Intersectionality and publics: How exploring publics’ multiple identities questions basic public relations concepts

Abstract

As a descriptive theory, intersectionality refers to individuals’ interdependent and simultaneous identities that affect how publics confront issues. In this article, we introduce an intersectional approach to publics that complements current segmentation strategies with publics. This article complements early efforts to study multiple identities by expanding the possibilities and realities of accessing and analyzing intersectionality within our intellectual and practical discipline. Also, this article attempts to make apparent possible taken-for-granted assumptions in the research and campaign design process. This approach helps researchers and practitioners to better understand the sociopolitical contexts of public relations communication relationships that lead to the construction of identities.

Keywords

Identity intersectionality publics research methods segmentation

Introduction

Public relations practitioners have traditionally conceptualized publics’ identities according to discrete, single demographics that practitioners assume can be added together and easily separated. Practitioners use this additive approach to segment publics into sub-groups based on essential similarities. Demographics used often for segmentation include gender, age, race and geographic location, among others (Aldoory, 2009a). We highlight problems with this approach and present another way of understanding publics’ identities by including intersectionality in campaign research and design.

In this article,¹ we assert that publics have social identities – rather than one identity as comprised of different facets – because they stem from the ‘categories to which individuals are socially recognized as belonging’ (Owens, 2003: 224). We view identities as social constructions because individuals have:

value and emotional significance attached to … membership … [T]he assumption is made that, however, rich and complex may be the individuals’ view of themselves in relation to their surrounding world … some aspects of that view are contributed by the membership of certain social groups or categories. Some of these memberships are more salient than others; and some may vary in salience in time as a function of a variety of social situations. (Tajfel, 1981: 255, italics in original)

Since ‘public relations is practiced within a framework of identity’ (Vujnovic and Kruckeberg, 2010: 672), considering publics’ multiple identities is important because the kaleidoscopic of individual identities merge together to form a lens through which meanings about an organization are made. Identities are also complicated to comprehend (McCall, 2005) because of the richness and complexity inherent in how publics define themselves alongside how others ascribe identities to publics (Sha, 2006). These issues of identity are addressed by an interdisciplinary theory called intersectionality, which suggests that identities do not exist in isolation to one another; instead, identities mix together to produce unique experiences (Weber, 2001).

In this article, we introduce an intersectional approach to publics that complements current segmentation strategies with publics. This article complements early efforts to study multiple identities by expanding the possibilities and realities of accessing and analyzing intersectionality within our intellectual and practical discipline. Also, this article attempts to make apparent possible taken-for-granted assumptions in the research and campaign design process. This approach helps researchers and practitioners to better understand the sociopolitical contexts of public relations communication relationships that lead to the construction of identities (L’Etang, 2010; Vujnovic and Kruckeberg, 2010).

Context and scope

In this article, we theorize about publics using intersectionality as a starting point. It is written with hindsight from conducting a series of empirical public relations studies² incorporating intersectionality. This conceptualization is critical because it challenges traditional assumptions about the power inherent in practitioners’ and researchers’ roles.³ As a critical piece, we suggest ways intersectionality questions some fundamental public relations concepts. By reflecting upon methodological challenges such as accessing intersectionality and reducing politics of participation in research, we hope to move beyond basic operationalizations of publics toward ethnographically informed knowledges of publics’ multiple identities that facilitate or hinder communication.

Epistemological roots

As identities are sociopolitical constructions, researching publics’ identities begs questions about the subjectivity of research, such as who has the authority to study which topics, and from what standpoint the researcher enters the research setting (Fine et al., 2003). As such, public relations scholars have emphasized the importance of theory-building through disclosing one’s identities as well as revealing how one comes to research as part of theory-building (Aldoory, 2009b; Pompper, 2010; Sha and Ford, 2007). These questions of validity and agency are pertinent in the research and practical realms. First, researchers of publics – whether in academia or in practice – contribute to this subjective process by determining what questions are asked of publics and what interpretations they make of publics’ data. Researchers then give this information to clients, to students of public relations, or to other academics via conference proceedings and journals. Second, public relations practitioners should know how power operates in their relationships with publics, particularly regarding socially sensitive issues when publics may feel their interests need to be represented delicately by organizational spokespeople who know them well and possibly are ‘like’ them.

We approach this research from common and different standpoints as former practitioners and current educators of public relations. We are all women, but we come from different racial and ethnic backgrounds as a White American, an African American and a Chinese person living in the USA. We enter the research process from an epistemological view that multiple identities – rather than single identities such as gender or race – guide publics’ decision making processes. After years of researching publics’ motivations to seek information about health and risk topics, we struggled with how to produce holistic, accurate conceptualizations and operationalizations of identity and whether traditional categorizations of publics continue to be meaningful and effective. As feminist researchers with a desire to improve the public relations function’s ability to communicate valuable information in the context of publics’ lives (and overcome multiple, simultaneous barriers such as health information-seeking and health care attainment among low-income, immigrant, uneducated women), we seek more encompassing approaches to conceptualizing publics.

Structure

First, we critique extant public relations research about identity as limited in its scope of conceptualizing publics. Then we introduce the theory of intersectionality, and we relate the premises of intersectionality to identity research about publics. The third section highlights potential complications and possibilities researchers and practitioners may have in adopting an intersectional approach to studying publics, as we encountered them in working intersectionality into our empirical studies. In the final section, we question the field’s theoretical and practical assumptions about publics. These points inform a developing intersectional approach to publics.

