Porous boundaries, contentious boundaries: “Public relations” and “propaganda” within the discourse of Italian PR professionals after 1945

Abstract

This article explores the relationship between the terms “propaganda” and “public relations” within the discourse of Italian PR professionals after 1945. Inspired by the critical history of PR, it examines how these professionals conceptualised and named their activities at that time. Extensive documentary research of historical sources from the Italian PR world reveals the porous boundaries between “propaganda” and “public relations”, while also highlighting the professional and political conflicts underlying their definitions. The need to define the PR profession’s boundaries then produced a series of oppositions destined to become classic: transparency vs. opacity; democracy vs. dictatorship; free world vs. totalitarianism; expertise vs. ideology. These dichotomies, characteristic of anti-communist imaginary, contributed to forging the idea of a correspondence between political regimes and forms of communication, where propaganda was on the side of “totalitarian” states, while PR was on the side of democracies. The incompatibility between public relations and dictatorship was, however, selective in the discourse of professionals: it followed the political divisions of the Cold War. At the same time, the idea of a discontinuity between fascist propaganda and the public relations of post-war democratic Italy was not monolithic. Historical research deconstructs the narrative of an ethical progression from propaganda to PR. Sources from the Italian PR world empirically demonstrates the historical inadequacy of this narrative, which was above all an ideological construct of the Cold War.