Pub Date : 2024-02-22DOI: 10.1177/2046147x241232811
Luke Capizzo, Monique Luisi
This conceptual paper analyzes the definitions and the explicit and implicit relationships among Environmental, Social, and Corporate Governance (ESG), Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), and environmental justice. We explore their roles in public relations theory and practice. Furthermore, we suggest a path for articulating justice and equity more explicitly for future ESG communication. This synthesis leads to defining six equity strategies for ESG communication: Clarity, conflict, reflectiveness, community empowerment, and collaborative, justice-oriented outcomes.
{"title":"Responsibility, sustainability, or environmental justice? Strategic communication and evolving expectations for stewardship and citizenship","authors":"Luke Capizzo, Monique Luisi","doi":"10.1177/2046147x241232811","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/2046147x241232811","url":null,"abstract":"This conceptual paper analyzes the definitions and the explicit and implicit relationships among Environmental, Social, and Corporate Governance (ESG), Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), and environmental justice. We explore their roles in public relations theory and practice. Furthermore, we suggest a path for articulating justice and equity more explicitly for future ESG communication. This synthesis leads to defining six equity strategies for ESG communication: Clarity, conflict, reflectiveness, community empowerment, and collaborative, justice-oriented outcomes.","PeriodicalId":44609,"journal":{"name":"Public Relations Inquiry","volume":"34 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2024-02-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139951821","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-02-16DOI: 10.1177/2046147x241234066
Sarah A. Aghazadeh
Public relations (PR) has explored a host of taboo and stigma riddled health topics to understand the role of communication and advocacy to improve wellbeing. However, PR scholarship has not sufficiently investigated taboo as a mechanism of social control within sociocultural theory or the role of the discipline in shaping meanings about death and bereavement. As a step in this endeavor, this study explored pregnancy loss through a sociocultural perspective of PR. It employs Foucault’s biopower to tease out how pregnancy loss awareness advocates/activists perceive taboo as regulation and their methods to push back on such constraints through advocacy. Using in-depth interviews with U.S. pregnancy loss awareness advocates/activists (17), findings explicate how participants see taboo as regulating pregnancy loss through isolation, invalidation, erasure, and conflation. Findings also speak to the ways that they resist such regulation by framing pregnancy loss as a public health issue, building community, and reclaiming parental identity. This study offers implications for sociocultural PR by illustrating the complex regulatory functions taboos serve, presenting experience-based community as productive use of power, and considering the nuances of advocacy in the context of death.
{"title":"Don’t say “the D word”: Exploring death taboo and biopower in pregnancy loss awareness advocacy","authors":"Sarah A. Aghazadeh","doi":"10.1177/2046147x241234066","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/2046147x241234066","url":null,"abstract":"Public relations (PR) has explored a host of taboo and stigma riddled health topics to understand the role of communication and advocacy to improve wellbeing. However, PR scholarship has not sufficiently investigated taboo as a mechanism of social control within sociocultural theory or the role of the discipline in shaping meanings about death and bereavement. As a step in this endeavor, this study explored pregnancy loss through a sociocultural perspective of PR. It employs Foucault’s biopower to tease out how pregnancy loss awareness advocates/activists perceive taboo as regulation and their methods to push back on such constraints through advocacy. Using in-depth interviews with U.S. pregnancy loss awareness advocates/activists (17), findings explicate how participants see taboo as regulating pregnancy loss through isolation, invalidation, erasure, and conflation. Findings also speak to the ways that they resist such regulation by framing pregnancy loss as a public health issue, building community, and reclaiming parental identity. This study offers implications for sociocultural PR by illustrating the complex regulatory functions taboos serve, presenting experience-based community as productive use of power, and considering the nuances of advocacy in the context of death.","PeriodicalId":44609,"journal":{"name":"Public Relations Inquiry","volume":"32 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2024-02-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139951819","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-12-28DOI: 10.1177/2046147x231224830
Joshua Foust, Burton St. John
This study argues that public relations scholarship on activism needs to better contextualize the ascendancy of non-dialogic, raw assertions in today’s public sphere. Analyzing 10 years of corporate communication by Blackrock CEO Larry Fink, we show how his corporate activist rhetoric suggests a growing disregard for dialogic communication, which is typically articulated within American public relations scholarship as a vital component in, for example, Grunig’s Excellence Theory and Heath’s rhetorical perspectives. This analysis of Fink’s communication further suggests the need for American public relations scholarship to move beyond a false binary between external and internal approaches to activism, which is further complicated by Fink’s seeming lack of interest in dialogic communication. Relatedly, we note that the mainstream conception of public relations as a consensus-oriented, good faith exchange seems at odds with the emerging reality of a societal disposition for mere assertions. We end with discussing theoretical implications regarding public relations’ ability to engage with stakeholder groups.