Critiques of current identity research

The process of segmenting publics into priority groups is a tool public relations practitioners and researchers have used and studied as an integral part of the strategic management of organizational communication (Grunig, 1997; Kim and Ni, 2010). Public relations practitioners face challenges in identifying and segmenting publics because of today’s vast global cultural and technological changes. Public relations has long advocated that publics do not fit static, monolithic and traditional categories. But factors such as the increase in professional and personal travel (Sison, 2009), the growth of Hispanic and Asian-American populations in large media markets such as in the USA (US Census Bureau 2011) and the improved availability of diverse perspectives via communication technologies (Jenkins et al., 2006) signal that, more than ever, a new approach to understanding the multiple identities of publics is vital in creating meaningful communication.

Furthermore, the intricate identities and rich experiences of publics contribute to the nuanced communication behaviors publics exhibit toward organizations. Practitioners seeking to understand why publics behave as they do are behooved to learn about the complex identities of publics. First, we suggest that segmentation research in public relations – particularly that of the situational theory of publics – is limited because of the current gaps in understanding of identities and public relations publics. Then we explain these limitations through lenses of gender and race.

Situational theory of publics and identity

The situational theory of publics has received significant scholarly attention, as it helps communicators use publics’ cognitive evaluations of problems, involvement, and constraints to predict communication behavior (Aldoory and Sha, 2007). Specifically, identities of publics have been considered in the conceptualization of the referent criterion, an original independent variable in the situational theory of publics.⁴ The referent criterion consists of a public’s identities, previous experience with the issue, and cultural norms, and has been considered antecedent to a public’s information-seeking behavior (Aldoory and Sha, 2007).

However, the identities of publics have been studied, theorized and applied in decontextualized silos rather than as comprehensive, constitutive of one another and contextualized in social systems. Furthermore, gender, race and age are the primary demographics researched in public relations, whereas identities such as class, nationality, disability and religion have not been explored as relevant to publics (Sison, 2009). The genders and races of publics are relevant to communication behavior. But our scholarship should engage the two identities simultaneously because separately, the two identities tell partial stories about how they influence information seeking.

Gender, race, and publics

Most gender and race research in public relations has focused on the composition of practitioners and how gender and race, separately, affect the practice of public relations. Few studies have examined how gender-and-race influence publics’ communication; and most identity research conceptualizes race and gender largely as unconnected factors affecting communication. Thus, as there is little scholarship on the topic, ‘gender and publics’ and ‘race and publics’ will be discussed simultaneously next to highlight the common trends of identity research about publics.

Few studies have considered how gender shapes publics’ decision making about involving topics such as health representations in the media⁵ (Aldoory, 2001; Tindall and Vardeman-Winter, 2011; Vardeman and Aldoory, 2008; Vardeman-Winter and Tindall, 2010). Cultural factors such as the salience of everyday life, putting others’ needs before their needs, and negotiating costs and benefits of health interventions characterize women publics as part of a theory of women’s health communication (Aldoory, 2001). Examining gender only assumes that all women and all men communicate similarly about issues, regardless of other identities such as race, age, religion, ability and sexual orientation. To this point, Aldoory found gender-only representations in media were harmful to the participants in her study:

Although health communicators and public relations practitioners often espouse race and class sensitivity in targeting key publics, the findings here show that, for this study’s participants, many messages and campaigns may not be sensitive enough for their needs and everyday lives. In particular, the lesbian participants perceived themselves as completely isolated from all health media and health messages. (2001: 181)

Similar to the analysis of scholarship on gender and publics, only a handful of public relations studies have purposefully sampled participants from non-White/Caucasian races and ethnicities (Aldoory, 2001; Sha, 2006; Tindall and Vardeman-Winter, 2011; Vardeman-Winter and Tindall, 2010). All race-based research on publics have used the situational theory of publics (Grunig, 1997) as a framework to determine the extent to which race contributes to publics’ communication behaviors because it acts as a motivator on issues or a constraint toward acting on issues. Findings show that publics’ recognition of race guides many of their communication behaviors because of heightened recognition of problems with and personal involvement around racioethnic issues such as racial discrimination on college campuses (Sha, 2006) and health topics that disproportionately affect groups of color (Vardeman-Winter and Tindall, 2010). In her testing of the impact of race and ethnicity on the situational theory of publics’ predictive ability, Sha underscored the referent criterion because the data suggested that ‘if a person identifies with a given culture, he or she may behave according to that culture’s rules regardless of the situation at hand’ (2006: 60). To this point, Sha used her identity work to encourage practitioners to research and acknowledge the salient and avowed cultural identities of publics rather than relying on ascribed identities of publics to predict action.

Traditional research assumes that race and gender equate neat, discrete variables, detailing explicit relationships between gender and communication, and race and communication about an issue. Gender and race are also measured in discrete units gauged using single items on questionnaires, with gender measured by a binary option and race measured by offering a handful of conventional racioethnic categories from which the participant is forced to pick one. Rather, Sha (2006) and similar studies suggested that such basic – yet complex – identities like race (and opportunities and barriers that result from race) permeate multiple levels of communication behavior (or, race affects how publics demonstrate each variable in the situational theory of publics).

