Critical Perspectives in Public Relations


Book Description

This edited collection explores key concepts, themes and theories in public relations and the assumptions which lie behind them. This book will be of interest to students of public relations, media and communications studies.




Public Relations


Book Description

This important volume will stimulate debate about the boundaries, definitions, functions, and effects of public relations. The editors are Lecturers in Public Relations at the Stirling Media Research Institute, University of Stirling, Scotland.




Gender and Public Relations


Book Description

Although there is a small body of feminist scholarship that problematizes gender in public relations, gender is a relatively undefined area of thinking in the field and there have been few serious studies of the socially constructed roles defining women and men in public relations. This book is positioned within the critical public relations stream. Through the prism of ‘gender and public relations’, it examines not only the manipulatory, but also the emancipatory, subversive and transformatory potential of public relations for the construction of meaning. Its focus is on the dynamic interrelationships arising from public relations activities in society and the gendered, lived experiences of people working in the occupation of public relations. There are many previously unexplored areas within and through public relations which the book examines. These include: the production of social meaning and power relations advocacy and activist campaigns for social and political change the negotiation of identity, diversity and cultural practice celebrity, bodies, fashion and harassment in the workplace notions of managing reputation and communicating policy. In extending the field of inquiry, this edited collection highlights how gender is accomplished and transformed, and, thus how power is exercised and inequality (re)produced or challenged in public relations. The book will expand thinking about power relations and privilege for both women and men and how these are affected by the interplay of social, cultural and institutional practices. Winner of the Outstanding Book PRide Award, awarded by the National Communication Association (NCA).




Rhetorical and Critical Approaches to Public Relations II


Book Description

This volume is the first to illustrate the application of rhetorical theory and critical perspectives to explain public relations practices. It provides a systematic and coherent statement of the critical guidelines and philosophical underpinnings of public relations and as such should guide pedagogy and practice. It also supplies pedagogic and critical standards with which to meet the needs of an increasingly sophisticated society that tends to reject all of public relations as propaganda. With the enormous amount of money spent on product publicity and public policy debates, this book gives practitioners a sense of whether their public relations campaigns make a contribution to the organizational bottom line by means of achieving the timeless standards of the art of rhetoric.




Public Relations in Global Cultural Contexts


Book Description

While public relations practice has become increasingly globalized, scholars are still behind in theorizing about the intersections of culture, communication, and power at this level of practice. This volume emphasizes theories and concepts that highlight global interconnectedness through a range of interpretative and critical approaches to understanding the global significance and impacts of public relations. Providing a critical examination of public relations’ contribution to globalization and international power relations, the chapters included here explore alternative paradigms, most notably interpretive and critical perspectives informed by qualitative research. The volume encourages alternative ‘ways of knowing’ that overcome the shortcomings of positivist epistemologies. The editors include multiple paradigmatic approaches for a more complex understanding of the subject matter, making a valuable contribution toward widening the philosophical scope of public relations scholarship. This book will serve well as a core text in classes in international public relations, global public relations, and advanced strategic public relations. Students as well as practitioners of public relations will benefit from reading the perspectives included here.




International Public Relations


Book Description

International Public Relations: Perspectives from deeply divided societies is positioned at the intersection of public relations (PR) practice with socio-political environments in divided, conflict and post-conflict societies. While most studies of PR focus on the activity as it is practiced within stable democratic societies, this book explores perspectives from contexts that have tended to be marginalized or uncharted. Presenting research from a diverse range of societies still deeply divided along racial, ethnic, religious or linguistic lines, this collection engages with a variety of questions including how PR practice in these societies may contribute to our understanding of PR theory building. Importantly, it highlights the role of communication strategies for actors that still deploy political violence to achieve their goals, as well as those that use it in building peace, resolving conflict, and assisting in the development of civil society. Featuring a uniquely wide range of original empirical research, including studies from Israel/Palestine, Mozambique, Northern Ireland, former Yugoslavia, former Czechoslovakia, Spain, Malaysia and Turkey, this groundbreaking book will be of interest not only to scholars of public relations, but also political communication, international relations, and peace and conflict studies. With a Foreword by Krishnamurthy Sriramesh, Editor of The Global Public Relations Handbook




Culture, Social Class, and Race in Public Relations


Book Description

Culture, Race, and Class-Based Perspectives in Public Relations, edited by Damion Waymer, covers timely and understudied topics in the field of public relations (PR). Via research, case analysis, and theoretical discussion, the contributors to this volume explore the ways that scholars can address issues of voice (or the lack thereof) that marginalized publics have encountered in the past or are currently encountering in regard to matters of culture, race, and class. A central question this book asks is what role can and does a greater understanding of culture, race, and class play in helping scholars, teachers, students, and practitioners to aid in society becoming a better place to live and work? Culture as well as other divisive social constructs such as race and class must be unpacked, problematized, and considered carefully before the fully functioning vision of society can be deemed possible. Some topics included are the Black Panther Party and Native American Activist rhetorical PR, risk equity, critical race theory, and pedagogical approaches to teaching culture, race, and class. This edited volume serves an important early step by scholars—via the context of public relations—in this process of advocating social justice as well as organizations' role in helping society achieve these ends.




Public Relations


Book Description

Public relations as described in this volume is, among other things, society’s solution to problems of maladjustment that plague an overcomplex world. All of us, individuals or organizations, depend for survival and growth on adjustment to our publics. Publicist Edward L. Bernays offers here the kind of advice individuals and a variety of organizations sought from him on a professional basis during more than four decades. With such knowledge, every intelligent person can carry on his or her activities more effectively. This book provides know-why as well know-how. Bernays explains the underlying philosophy of public relations and the PR methods and practices to be applied in specific cases. He presents broad approaches and solutions as they were successfully carried out in his long professional career. Public relations is not publicity, press agentry, promotion, advertising, or a bag of tricks, but a continuing process of social integration. It is a field of adjusting private and public interest. Everyone engaged in any public activity, and every student of human behavior and society, will find in this book a challenge and opportunity to further both the public interest and their own interest.




The Dark Side of Marketing Communications


Book Description

What fuels capitalism and what stops it from collapsing? Does marketing communications support and sustain the economic and political status quo? This book is not about describing the ways in which businesses can optimize the messages they put across or about adding to the marketing communicator’s toolkit. This book argues that marketing communications plays an increasingly important role in bolstering contemporary capitalism. Drawing on conceptualizations of the ‘market’ from political economy and sociology, it focusses on five logics that underpin and sustain the form of capitalism in which we live: the logic of competition, the logic of sustainability, the logic of individualism, the logic of objectivity, and the logic of distraction. It does this by exploring those arenas which are increasingly dominated by the communicative activities of business: sport, CSR, social media, statistics, and entertainment. Bringing theories from marketing and consumer research, sociology, cultural studies, technology and media studies to bear on marketing communications, this book is necessary reading for undergraduate and postgraduate students and academics who wish to understand the broader role of marketing communications in the reproduction of contemporary capitalism.




Understanding Public Relations


Book Description

This text introduces a socio-cultural approach to public relations as a way of analysing the growing importance of public relations in its social, cultural and political contexts and brings theory to life with a range of case studies, including YouTube vlogging, the global fair trade movement and the 2016 EU referendum in the UK.