{"title":"Public relations, activism, and the culture of assertion: The case of Blackrock’s Larry Fink and the letter to the CEOs","authors":"Joshua Foust, Burton St. John","doi":"10.1177/2046147x231224830","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/2046147x231224830","url":null,"abstract":"This study argues that public relations scholarship on activism needs to better contextualize the ascendancy of non-dialogic, raw assertions in today’s public sphere. Analyzing 10 years of corporate communication by Blackrock CEO Larry Fink, we show how his corporate activist rhetoric suggests a growing disregard for dialogic communication, which is typically articulated within American public relations scholarship as a vital component in, for example, Grunig’s Excellence Theory and Heath’s rhetorical perspectives. This analysis of Fink’s communication further suggests the need for American public relations scholarship to move beyond a false binary between external and internal approaches to activism, which is further complicated by Fink’s seeming lack of interest in dialogic communication. Relatedly, we note that the mainstream conception of public relations as a consensus-oriented, good faith exchange seems at odds with the emerging reality of a societal disposition for mere assertions. We end with discussing theoretical implications regarding public relations’ ability to engage with stakeholder groups.","PeriodicalId":44609,"journal":{"name":"Public Relations Inquiry","volume":"52 4","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2023-12-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139151757","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-12-22DOI: 10.1177/2046147x231224834
Pablo Miño
Latin American nation branding has been conceived as an economic development strategy by governments within the region, justified by the commercial and political dependency of their countries on the Global North. This study takes that perspective one step forward, proposing that the economic and political dependency of Latin American countries is embedded in the representations and stereotypes that exist about the region within different forms of global news and entertainment media. Through in-depth interviews with 25 nation branding professionals with extensive experience working on behalf of Latin American governments, this study suggests that existing stereotypes (such as being an “exotic” and/or “dangerous” region of the world) were constantly conceived as an aid and/or a constrain in their work. Theoretically, this study draws from the concept of “promotional regime of visibility.” The goal is to theorize on the existing global power relations between Latin American nations and their counterparts in the Global North to counteract these stereotypes, defined by limited and ambivalent representations of these countries’ social, cultural, and political realities.
{"title":"Beyond economic dependency: Nation branding in Latin America subdued to stereotypes and neoliberal globalization","authors":"Pablo Miño","doi":"10.1177/2046147x231224834","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/2046147x231224834","url":null,"abstract":"Latin American nation branding has been conceived as an economic development strategy by governments within the region, justified by the commercial and political dependency of their countries on the Global North. This study takes that perspective one step forward, proposing that the economic and political dependency of Latin American countries is embedded in the representations and stereotypes that exist about the region within different forms of global news and entertainment media. Through in-depth interviews with 25 nation branding professionals with extensive experience working on behalf of Latin American governments, this study suggests that existing stereotypes (such as being an “exotic” and/or “dangerous” region of the world) were constantly conceived as an aid and/or a constrain in their work. Theoretically, this study draws from the concept of “promotional regime of visibility.” The goal is to theorize on the existing global power relations between Latin American nations and their counterparts in the Global North to counteract these stereotypes, defined by limited and ambivalent representations of these countries’ social, cultural, and political realities.","PeriodicalId":44609,"journal":{"name":"Public Relations Inquiry","volume":"29 32","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2023-12-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138946739","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-12-15DOI: 10.1177/2046147x231221828
Lukasz Swiatek, Chris Galloway, M. Vujnovic, Dean Kruckeberg
In a world-first human-robot media conference (held in Geneva, Switzerland, in July 2023), highly life-like humanoid robots gave answers of unprecedented sophistication to journalists’ questions. The media conference highlighted the extent to which artificial intelligence (AI) is changing the dynamics of public relations with extraordinary speed and, in particular, now posing a very real threat to the jobs of (human) practitioners. It is also likely to lead to the devaluing of professional communication undertaken by human beings. This polemical essay not only contends that scholars and practitioners have moved too slowly to consider the impacts of rapidly evolving AI on the profession, but also calls for both practitioners and academics to safeguard interpersonal (human) communication by urgently considering the possibility that many human-held jobs and livelihoods will be lost to increasingly sophisticated – and now ultra-realistic humanoid – AI much sooner than had been anticipated. Indeed, AI is creating ever-greater job losses that only exacerbate existing social inequities.
