Jordi Xifra

Americanization, Globalization, or Modernization of Electoral Campaigns? Testing the Situation in Spain

In Spain, there is a great deal of talk about the phenomenon of the Americanization of politics, that is, the influence of the U.S. campaign model in Spain and on the different political campaigns held in its territory—national campaigns and campaigns to elect the parliaments of the 17 autonomous communities into which the country is divided politically. The differences between the electoral systems, and between the cultures and the societies, of the United States and Spain are evident, but there are some characteristics that show that they have increasingly more elements in common, attributable mainly to the American training of the Spanish spin doctors and to how the opportunities of the new mass media are leveraged. However, this article suggests that the debate on the Americanization of electoral campaigns in Spain is insufficient. It is essential to see how the political parties should adapt their communication processes and their rhetorical strategies to an ever-changing society where the weight of the media and new technologies is becoming increasingly greater. Society changes, it becomes modernized, and therefore, the way we reach it should also change, as has been seen in the latest electoral campaigns in Spanish territory. The subject of this study are the latest elections to the Spanish Parliament and to the Parliament of the Autonomous Community of Catalonia.

Building sport countries' overseas identity and reputation: a case study of public paradiplomacy.

The aim of this article is to analyze public diplomacy efforts of noncentral governments through sport. The object of the study is Catalonia, a Spanish autonomous region with its own government but without power over national foreign affairs. Public diplomacy links up with relationship building between governments of nation-states and other nation-states and its citizens. However, noncentral governments, as Catalonia, and other organizations with powerful national identity symbols, such as sports organizations, also develop public relations activities to build an international reputation of regions. In the field of sports, some of these territories were given the name of sport countries in the 2003 Barcelona Conference. This article concludes by considering the notion of soft power as coined by Nye to frame the role of sports diplomacy efforts of regional actors.

Linkages Between Public Relations Models and Communication Managers' Roles in Spanish Political Parties

Studies of political and electoral communication usually focus on the strategic dimension of campaigns from a marketing approach. In these studies, public relations and communications are viewed as a set of techniques that serve political parties and other actors of the political scene, concentrated on media relations. This instrumental perspective is not in keeping with the structural dimension of organizational communication in the activity of political actors: political parties, pressure groups, and political leaders. From this point of view, during managing periods of governance and during electoral campaigns, the most applied communication form by political parties is structured in accordance with the major communication models founded by public relations theorist James E. Grunig: the press agent model, the public information model, the two-way asymmetrical model, and the two-way symmetrical model. This research shows the applicability of these models and its links with the roles of in-house political communicators in Spain according to the results of a quantitative survey focused on inside professionals who provide communicational services for the seven main political parties in this country.

Desolidifying Culture: Bauman, Liquid Theory, and Race Concerns in Public Relations

This article examines approaches to race in public relations and seeks to reframe them through the work of Zygmunt Bauman. After a brief survey of recent race-concerned interventions in the literature, I contend that the mainstream field still tends to avoid anxieties around race in 3 main ways: by considering race from a functionalist business orientation rather than a social equity perspective; by embedding, or freezing, race in relatively static, quantitative, and unemotional conceptualizations of culture and ethnicity; and by acting as if race is no longer an issue in a multicultural, or postrace society. I find these approaches inadequate to the task of comprehending a swift-moving and unsettled present characterized by massive population movements. To improve the fields engagement with the cultural and demographic fluidity of contemporary conditions, especially in relation to race, I open up possibilities for public relations by drawing from Baumans concept of liquid society and his methodological creativity.

Peace, sports diplomacy and corporate social responsibility: a case study of Football Club Barcelona Peace Tour 2013

The aim of this article was to analyse the initiative FC Barcelona Peace Tour 2013, in Israel and Palestine. This research is based on lengthy interviews with people associated with the initiative and the use of primary sources, both institutional and journalistic. Secondary sources have also been used, such as journalistic accounts of the initiative. The article thus examines the nature of FC Barcelona Peace Tour 2013, which it defines as an exercise in sports diplomacy, inspired by civil society and articulated through the club. The article concludes that FC Barcelona has been able to act as a mediator between two opposed communities due to the universal values linked to its brand and its nature as a ‘civil religion’. This notwithstanding, the political problems that arose during the planning of the initiative highlight the geopolitical complexity of the Middle East and, by extension, the limits of sports diplomacy.