However, some public relations studies have found evidence of the simultaneous expression of effects of race, gender and other identities such as class on publics’ communication behaviors (Aldoory, 2001, 2009a; Holland, 2009; Vardeman-Winter and Tindall, 2010). For example, publics remain latent or aware about health topics such as heart disease because communication efforts failed to consider the unique constraints low-income, non-US women of color experience differently than White women, middle-class women, American women and literate women reading the same mediated communication (Vardeman-Winter and Tindall, 2010). These findings exhibit the importance of intersectionality in the public relations function: alone, neither gender nor race tells the whole story of persistent opportunity for particular groups and persistent marginalization for other groups. Because of the interlocking simultaneity and reinforced interdependence of race and gender, women of color, for example, experience campaign messages in different ways than groups of other mixes of gender and race.

Furthermore, while these studies reached separate conclusions that multiple identities influenced how the women participants made decisions about health based on media representations, they did not explore multiple identities as a theoretical construct. Rather, more essentialist assumptions about gender began the research but were revised in the findings and conclusions of the projects to draw attention to the influences of other identities such as maternal identity (Vardeman and Aldoory, 2008), class (Aldoory, 2001) and race and ethnicity (Vardeman-Winter and Tindall, 2010).

Finally, experimental and survey research about publics have collected information on gender and race as factors affecting communication behavior. Some statistics enable analyses of covariance (e.g. ANCOVA) among multiple demographics. But, the disadvantage of using statistics such as ANCOVA is that indicating primary (independent) and secondary (covariate) variables burdens investigators with the need to designate one identity as ‘primary,’ or more salient and influential than other identities. This wrongly ranks identities (Valentine, 2007) and encourages false dichotomies (Allen, 2010). This assumption of independent variables and covariates not being correlated with each other contradicts the basic tenets of intersectionality.⁶ Thus, scholarship lacks a larger effort to theorize about publics with an initial assumption that multiple identities affect information-seeking behavior.

In summary, current public relations research and practice is limited because of the dominance of the traditional paradigm of publics’ identity as comprised of discrete demographics. This limits our understanding of how multiple identities shape publics’ communication behaviors. Publics are increasingly complex because they align with multiple demographic and sociographic groups, and they identify as other to traditional segments. Thus, public relations researchers and practitioners should forge more sophisticated categories based on intersectionality.

Intersectionality as an emerging identity approach

The concept of multiple, intersecting identities as the basis for political, structural and representational subjugation was simultaneously theorized by a legal theorist, Kimberlé Crenshaw (1991), and a feminist philosopher, Elizabeth Spelman (1988). Both scholars highlighted the inessential – and nuanced – qualities of women from different races, classes and sexual orientations (Spelman, 1988), and how these women are treated with inequality in social policy making for second-class groups like immigrant, illiterate women of color (Crenshaw, 1991). Intersectionality is considered interdisciplinary because it has been refined by feminist and critical race scholars in philosophy, education, political science, sociology, psychology, public health and geography (see Berger and Guidroz, 2009, for a comprehensive list of intersectionality studies).

Conceptualization

The theory of intersectionality proposes that social constructions of identity do not exist independently (i.e. identities do not exist within a vacuum) or discriminately (i.e. every person has a gender, race, class and sexual orientation) (Collins, 1990; Crenshaw, 1991). Instead, intersectionality explains the consequence of concomitant oppression and privilege dispersed among social groups because of the cascading, multiplying effect of interlocking, simultaneous identities (Dill and Zambrana, 2009; Holvino, 2010; Valentine, 2007). Three main characteristics explain intersectionality: identity interdependence, reliance on sociological othering and spatial and temporal contextuality.

Identity interdependence

The first premise of intersectionality rejects isolated, exclusive identities. Identities are partial truths: race or gender tells part of an individual’s or group’s lived experiences and their access to opportunities (Collins, 2000; Mattis et al., 2008; Weber, 2001). To obtain the full picture, identities such as race, class, gender and sexuality must be examined as simultaneous (Weber, 2001). Also, these intersections represent the realities that subjugation and privilege can co-exist. These intersections result in either ‘multiple jeopardy (i.e. the intersection of two or more low social status positions)’ or ‘multiple advantage (i.e. the intersection of two or more high social status positions)’ (Bowleg, 2008: 313).

Social inequality does not result from a simple addition of gender, class, race, sexual orientation and many other social identities (Bowleg, 2008; King, 1988; McCall, 2005). Rather, macro-level structures such as the law, educational and economic systems, and politics create an ‘interlocking matrix of relationships’ (Collins, 1990: 20). Identities are the socially constructed result of power relationships, and inside a matrix of domination, social relations that appear neutral are cloaked in oppression and privilege (Hayman and Levit, 2002; Zinn and Dill, 1996).

Although not often called intersectionality, the phenomenon of identity interdependence has received some attention in the past decade by public relations scholars. Latina practitioners (Pompper, 2007) and African American female public relations educators (Tindall, 2009) experience multiplied marginalization – or a ‘double bind’ – because of inequalities in career advancement based on gender-and-race. In other words, the practitioners’ and educators’ races and genders depend on one another to reveal the entire experience with public relations.