{"title":"Humanoid artificial intelligence, media conferences and natural responses to journalists’ questions: The end of (human-to-human) public relations?","authors":"Lukasz Swiatek, Chris Galloway, M. Vujnovic, Dean Kruckeberg","doi":"10.1177/2046147x231221828","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/2046147x231221828","url":null,"abstract":"In a world-first human-robot media conference (held in Geneva, Switzerland, in July 2023), highly life-like humanoid robots gave answers of unprecedented sophistication to journalists’ questions. The media conference highlighted the extent to which artificial intelligence (AI) is changing the dynamics of public relations with extraordinary speed and, in particular, now posing a very real threat to the jobs of (human) practitioners. It is also likely to lead to the devaluing of professional communication undertaken by human beings. This polemical essay not only contends that scholars and practitioners have moved too slowly to consider the impacts of rapidly evolving AI on the profession, but also calls for both practitioners and academics to safeguard interpersonal (human) communication by urgently considering the possibility that many human-held jobs and livelihoods will be lost to increasingly sophisticated – and now ultra-realistic humanoid – AI much sooner than had been anticipated. Indeed, AI is creating ever-greater job losses that only exacerbate existing social inequities.","PeriodicalId":44609,"journal":{"name":"Public Relations Inquiry","volume":"54 3","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2023-12-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138999207","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-12-08DOI: 10.1177/2046147x231218310
Thu Luong Le, Elena Block
This article explores the communication strategies used by Vietnam’s communist government during the earlier phases of the COVID-19 pandemic. What makes this case worth studying is the examination of Vietnam’s hybridised use of Western public relations strategies with communist propaganda and the fluctuating, emphasis on one or the other depending on the outbreak’s implications. While Vietnam was praised as a pandemic hero in 2020, thanks in part to some academic and news media representations of the Vietnam government as an effective communicator, this perception changed when the Delta variant hit the country. What happened? Which communication strategies changed? Which remained? To answer these questions, we used a mixed qualitative method consisting of a case study and manual and computational thematic analyses of government and news media and social media texts to identify the strategies and themes that were dominant during the first COVID-19 outbreaks. This study helps to throw light on the effectiveness but also the problems that may arise from a mixed use of public relations and propaganda strategies during a global pandemic; it also raises questions about the need to build a country-specific pandemic communication framework as well as to rethink theories and uses of propaganda vis-à-vis PR today.
{"title":"When communist propaganda meets western public relations: Examining Vietnam’s government pandemic communication","authors":"Thu Luong Le, Elena Block","doi":"10.1177/2046147x231218310","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/2046147x231218310","url":null,"abstract":"This article explores the communication strategies used by Vietnam’s communist government during the earlier phases of the COVID-19 pandemic. What makes this case worth studying is the examination of Vietnam’s hybridised use of Western public relations strategies with communist propaganda and the fluctuating, emphasis on one or the other depending on the outbreak’s implications. While Vietnam was praised as a pandemic hero in 2020, thanks in part to some academic and news media representations of the Vietnam government as an effective communicator, this perception changed when the Delta variant hit the country. What happened? Which communication strategies changed? Which remained? To answer these questions, we used a mixed qualitative method consisting of a case study and manual and computational thematic analyses of government and news media and social media texts to identify the strategies and themes that were dominant during the first COVID-19 outbreaks. This study helps to throw light on the effectiveness but also the problems that may arise from a mixed use of public relations and propaganda strategies during a global pandemic; it also raises questions about the need to build a country-specific pandemic communication framework as well as to rethink theories and uses of propaganda vis-à-vis PR today.","PeriodicalId":44609,"journal":{"name":"Public Relations Inquiry","volume":"34 29","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2023-12-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138588782","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-11-23DOI: 10.1177/2046147x231218311
Som Sengmany
While the Australian PR discipline and industry has acknowledged the demographic realities of multiculturalism, it has yet to critically interrogate multiculturalism as an ideological concept, contested discourse and politicised practice. This paper addresses this gap by investigating how public relations (PR) practitioners and culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) stakeholders in the Victorian government and multicultural sectors understand multiculturalism. It situates PR practice, and PR practitioners, within broader theoretical perspectives on Australian multiculturalism. In doing so, this paper contributes to knowledge in two ways: firstly, by identifying the significant deficits in existing Australian PR scholarship on multiculturalism; and secondly, by building bridges to new approaches and engaging with contemporary research and theories of multiculturalism. To this end, this paper opens up and extends the PR discipline’s ability to better engage with, and contribute to, ongoing contemporary debates on Australian multiculturalism.