Climate Change Deniers and Advocacy A Situational Theory of Publics Approach

Climate change denial (i.e., organized attempts to downplay, deny, or dismiss scientific consensus on the extent of global warming, its significance, and its connection to human behavior) has been a recurrently researched topic in the United States, but is far less studied in Europe, where it is currently gathering force. The truth is that, as in the United States, climate deniers are a tiny minority in Europe. Their numbers contrast starkly with the overwhelming majority of scientists who agree on the reality of man-made climate change and the urgent need for action. However, the voices of climate deniers in Europe are amplified by a handful of influence groups, mainly think tanks, which consistently conceal their sources of funding and final interests. This situation can be approached from a strategic communication perspective, specifically within the framework of the situational theory of publics. From this standpoint, the knowledge of different variables relating to publics in a given situation regarding a public issue (like climate change) can determine the communication strategies chosen by deniers to amplify climate change denial arguments and will introduce their main communication strategies and messages.

The Ramparts we watch: film documentary discourse in the field of public relations

The aim of this article is to analyze Louis de Rochemont’s The Ramparts We Watch as a public relations war effort from the past century. Arising from the informative and propagandistic strategy of late 1930s newsreels, the aforementioned documentary was made using very appropriate narrative techniques to award it the dimension of objectivity and truthfulness characteristic of public relations messages, without losing sight of its educational and persuasive function. From this standpoint, The Ramparts We Watch founded a genre and constituted one of the clearest precedents of public relations war films in America.

Public relations and memory

Constructs a common past of a social community that extends beyond the life-span of its individual members ... generational memory refers to the common experiences of cotemporaries, to a life-world that is regarded as largely inaccessible to those who were born later on ... historical memory imagines a past that reflects the present culture of a social community instead of relating to direct experience. (Giesen and Junge, 2003: 326)

Reputation, Propaganda, and Hegemony in Assyriology Studies: A Gramscian View of Public Relations Historiography

ABSTRACT The aim of this article is to revisit the robust interest in the history of public relations, including its role on behalf of organizations and communities. Energy for that effort is being generated by recent discussions of propaganda and reputation in Assyriology. Major archeological findings of the 2nd half of the twentieth century revealed texts explicating a system of public communication, the purpose of which was to legitimize the power of monarchs in the ancient Near East. Founded on written (royal inscriptions) and iconographic materials and influenced by the historical materialism predominant in historiography when Assyriology was at its height, Assyriologists have approached the study of Mesopotamian state ideology via an essentially communicative dimension where the search for legitimacy and hegemony is articulated through communication in the form of impression and reputation management. To that end, Gramscis state theory, in particular his conception of historical blocs—dominant configurations of material capabilities, ideologies and institutions as determining frames for individual and collective action—are deemed useful for a critical view of public relations historiography.

Propaganda, terrorism and ethics

Our Special Issue was inspired by the desire to confront head on difficult challenges for the public relations field. We also hoped that the Call for Papers would inspire those from outwith the discipline to contribute their perspectives. We were not disappointed in either of our hopes for the issue. We begin our Special Issue with an article by Holbrook that focuses initially on conceptual analysis, drawing on a range of literature to explore the relationship between terrorism (understood as message communication and violence) and mass communication and the way in which violence is rationalised and contextualised by terrorists. Holbrook argues that propaganda is not a static concept and points to its variable usage and highlighting connections between activist and terrorist approaches to communication and the role of ideology as central as a guide to political behaviour and action. In the final part of the article, Holbrook turns attention to Al-Qaeda, providing empirical evidence of media production outputs and the attention paid to the writing of a Syrian jihadist strategist to the concept of public relations. These writings are contrasted with those of Carlos Marighella, whose work inspired the Red Army Faction/Baader Meinhof Group, and White supremicist and neo-Nazi publications. This genre of writing is subsequently linked to mobilisation plans that include a wider group or broader movement to sustain the activism, and conceptually positioned as a form of social movement and reference to the literature within that field.