In risk communication, for example, intersectionality is used as a way to reconceptualize ‘the multiplicative and intertwining effects of the multiple identities and cultures that influence an individual’ (Aldoory, 2009a: 236). Aldoory (2009b) highlighted the ‘white male effect’ on perceived risk (citing Flynn et al., 1994). Compared to other race-and-gender groups, White males were less likely to perceive that they are susceptible to various environmental, safety and lifestyle risks, that they trust institutions more, that they are more willing to accept small, imposed risks, and were better educated and received higher incomes. These findings explain perceptions of risk by not just White males but also by multiple other groups, which indicate which groups have more personal and institutional resources.

Reliance on sociological othering

Social identities are represented or embodied in ideological regimes constituted by ideas, prejudices and stereotypes about the values and roles of different individuals or groups (Mattis et al., 2008). These identities exist along macro social structural and micro social psychological levels (Weber, 2001). The hierarchy of privilege emerges from unequal distribution of power resources in conjunction with the cultural forming of us-versus-them – or other – groupings (Sherwood, 2009). The othering effect is essential for meaning to exist; individuals situate themselves in larger groups, cultures and nations based on common understandings of phenomenon as different from groups, cultures and nations outside their own (Hall, 1991).

Furthermore, identification and othering are political processes (Hall, 1991; Haraway, 1988; Harding, 1991). When a dominant group chooses to study, judge or aid a group with less power and resources, the sub-altern group is othered and essentialized as a monolith according to the norms of the dominant group. The norms of this dominant group ‘distort the realities of the other in an effort to maintain power relations’ (Ladson-Billings, 2003: 408).

By prioritizing publics according to their strategic value to an organization’s bottom line, organizations can other publics in public relations campaigns. For example, low-income, non-White teen girls in Vardeman-Winter’s (2010) study about perceptions of Merck’s Gardasil-HPV vaccine campaign believed that companies think African American girls’ and Latina’s main health risks are HIV/AIDS. Therefore, they felt Merck did not target them for the vaccine because of their races. However, they felt they needed the vaccine to protect themselves against HPV because their boyfriends are not monogamous. But, among the study’s racially and socioeconomically diverse sample, these girls had the lowest awareness about the HPV campaign, had the least number of girls vaccinated (none were vaccinated) and lacked the financial resources to obtain the vaccine. However, according to US epidemiological statistics, low-income women of color are more likely to have and die from cervical cancer (US National Cancer Institute, 2009; Rothman and Rothman, 2009). This suggests that Merck divided public health disparities victims (low-income women of color) from potential buyers with better access (White women with health care). Merck neglected customizing messages and utilizing media that would reach publics likely to benefit most from the product and, instead, commoditized a less salient risk among publics with the means to purchase the remedy.

Spatial and temporal contextuality

Intersectionality is produced through a ‘matrix of domination’, which is the ‘overall social organization within which intersecting oppressions originate, develop, and are contained’ (Collins, 2000: 227–228). Identities function in different institutional and social organizational settings such as the legal, political and educational systems (Mattis et al., 2008; Weber, 2001). In one context, a certain identity may trump another (King, 1988; Valentine, 2007). As Valentine noted, intersectionality highlights the ‘specific identifications/disidentifications that emerge for [the participant] in particular spatial and temporal moments’ (2007: 15). Crenshaw (1991) highlighted an important example in juridical contexts: rape statistics are reported by sex and by race, but not by sex and race together. Therefore, rape rates for Black women, for example, are unrecognized.

Furthermore, interactions of race and gender – as in the rape statistics example – do not exist alone; the interaction exists alongside other identities, such as class, as well as within distinct (but often overlapping) social institutions, such as educational, occupational and criminal. In other words, reporting rape statistics is a complex matter according to the layers of identities and contexts (by place and by generation/era/period) considered. These nuances display the power of analyzing intersectionality effects. This framework offers analytic points into concurrent opportunities and oppressions across many hierarchical relationships such as those between organizations and publics, producers and consumers, and policy makers and affected communities (Zinn and Dill, 1996).

In public relations, education and scholarship are sites for examining the spatial and temporal contextuality of intersectionality. As the USA has been regarded as the leader in theoretical and educational development of public relations, theory and education have been critiqued as largely western-based and ethnocentric (Molleda, 2000; Sriramesh and Verčič, 2003). For example, in their application of the situational theory of publics to a Singaporean public – i.e. the first non-US public used in a situational theory study – Sriramesh et al. (2007) suggested that generational and cultural identities combined refuted previous conceptualizations of how active publics are formed. Their findings are relevant when considering temporal and spatial application of the theory: older Singaporeans were not likely to become active in demanding better customer service from organizations, and these findings contradicted previous research about communication behavior and customer service, particularly of American publics. Examining these identities in a new spatial context (i.e. Singapore) and a temporal context (i.e. the situational theory is more than 40 years old) suggests that scholars and practitioners consider identities beyond merely their current or seemingly stable situations.

Similarly, Molleda (2000) pointed out that scholarship in Latin American is fertile though lagging in its presence among non-Latin academe because of multiple, intertwined barriers to research and publishing. The ethnic identity of being Latin American has reproductive effects: because of Latin American scholars’ geographic location, there is a physical distance separating them from western scholars; because of the prevalence of English-based journals in which public relations research is published, Latin American scholars’ research is not published in the most widely read outlets; and because of these two barriers combined, the relationships with large publishing houses need improvement. Put together, these examples demonstrate the relevance of situating intersectionality within time and space parameters.