{"title":"Understanding Australian multiculturalism in public relations practice through a social justice lens","authors":"Som Sengmany","doi":"10.1177/2046147x231218311","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/2046147x231218311","url":null,"abstract":"While the Australian PR discipline and industry has acknowledged the demographic realities of multiculturalism, it has yet to critically interrogate multiculturalism as an ideological concept, contested discourse and politicised practice. This paper addresses this gap by investigating how public relations (PR) practitioners and culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) stakeholders in the Victorian government and multicultural sectors understand multiculturalism. It situates PR practice, and PR practitioners, within broader theoretical perspectives on Australian multiculturalism. In doing so, this paper contributes to knowledge in two ways: firstly, by identifying the significant deficits in existing Australian PR scholarship on multiculturalism; and secondly, by building bridges to new approaches and engaging with contemporary research and theories of multiculturalism. To this end, this paper opens up and extends the PR discipline’s ability to better engage with, and contribute to, ongoing contemporary debates on Australian multiculturalism.","PeriodicalId":44609,"journal":{"name":"Public Relations Inquiry","volume":"287 ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2023-11-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139245246","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-11-21DOI: 10.1177/2046147x231218309
Elin Helgesson
Public affairs is a rising field of practise; at the same time, it is reputationally complicated. In view of the widespread concern about the impact of its practise on democracy, this study explores how practitioners construct an occupational identity and present their occupation as meaningful to a wider audience. Using the concepts of occupational branding and stigma management communication, the study unpacks how practitioners manage and understand the stigma associated with their occupation and how the meaning of public affairs work is negotiated, described and framed. Drawing on interviews and free-text answers from a nationwide survey of public affairs consultants, the study illuminates how practitioners utilise a variety of strategies while engaging with and navigating the stigma, as well as the societal and historical discourses associated with their profession. Further, the findings show that practitioners are in no rush to reconfigure their image and instead have found productive ways to live with taint and tensions. These results open for debate not only the professionalisation project of public affairs but also the implications that keeping the status quo has on the development of democratic society.
{"title":"Folk devils and moral vigilantes – The occupational branding of public affairs consultants and the management of stigma","authors":"Elin Helgesson","doi":"10.1177/2046147x231218309","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/2046147x231218309","url":null,"abstract":"Public affairs is a rising field of practise; at the same time, it is reputationally complicated. In view of the widespread concern about the impact of its practise on democracy, this study explores how practitioners construct an occupational identity and present their occupation as meaningful to a wider audience. Using the concepts of occupational branding and stigma management communication, the study unpacks how practitioners manage and understand the stigma associated with their occupation and how the meaning of public affairs work is negotiated, described and framed. Drawing on interviews and free-text answers from a nationwide survey of public affairs consultants, the study illuminates how practitioners utilise a variety of strategies while engaging with and navigating the stigma, as well as the societal and historical discourses associated with their profession. Further, the findings show that practitioners are in no rush to reconfigure their image and instead have found productive ways to live with taint and tensions. These results open for debate not only the professionalisation project of public affairs but also the implications that keeping the status quo has on the development of democratic society.","PeriodicalId":44609,"journal":{"name":"Public Relations Inquiry","volume":"60 6","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2023-11-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139252258","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-11-09DOI: 10.1177/2046147x231210277
Lee Edwards, Sundeep Aulakh
In this article we explore the ways in which specialist recruitment practices for the PR industry influence the pursuit of diversity in the profession. Drawing on interviews from an exploratory study of specialist PR recruitment in the UK, we combine Abbott’s theory of boundary-making between professional fields with existing research on the exclusionary dynamics of recruitment in professions, to explain how PR recruitment consolidates the focus on client and candidate ‘fit,’ and is likely to work in favour of preserving the dominance of middle-class, white and gendered identities in the profession. In this context, diversity is perceived as a risk rather than an opportunity and becomes a casualty of professional logic.
{"title":"Public relations recruitment as boundary-making: The client, the ‘fit’ and the disposability of diversity","authors":"Lee Edwards, Sundeep Aulakh","doi":"10.1177/2046147x231210277","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/2046147x231210277","url":null,"abstract":"In this article we explore the ways in which specialist recruitment practices for the PR industry influence the pursuit of diversity in the profession. Drawing on interviews from an exploratory study of specialist PR recruitment in the UK, we combine Abbott’s theory of boundary-making between professional fields with existing research on the exclusionary dynamics of recruitment in professions, to explain how PR recruitment consolidates the focus on client and candidate ‘fit,’ and is likely to work in favour of preserving the dominance of middle-class, white and gendered identities in the profession. In this context, diversity is perceived as a risk rather than an opportunity and becomes a casualty of professional logic.","PeriodicalId":44609,"journal":{"name":"Public Relations Inquiry","volume":" 2","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135290924","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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