Kate Fitch

A Disciplinary Perspective: The Internationalization of Australian Public Relations Education.

This article investigates the internationalization of public relations education, by examining public relations education in Australia, its relation with the public relations industry, and its growth in response to international student- and market-led demand. The discussion highlights the tensions within what is essentially an education project driven in part by stakeholders seeking to professionalize the industry and in part by university staff seeking academic legitimacy and disciplinary status for public relations within a rapidly changing higher education sector. Tensions between the local, national, and global contexts of higher education, and academic, industry and market factors are evident. In particular, the process of developing an internationalized curriculum exposes the narrow disciplinarity and weak theoretical foundations of a field, which emerged out of industry practice and is strongly influenced by U.S. scholarship. It is concluded that internationalization of the public relations curriculum offers scholars the possibility to address the ethnocentric values and narratives of their discipline and improve learning outcomes for students.

Developing global practitioners: Addressing industry expectations of intercultural competence in public relations graduates in Singapore and Perth

Abstract Intercultural competence, defined as the skills required for an increasingly globalised world, is poorly understood in both higher education and in its value for different professions. The challenge for educators is how to develop such competence – as a kind of professional knowledge – through the curriculum. This paper explores industry expectations of intercultural competence in public relations graduates in two cities, Singapore and Perth, and offers useful insights into the perceived value of intercultural competence for public relations. The study highlights the need for intercultural competence, as both an understanding of cultural difference and as it applies to professional knowledge, to be incorporated into public relations curricula. The findings highlight the difficulties in offering a ‘national’ curriculum, which is then exported to other countries, and demand educators address the ethnocentric values and narratives of their discipline. These findings are significant given the internationalisation of public relations education and the need to prepare graduates for careers in public relations in a globalised world.

Developing professionals: student experiences of a real-client project

This study investigated the learning potential of the student experience of working with real clients in a final-year undergraduate unit that aims to develop professional skills. Students, working in consultancy teams, developed communication strategies for a not-for-profit organisation. A teaching intervention was trialled late in semester to promote the sharing of client-interaction experiences amongst student teams. Student worksheets were analysed to explore student perceptions of the challenges of the client project and their responses to those challenges. The findings revealed that assumptions cannot be made about the value of real-client projects and suggest that such learning activities need to be carefully structured to make the links between academic learning and professional development explicit and beneficial.

Making history: Reflections on memory and elite interviews in public relations research

Drawing on research into recent Australian public relations history, this article reflects on the significance of memory for historical research. The personal testimony of senior practitioners is perceived to offer authentic insights into the development of public relations. Given the lack of alternate evidence, retrospective accounts such as those narrated in memoirs and interviews have become the de facto history of public relations. The findings indicate that these narratives can be meaningful but point to the need for public relations researchers to adopt a critical approach to historical research, recognising the subjectivity and retrospectivity of personal accounts and the ways in which widely accepted industry narratives and professional networks constrain and structure those accounts. The significance of this study is that it offers evidence of how certain discourses of Australian public relations continue to inform contemporary understandings of its development and limit alternative perspectives.

Other voices? The state of public relations history and historiography: Questions, challenges and limitations of ‘national’ histories and historiographies:

This essay offers an overview of public relations history and historiography, using a review of a recently published book series as a starting point. In offering sometimes previously undocumented national histories and regional and non-US perspectives, National Perspectives on the Development of Public Relations: Other Voices opens up the field. However, the series also raises philosophical and methodological issues regarding the role of history, the positioning of public relations, tensions within the field and public relations’ relationship to societal communication and powerful strategic interests. Scholars have not always grounded their histories within wider historical literature that contextualises the public relations occupation and its role in a particular societal context. We argue that a renewed focus on historiography is needed to better address the influence of US progressivist accounts, the scientisation of western public relations and the narrow confines of the public relations discipline.

Professionalizing Public Relations

This groundbreaking study offers new insights into public relations history with a focus on the changing relationship between women and public relations, the institutionalization of public relations education, and the significance of globalization in Australia in the second half of the twentieth century. Drawing on archival and interview research, it reveals how the industry’s professionalization led to the development of an occupational identity along national and gendered lines. It also challenges common misconceptions around the origins of public relations and women’s early contributions and careers. Adopting a critical approach, Professionalizing public relations avoids corporatist perspectives on the historical development of public relations by focusing on the processes of professionalization and their significance for gender and education, and by situating this study in a broader global context. The findings reveal dynamic and contested conceptualizations of public relations knowledge and expertise, and the significance of historical processes for contemporary understandings of the industry.

Perceptions of Australian public relations education, 1985-1999

This article investigates perceptions of Australian public relations education during a period of significant growth. It analyses in-depth interviews with 14 practitioners and educators in conjunction with Public Relations Institute of Australia (PRIA) archives. Four themes emerged from the analysis: education, professionalisation and gender; theory and practice; developing academic legitimacy and practitioner perspectives in the curriculum. Participants understood education within a professional narrative, that is, as offering a way of establishing Australian public relations as a distinct field of expertise and confirming its professional status. The findings offer new insights into the development of Australian public relations education as it became established as a popular course of study and the role of PRIA in the constitution and transmission of public relations knowledge.

Seeing ‘the unseen hand’:: Celebrity, promotion and public relations

Public relations scholars have largely neglected celebrity public relations. The aim of this article is to explore public relations activity associated with celebrity, in order to better understand day-to-day public relations work and its influence on contemporary culture. Positioning public relations in terms of its cultural intermediary role, this article considers the work of celebrity publicists and public relations agencies that work closely with celebrities. It identifies the increased visibility of public relations in contemporary society, the links between public relations and promotional culture, and public relations’ role in media production and consumption. The findings point to the need to reconceptualise public relations as a promotional practice and call for a renewed focus on the societal impact of public relations activity.

Rethinking Australian public relations history in the mid-20th century

This article investigates the development of public relations in Australia and addresses calls to reconceptualise Australian public relations history. It presents the findings from an analysis of newspaper articles and industry newsletters in the 1940s and 1950s. These findings confirm the term public relations was in common use in Australia earlier than is widely accepted and not confined to either military information campaigns during the war or the corporate sector in the post-war period, but was used by government and public institutions and had increasing prominence through industry associations in the manufacturing sector and in social justice and advocacy campaigns. The study highlights four themes – war and post-war work, non-profit public relations, gender, and media and related industries – that enable new perspectives on Australian public relations history and historiography to be developed.

Public Relations and Responsible Citizenship: Communicating CSR and Sustainability

This chapter offers a critical public relations perspective in its exploration of the role of communication in corporate social responsibility and sustainability . It explores the contradictions inherent in public relations in relation to both organisational communication and activism. Certainly, industry practices such as greenwashing and astroturfing appear to undermine the possibility of public relations being perceived as an ethical and socially responsible occupation. This chapter, therefore, considers the public relations role in conceptualisations of socially responsible citizenship through a discussion of the role of public relations in CSR in the fashion sector. In the wake of the Rana Plaza tragedy in 2013, when more than 1100 textile and garment workers died, activists and consumers demanded fashion retailers and brands take greater responsibility for their social and environmental impacts. In exploring activist campaigns to promote ethical and sustainable fashion and corporate CSR programs in the sector, this chapter concludes that public relations, as practised by activists, NGOs and corporations, may contribute to more socially responsible behaviour on the part of organisations. However, without an authentic commitment to sustainability, there is a real risk of CSR programs being perceived as little more than corporate propaganda and image management .