Critiques of intersectionality

Although intersectionality has been called ‘the most important theoretical contribution that women’s studies, in conjunction with related fields, has made so far’ (McCall, 2005: 1771), some critiques within the legal fields (where intersectionality theory emerged; see Crenshaw, 1991) and the gender and race studies disciplines have emerged. Intersectionality was a solution to the problem of essentialism in feminist and antiracist scholarship and activism; now, intersectionality serves as a ‘catch-all’ for identity politics. Thus, Nash (2008) criticized the vagueness of intersectionality’s empirical application, its unclear methodology and the consistent use of Black women as subjects. Such critiques attempt to continue the refinement of intersectionality and ‘enable both feminist and anti-racist theorists to evaluate the possibilities and potential pitfalls of “inclusive” theorizing’ (Nash, 2008: 4). Furthermore, some have debated the methodological problems with intersectionality because of its emphasis on a simultaneous emergence of identities rather than a surfacing of a salient identity in particular situations (Brah and Phoenix, 2004). To accommodate this debate, researchers and activists have argued that single identities pivot into the spotlight under certain circumstances but are still co-constructed spatially and temporally (Dottolo and Stewart, 2008; Luft, 2009; Yuval-Davis, 2009).

Application of intersectionality

Intersectionality adds necessary depth and context to theories attempting to explain publics’ behaviors and categorize publics (Aldoory, 2009a). For example, when practitioners use segmentation theories to determine campaign strategies for multiple publics, practitioners who take an intersectionality approach will examine how simultaneous expressions of several identities affect motivations and barriers to communication rather than examining one or two identities separately. Intersectionality also encourages practitioners to see a public not as isolated from external forces but as affected by and affecting multiple environments. Knowing the breadth and depth by which publics make decisions – i.e. by complementing existing segmentation theories about publics – practitioners can design messages that address the essence of decision-making, particularly for inactive publics (Aldoory and Sha, 2007).

Challenges to studying intersectionality

Scholars in other disciplines have already begun linking intersectionality to theories from other disciplines such as psychology, education and sociology but have found that intersectionality is methodologically challenging to incorporate into extant models (Bowleg, 2008; Hancock, 2007; McCall, 2005; Shields, 2008; Valentine, 2007; Warner, 2008; Weber, 2001). For example, a 2008 issue of Sex Roles journal was dedicated to discussing methodological challenges and strategies to conducting empirical investigations of intersectionality. The methods used to explore intersectionality reflect both qualitative and quantitative inquiries, and neither methodology has dominated in analyzing intersectionality. In fact, although mixed methods seem to be the most advocated-for methodological approach by intersectionality advocates, some scholars struggle because ‘intersectionality stands ontologically between reductionist research that blindly seeks only the generalizable and particularized research so specialized it cannot contribute to theory’ (Hancock, 2007: 74). This paradox will be discussed later, as intersectionality illuminates similar basic questions about public relations.

Intersectionality is one of many ‘hidden’ phenomena that influences the field of public relations but remains understudied because of the relative difficulty of conceptualizing, operationalizing and measuring it. Intersectionality persists as an understudied and misunderstood phenomenon because of its seeming vagueness and ubiquity (Davis, 2008). However, by analyzing our experience in designing intersectionality research, we found challenges of accessing intersectionality from ‘somewhere’ and reducing politics of participation. Next, we consider how these challenges affect fundamental concepts and issues in public relations such as the power of practitioners, boundary spanning and the empowerment of public relations.

Accessing Intersectionality from ‘Somewhere’

One complication of studying intersectionality comes from the possibility that public relations practitioners and researchers represent a set of demographics that are often different from those of our publics (e.g. according to class, educational attainment, health status and citizenship status). Furthermore, organizations impress particular group identities on employees, which may not align with the identities and interests of publics (Henderson, 2005). Curtin and Gaither (2007) suggested that campaigns are produced by relatively few people who may not represent the vast number of publics targeted by campaigns:

It’s no secret the public relations industry isn’t as diverse as the audiences it purports to reach. Minorities are severely underrepresented in public relations in the United States, where women account for two thirds of all public relations practitioners. Nevertheless, men still predominate as top firm executives, demonstrating that the gender distribution at managerial levels is still heavily tilted toward men … Yet another issue is class; it takes some capital to operate a public relations business, and global agencies often have the deep pockets to bring their Western, corporate business models to developing countries. (Curtin and Gaither, 2007: 112–113)

Practitioners and researchers may find it difficult to know they are studying intersectionality because of the traditional barriers of identity politics. Richardson noted that this intellectual movement in which the personal is political ‘holds that one’s personal experiences and memories are routes into consciousness-raising about the structures and cultures of oppression’ (2007: 459). The personal presents a problem because it puts cultural ‘blinders’ (Maxwell, 2007) on a researcher or practitioner. Intersectionality requires researchers and practitioners to unlearn their ‘normal’ position and privilege, and to reassess their access to opportunities, resources and knowledge.

In the development of our intersectionality research, we acknowledged that as researchers and communicators, we are considered a diverse research team because of our mixed races and ethnicities. Finding women to study was easy because our networks largely consist of women. Recruiting women of different ethnicities and races was also not difficult because we have ready access to African Americans, Asian Americans, Whites and Latinas because of our personal contacts with people of our same races as well as the racial and ethnic diversity of the areas where we work and live.

