whether theatrics or threat, the authors map a direction for future PR scholarship that takes these technologies seriously, but also offers a critique.
Lastly, Karen Miller Russell reviews Melissa Aronczyk and Maria I. Espinoza’s A Strategic Nature: Public Relations and the Politics of American Environmentalism. The authors investigate the rise of both US corporate public relations and environmentalism in the twentieth century. This important and timely book confirms that the PR industry has often led the global charge in undermining environmental responsibility. It is compulsory reading for anyone interested in PR history, climate change and environmental activism.
As 2023 sets new records for rising global temperatures, and Generative AI is working in new and surprising ways, it is imperative to start thinking differently about the impenetrable object of PR and where it might lead us into the future. The task of defining PR as a power dynamic and political practice is layered, historically situated, and bound to a multitude of institutional sites. But opening doors, letting in the light, and finding new ways to think about PR is vital for our very survival. This edition of the journal offers a great deal for critical scholars of the field who are interested in ethics, and the lived realities of PR in divergent contexts, operating within structural biases, and how as a profession it may be thought about, and enacted both today and tomorrow.
Finally, our thanks go to the following outgoing editorial board members for their contributions to Public Relations Inquiry: Mats Alvesson, Carl Botan, Christine Daymon, Romy Fröhlich, Carrie Hodges, Richard Keeble, Darren Lilleker, Steve Mackey, Judy Motion, Erich Sommerfeldt, Anne Surma and Ted Zorn. Many of these scholars were foundation board members and have contributed to the success of the journal and its rise up through journal rankings. More significant than rankings are the ways in which they have ensured the success of an important publication for advancing critical and interpretative perspectives on public relations.