Abstract
A strong contribution to the critical literature on public relations is Christopher Caldiero’s NEO-PR: Public Relations in a Postmodern World.
Three quick takes on the book: First, it will be an intellectually stimulating delight for geeky PR academics who appreciate studying the nuances and intricacies of how PR is both reflective and shaping of the cultures—both macro and micro—in which it operates. Second, students will need a good teacher to help them mine the gold nuggets of insight buried in necessarily complex contexts and arguments. Third, PR professionals are going to need some patience while working through the academic language en route to real-world advice.
NEO-PR opens with a discussion on the cultural constructs of modernism and, more to the book’s focus, postmodernism. The author acknowledges the challenge of precisely and comprehensively defining those concepts/eras/movements, yet does a nice job in summing them up (notably in mass media contexts), especially for those of us only vaguely familiar with modernism or postmodernism and holding no pretense of deeply understanding their artistic and philosophical manifestations. More important, the author, who is Professor of Communication Studies at Farleigh Dickinson University, uses familiar U.S. PR icons such as Bernays, Creel, and Lee, anchoring their legendary PR work in modernism, and then moves us toward the argument that today’s PR practitioners function, or ought to function, with postmodern approaches.
It’s a bit unfair to try to simplify the author’s intricate and complex concept of NEO-PR, but, with that caveat, the concept in a nutshell seems to be that PR today exists in a highly interactive form that shares the creation of meaning with target audiences while still remaining a quite powerful force. PR pros, therefore, must grasp the postmodern contexts in which they work, reject some aspects of old-school (modernist) approaches that are no longer relevant, and embrace the technological and societal advancements that can make them even better at their jobs.
The bulk of book covers classic studies such as the Deepwater Horizon oil spill; the Susan G. Komen Foundation’s wavering stances on funding Planned Parenthood; the Boy Scouts of America’s policies regarding sexual orientation; the sexual assault crimes of Jerry Sandusky, football coach at Penn State University; and SeaWorld’s responses to the critical documentary Blackfish. Each case is thoroughly reviewed and then interpreted through the NEO-PR viewpoint. The book contains an extremely helpful collection of seven appendices that remind readers—or inform younger readers—of key timeline moments and messages related to each case study.
Scholars, practitioners, and students will benefit from the artful way the author weaves his NEO-PR arguments into those prominent and compelling case studies. If using the book for a college course, it would be helpful to require reading of the timeline appendices ahead of the studying of each related chapter. Of course, online video resources abound on these cases, and would help provide the quick background students need.
Neo PR is introduced as a “reader” in the philosophy of PR for graduate and undergraduate students. It is, indeed, a valuable contribution for thinking more philosophically about PR. Undergrads (and other readers), though, will need some help with the many heavy-going sentences like this one: “Narrative communication, while essentially mimetic of real life, is functionally transcendent of lived experience, so that narrative constructions of knowledge or information necessarily effectuate a distancing from the lived experience they reflect or report.” And, in a good number of places, the book would benefit from the wielding of an editor’s axe: “ . . . to be an eye- or ear-witness to events is to be within seeing and hearing distance of them.”
A challenge for many PR veterans and scholars is to find something strikingly new in elements of the “NEO PR” paradigm such as the following:
that communication “no longer travels in linear pathways”;
that “publics are not simple receptors of information,” but, rather, are people who “research,” “respond,” “ask questions,” and “act”;
that the traditional PR textbook mantra of symmetrical communication doesn’t go far enough, and, thus, the profession should focus on what is “just” while developing “an outlook of empowerment of publics and benefit for all.”
Those points are valid; however, who working in or studying PR hasn’t already heard versions of them? The presentation of these points as somehow revolutionary is a tad overstated.
However, the two larger principles of NEO-PR presented in the text, even if they’re not groundbreakingly NEO, do indeed provide helpful insights both for thinking philosophically about PR and for doing it in the field, especially during a crisis. One principle is that PR is “not just an organizational function,” but helps “co-create meaning in an increasingly diverse world.” The other principle is that “public relations does not, nor should it, seek a singular, objective truth.” Instead, the author effectively argues that as “singularity of truth does not exist,” PR pros should think about delivering “microlevel messages, tailored to specific publics or segments of publics.” PR practitioners may react in two ways to that advice. They may say, “that’s what we already try to do, especially via social media.” On the contrary they may say, “love it, as an ideal, and we’ll give it a go, but in the real world that takes more time, staff and budget than we’re ever going to get.”
Overall, though, with his postmodernist analysis and his bold, insightful call for a “neo” approach to PR, Caldiero has provided scholars, students, and practitioners with a valuable liberal arts context in which to consider how one studies and practices the profession of PR.