However, we are homogeneous and part of a privileged group because of our individual education levels, which are results of, as well as factors for, continued socioeconomic opportunity. We are also women of similar ages, health statuses and occupations. We had little access to people of varied intersections, such as low-income women of color, aging women and women with significant health impairments. This point – that we approached our research from a particular intersection from ‘somewhere’ rather than ‘nowhere’ (Bordo 1990, as cited by Richardson 2007: 466) – seems poignant as a researcher and practitioner challenge: those who attempt to span the boundaries between organizations and publics cannot not be an individual situated in a particular intersection and an employee of an organization in a particular industry, portraying a distinct organizational identity.

Obscure, sensitive subject matter

Furthermore, intersectionality is not a common word. Some participants may feel confused by interviewers asking about their intersecting identities, and some may feel vulnerable talking about how their identities create opportunities or hardships for them. In her autoethnography about her role as a White researcher studying practitioners of color, Pompper pondered, ‘Could I adequately interpret their experiences?… How could I do this without in some sense “othering” and re-invoking a fixed hierarchical relationship between respondents and myself?’ (2010: 4–5). Even talking about identity can be a sensitive subject for participants, particularly when researcher and participants are from different backgrounds (Reinharz, 1992). To this point, qualitative researchers have been reprimanded for assuming that a participant’s identity has anything – or nothing – to do with how they communicate (Fine et al., 2003; Vardeman-Winter, 2011).

We experienced in our research that some participants do not want to reveal details about their identity that are not obvious from their appearance, such as sexuality, class, educational attainment, health status, citizenship status and racioethnicity. For example, in individual interviews and focus groups, we wanted participants to get comfortable talking about their multiple identities before we presented the idea that multiple identities may influence their behaviors. Early in the interviews, we asked them to ‘write down on the piece of paper what your identity is. For example, if you were to describe who you are to someone that cannot see or hear you, how would you describe yourself?’ Rather than describing their genders, races, ethnicities, ages, sexual orientations, religions and other demo- and socio-graphics, several participants wrote instead about their personality traits, such as ‘I’m a strong, compassionate, loving, concerned daughter, mother, and wife’ and ‘athletic, funny, friendly, caring, healthy, outgoing’. Despite our assumption that this rapport-building activity would yield consistent results about obvious demographics, we learned that while some participants chose to avow demographics and sociographics, others preferred to present themselves according to their social roles, interactions, and interests. This made asking about identities such as gender, race and age more uncomfortable later in the interviews and problematic, as it seemed we were imposing a disadvantaged identity on participations.

As some participants wrote about their personality traits as part of their identities, we considered that personalities certainly influence communication behavior. In fact, communicators must learn how to hone in on collective personality traits as related to types of products, services and causes. However, personality is more difficult to segment because of its individual, less visible nature. An interested practitioner would then ask, is there some inevitable or intrinsic connect between personality traits and larger demo- and socio-graphic profiles that can be harnessed for segmentation purposes? Targeting groups according to their shared identities, values and behaviors is the traditional basis of communication relationships. However, when organizations ascribe identities to target audiences differently than audiences self-avow their identities, the communication relationship may suffer because the public could perceive the organization is disconnected (see Sha 2006; also see Vardeman-Winter 2011 for a discussion about essentialism in public relations research and segmentation).

Operationalizing intersectionality and negotiating its naming

Based on critiques that intersectionality is too nebulous to be applied effectively to social problems (Davis, 2008; Nash, 2008), some scholars have debated how (and whether) it can be studied using quantitative inquiry (Hancock, 2007; McCall, 2005). Furthermore, intersectionality scholars have argued that the phenomenon is best understood when investigated using a mixed methods approach (Bowleg, 2008). Thus, to obtain a comprehensive understanding of how intersectionality can predict communication behavior among publics, we attempted to quantify multiple, interactive identities. These findings would ideally complement qualitative evaluations of how identities influence communication behavior, particularly in the context of the tenets of the situational theory of publics.

For quantitative analysis, we developed a scale to measure intersectionality because one did not exist. Through the processes of scale validation, the data confirmed our assertions made about the complications of accessing intersectionality; in short, naming ‘multiple identities’ and measuring participants’ comprehension of intersectionality proved to be laborious. For example, in measuring the content validity of the items, participants responded that the items employed highly technical language (one participant commented that, ‘“the intersections and co-existence of oppression” is very academic’). Pilot participants also felt that the myriad descriptions of intersectionality used – ‘people of my same gender, age, race, class, sexual orientation, and ability (handicapped or not)’, ‘mix of identities’, ‘people like me’ and ‘web of inequality’ – complicated who they understood was being studied. Finally, pilot participants felt confused about the nature of the study subject (e.g. one participant responded, ‘Are you asking if one or more of the “gender, age, race, etc.,” items plays a greater role in determining my feelings about the guidelines? Or if my identity, as an interaction of the set, determines my feelings about “privilege?”’). Pilot participants gave suggestions about how to improve the wording, but when we tested the revised wording, other participants disagreed with the readability of the wording.

