Jacquie L’Etang

The myth of the “ethical guardian”: An examination of its origins, potency and illusions

The paper takes up the challenge offered in the call for papers for this special issue to explore the notion of public relations as “ethical guardian”. The approach taken is to review some influential academic perspectives as well as practitioner perspectives that emerged throughout the 20th century. It is argued that the ethics and social responsibility have long been an intrinsic part of public relations self‐identity. The paper identifies a number of problems for the public relations occupation that arise from its historical legacy and considers the implications for professional status.

Public Relations Education in Britain: An Historical Review in the Context of Professionalisation.

Abstract The article presents a review of educational developments in Britain, concentrating on the activities of the Institute of Public Relations (IPR), the professional body for individual public relations practitioners. The article is based on research in the IPR archive. Jacquie L’Etang is a member of the Stirling Media Research Institute and is director of the full-time M.Sc. in Public Relations at the University of Stirling, Scotland.

Public relations education in Britain: A review at the outset of the millennium and thoughts for a different research agenda

This paper reviews the history of public relations (PR) education in the UK in the context of the process of professionalisation. Drawing on the sociology of the professions, it describes the criteria for an occupation to be accorded professional status and the role of education in that process. The relationship between academia and practice is given some consideration and some of the challenges facing practitioners and academics in relation to legitimacy and status are identified. Finally, the paper suggests some new issues for research in the field and argues for an ethnographic turn in PR.

Public Relations, Persuasion and Propaganda: Truth, Knowledge, Spirituality and Mystique

This chapter draws together a number of concepts and lines of argument to confront directly the challenge of separating PR and propaganda through a methodological discussion that demonstrates the complexities of such analysis. Attention is drawn to language practices and the significance of the subject position. Spiritual dimensions of public relations are also explored in relation to vocation, public service and propaganda.

Public relations, activism and social movements: Critical perspectives

The Special Issue in ‘Public relations, activism and social movements: critical perspectives’ was designed to solicit the literature that pushed thinking in new directions away from established assumptions about the relationships between the core concepts. Public relations (PR) has had a complicated relationship with activism because historically activism justified organisational investment in PR services and personnel and apparently explained the emergence and development of the specialist areas of issue management and crisis management. Student protest movements and societal critiques of the 1960s and 1970s also played their part in a developing story that conservative corporatism sponsored PR as a protective strategy against radical societal critiques. The consequence of this historical legacy was the formation of rather fixed identities that opposed each other; therefore, this Special Issue encouraged prospective authors to reflect upon such assumptions and others embedded in the literature both of PR and of relevant disciplines. There are dangers in glamorising activism, or in assuming that activism is necessarily a homogeneous category. Apart from the fact that activists range in scale, across the ideological spectrum and are often in direct opposition to each other , they also display considerable variety in their corporate-ness and the extent to which they are self-serving (in order to maintain a successful organisation) or co-opted by other strategic interests. PR literature on activism has tended to ignore the political dimensions of struggle and change. Part of Public Relations Inquiry’s (PRI) mission has been to encourage the work that is outward-facing in order to redress the historical practices in the PR discipline that were both introverted and unimaginative. Consequently, PRI has explicitly sought contributions that cross disciplinary boundaries and draw in theories and concepts from outwith PR. Thompson’s article ‘Towards a theory of rent-seeking in activist public relations’ takes an unusual and critical approach to offer a novel interpretation of the underlying

Political formations, discourses and actions

The articles in this issue explore a range of political themes connected to discourse, identification and power. The first article (Vardeman-Winter, Tindall and Jiang) considers how the descriptive theory of intersectionality has critical implications for public relations as a discipline and a practice, challenging situational theory and established conceptions of publics. Intersectionality implicitly politicizes public relations since identities are sociopolitical constructions and raises issues for research practices, explored by the authors through critical review of past empirical studies. The authors argue that their approach offers a better understanding of ‘phenomenological situations’ making use of ethnographic insights. The tensions between interpretations that respectively propose organizations or publics (activists) have more power is foregrounded as: ‘Intersectionality illuminates this “crisis of representation” over who has what power in public relations, based on their identities and how these identities are situated in sociological contexts.’ Identities and identity formation and maintenance are seen as central to the understanding of the acquisition, enactment and ‘management’ of power. Power is central to the second article (Place and Vardeman-Winter) where: ‘The public relations industry can be viewed as a site through which power is exercised, and public relations professionals are players in systems of power dynamics and relations.’ The authors discuss hegemonic discourses in public relations where the concept has had purchase in considering the impact of public relations practice in society as well as in paradigm debate within the field itself (L’Etang, 1996: 34; Roper, 2005) blending insights from subaltern and post-colonial theories while adapting Foucault’s concept of

Media, socio political theory and reflexivity

The final issue of our first volume of Public Relations Inquiry has a strong thematic focus around political communication and political ideology. The relationships between public relations, public communication and propaganda underlie the specific contributions as do the challenging issues of public participation, dialogue, transparency, and the relationships between public communicators and the media. The tensions between idealism and realpolitik are a point of engagement as contributors conceptualize a variety of empirical and conceptual projects. We open with the contribution of Ian Somerville and Shane Kirby, which analyses the public relations strategies employed by the mainstream political parties during the ‘Good Friday Agreement’ referendum campaign in spring 1998. Based on extensive empirical research, including elite interviews with politicians, campaign directors, press officers and political strategists from the main political parties and textual analysis of the rhetoric employed in campaign materials, the study is positioned conceptually as an exploration of practice in relation to dialogic and dissemination communication models, arguing that the latter is more appropriate in contemporary democratic societies. The article is characterized by its detailed review of the concepts of dialogue and dissemination and its sensitivity to structures of argumentation and logic and also reveals the revolving doors between elite communicators and politicians, a feature that also emerges as significant in our second article by Larsåke Larsson, whose detailed historical study recounts the emergence and development of government press relations in Sweden. This fascinating

Ethics, identities and discursive formations

As editors we value diverse perspectives and research approaches, and in this issue we include contributions that elucidate public relations using concepts and theories from outside the mainstream, in order to generate new insights and research agendas. We have also included articles that are written around empirical work, and those that focus solely on the development of argument to unpack and problematize concepts. As it happens, there is some consonance among the articles; for example: shared concerns in relation to ethical praxis at the individual, organizational, societal and global levels; an interest in occupational identities; and a commitment to reflexivity. We open our second issue with an article that argues for a hermeneutic approach to public relations ethics with a view to increasing reflexivity in the field. Hermeneutics, according to Fawkes, is central to public relations practice: ‘given the centrality of interpretation ... the practitioner is constantly interpreting various internal and external publics to the organization and vice versa, and is prized for skill in understanding the nuances and navigating the pitfalls of interpretation’. Her article proposes a new approach to considerations of professional ethics in public relations. She presents a taxonomy of public relations theory linked to ethical theory, highlighting a number of problematics. She questions the way in which discussions about the loss of public trust focus on their lack of trust rather than on the lack of trustworthiness and her article re-orientates the burden of analysis about public relations ethics onto public relations actors and agents, rather than their critics. She highlights the value of a human-centred approach and understanding through interpretation within a relational context, indicating along the way that there are important, but relatively unexplored components within public relations ethics such as spirituality, thus leading towards a more holistic conception of public relations.