After two pilot surveys, we improved the validity of the scale items and achieved greater agreement among participants about terms that reflected intersectionality (Vardeman-Winter et al., forthcoming, 2013). However, the naming remains a constant concern, as not all participants agreed that the naming/wording is clear. We believe this process reaffirms our earlier proposition that intersectionality is a potentially sensitive and hard-to-access concept. Despite our and other scholars’ best intentions to study intersectionality quantitatively, this arduous process casts some doubt on whether identities are criteria that can be easily measured – for they evolve, are unique to individuals and narrowly defined groups, and are spatially and temporally contextual – and neatly evaluated using traditional research questions and methods.

Accessing intersectionality through real-life decision making

To confirm the existence and effects of intersectionality among publics’ decision making, we embarked on two phases of a study about a common topic, one employing a new scale to inquire about the generalizability of intersectionality; another using qualitative focus groups and interviews to explore the breadth and depth of intersectionality among publics. Furthermore, we learned that to overcome the problems with getting at a complex phenomenon, our data collection instruments must ask about lived decision making rather than general perceptions of identity in nebulous contexts (e.g. ‘society,’ ‘politics,’ and ‘economics’). We asked participants to examine a news article/clip about new breast cancer screening guidelines (Dellorto, 2009).

A scale to measure publics’ perceptions of intersectionality as it affects their decision making offers a first step to contextualizing publics’ communication behaviors in a framework that considers the systemic power relationships they experience (Vardeman-Winter et al., forthcoming, 2013). However, as quantitative data only demonstrate the prevalence of intersectionality among a public regarding an involving issue and not the variety of experiences contributing to lived intersectionality, qualitative methods were used to complement the quantitative data.

Previous intersectionality research has warned against the additive approach to studying multiple identities, and this issue becomes salient in qualitative research. The additive approach occurs when participants are asked how their identity affects their perceptions of a topic, such as, ‘how do you see yourself as a [gender of participant] represented in this piece?’ and ‘how do you see yourself as [race of participant] represented in this piece?’ To sum responses to these questions assumes that identities are additive and can be ranked in order of importance (Bowleg, 2008; Hancock, 2007; McCall, 2005). In a qualitative interview, it is problematic that researchers must ask about single and multiple identities because only one question can physically be asked first. Researchers must attempt to simultaneously deflect assumptions about the ranking of identities and the addition of identities.

Instead, we selected questions from previous studies that accessed interactive understandings of identity rather than additions of identities (McCall, 2005; Valentine, 2007; West and Fenstermaker, 1995). Qualitative researchers can ask these singular questions along with probes about the impact of collective identities on participants’ perceptions of topics. Questions such as ‘what identity of yours do you see the most represented in this piece?’ and ‘what situations in your life are too complex to put into this depiction of you?’ lead to an interactive analysis (Bowleg, 2008) and solicit participants’ beliefs about their identity’s influence on the health topic. Bowleg also suggested inquiring about common and meaningful experiences such as stress, discrimination and tensions rather than asking about demographics alone.⁷ Finding the clashes among identities may also illuminate intersectionality by asking participants how one identity is reinforced by another identity, as well as who, when and how identities are performed in different situations (McCall, 2005).

In summary, conceptualizing and operationalizing multiple identities is important in public relations because of the necessary practice of segmenting publics prior to campaign research and design. But, accessing these identities in research and representing identities in campaign messages are difficult for researchers and communicators who may not experience an issue the same way publics do. The research conducted in our field may be partly to blame, as public relations continues to suffer from a lack of thick, deep description (L’Etang, 2010) about its identities and how those identities influence the effectiveness of campaigns and in turn, relationships with publics.

Reducing politics of participation

Two trends in academic study of intersectionality reflect political biases researchers have toward the idea of intersectionality, and these trends affect who participates in our research. These trends are reflected in problems of studying producers’ vs. consumers’ intersectionality and seeking only ‘hot’ samples.

Studying producers’ vs. consumers’ intersectionality

The first trend reflects the tendency for intersectionality research to explore the individual’s experience of oppression due to multiple, simultaneous identities rather than a group’s experiences within social settings (Dill et al., 2007). For public relations purposes, it is important to understand how intersecting identities across groups create differences in political power and media representations (Crenshaw, 1991). One important group to study is practitioners so we can learn what motivates and constrains those with political and communicative power (Fine et al., 2003). If we can identify how practitioners come to know communication about an issue, we can compare that with how publics come to know communication about the issue. The ultimate goal of researching practitioners’ identities is to reduce the gaps between producers’ and consumers’ communicative power.

One way to study these gaps between privileged communicators and marginalized publics is to identify the motivations of communicators to target particular publics with campaign messages. This type of intersectionality is mapped to common communication constructs, perceived involvement and perceived quality of messages. An ideal study of political intersectionality would ethnographically collect and analyze interview data with producers of information and campaigns. This is challenging in terms of getting access to communication practitioners and policy makers, which is a usual research problem for those studying practitioners’ perspectives. It is further complicated by the attempt to critically analyze practitioners’ perspectives as informed by their individual and/or organizational identities. As advocates for the fundamental purposes and possibilities of public relations as a social function, we recognized our timidity in critiquing practitioners’/policy makers’ motivations for policy change/messaging. In essence, critical analyses such as intersectionality imply a necessity to address the ills of our discipline in interpersonal encounters with those we advocate are important agents in cultural and social discourse.

Seeking only ‘hot’ samples

The second trend of who participates in intersectionality studies reflects a tendency of researchers to study ‘hot’ populations (Fine et al., 2003: 182). Intersectionality studies examine the structural intersections in women’s everyday lives (Bowleg, 2008; Crenshaw, 1991), simplistic representations of women (Holland, 2009), people of color (Bowleg, 2008; Crenshaw, 1991), low-income or homeless people (Fine et al., 2003) and gay men or lesbians (Bowleg, 2008). These studies position ‘hot’ participants as the other to privileged groups. Although intersectionality involves all individuals and groups, the dominant social and political groups may not recognize the privilege they have received from their intersecting identities (Weber, 2001). Thus, privileged groups are those that catalyze change, and as such, ignoring their perspectives creates ‘insurmountable limits to a scholarship of inequality that only looks ‘down’’ (Sherwood, 2009: 136).

Most public relations identity studies have been conducted with marginalized groups (Aldoory, 2001; Sha, 2006; Vardeman-Winter and Tindall, 2010) instead of also talking with groups that have historically experienced privilege. These study participants could be White, men, healthy, from the middle- and upper-classes, educated, heterosexual, western, young or middle-aged, of a dominant religion and employed. If we study the most marginalized groups, we may come to associate intersectionality as only existing with and applicable to people of other identities. This consistent association stigmatizes intersectionality (Crenshaw, 1991), which cripples the intellectual lens and opportunities for policy change. The desires by some scholars to open spaces for additional voices to contribute to public relations theory building contradict the possible political and theoretical mistake of only studying ‘the exotic’ in intersectionality analyses. Using the intersectional lens to also study privileged groups, we learn more about the nature and universality of intersectionality, particularly how ‘privileged or powerful identities are “done” and “undone’’’ (Valentine, 2007: 14).

To address the issues of the politics of participation, and, in particular, the challenging goal of intersectionality to learn about multiple, simultaneous identities across all groups (not just ‘exotic’ publics), studies can pursue meaning-making from both groups (Fine et al., 2003; Valentine, 2007). In efforts to negotiate this contradiction as well as to study intersections that result in subjugation and privilege, we sought samples in our quantitative analysis that include people representing a spectrum of identities (Vardeman-Winter et al., forthcoming, 2013). We surveyed and interviewed women and men, people of color and White people, people with and without health insurance, people of any sexuality and sexual orientation, people of various ages, people with a range of educational attainment, and people with/-out histories of breast cancer. In this sense, we can evaluate the extent of intersectionality present among the various groups, which may lend more realism for how communicators can incorporate an intersectionality analysis into their segmentation of campaign publics.

In summary, attempting to understand intersectionality in the research and communication process sheds light on the fact that every step of research – including that of research and communication to address social and health issues – has a political derivation. Although intersecting identities can be hard to measure, we argue for deeper investigation of the interaction of identities, particularly in the specific relationships between campaign publics and organizations. Unfortunately, no method is perfectly suited for studying intersectionality because of the multi-dimensional, interlocking, constantly redefining and unpredictable nature of the phenomenon. But, a mixed methods approach to intersectionality offers cloudy yet fertile opportunities for public relations researchers. Next we discuss how an intersectional approach may reframe some basic public relations principles.

Intersectionality questions basic public relations concepts

We propose an intersectional approach to publics that complements current segmentation strategies to bolster the quality of how we come to know our publics. This approach, then, poses some questions about how organizations form relationships with publics and how scholars research publics. These questions encourage scholars, students and practitioners to reconsider some basic tenets about relationships in public relations.

Considering intersectionality in communication with publics

In the few studies that have investigated publics’ motivations and constraints to communicating with organizations, common identities of publics have been studied singularly and without connection to other identities as well as to larger macro-social systems. To better know the phenomenological situations that initiate or inhibit publics’ behaviors, scholars and practitioners should address communication relationships with the understanding that publics’ identities are multiple, simultaneous, interdependent and differently privileged. Furthermore, scholars and practitioners can explore how different identity mixes become salient in unique spatial and temporal contexts, particularly in the spectrum of activity between latent and activist publics (Grunig, 1997).

The accepted narrative in public relations of situational communication behavior correlates with intersectionality: in different situations, different identities become salient (Luft, 2009). Public relations theories suggest that salient identities influence communication behavior when activated by a communication issue (Aldoory and Sha, 2007; Grunig and Hunt, 1984; Kim and Ni, 2010), whereas an intersectional approach proposes that salient, situational identities are incremental, socially constructed responses to privilege and marginalization (King, 1988). These responses can be articulated through communication.

Researchers and practitioners can improve our practice by incorporating intersectionality into projects because the act of considering intersectionality forces researchers and practitioners to examine themselves in relation to publics. Intersectionality requires deeper, richer, more ethnographic understanding of publics’ identities and experiences, which may fill in gaps left by current segmentation strategies. These necessary reflections help improve the quality of our understandings of publics, which can result in more useful and meaningful messaging for publics.

Thus, a developing intersectional approach to publics relies on characteristics of intersectionality – identity interdependence, reliance on sociological othering, and spatial and temporal contextuality (Mattis et al., 2008; Weber, 2001) – as antecedents affecting all communication behavior. These premises re-situate the act of considering publics’ decision-making processes as (1) based on their interdependent identities that determine relative privilege or oppression and largely influence the extent to which they can communicate about issues with organizations; (2) affected by large-scale policies and communication processes that have systemically prioritized publics unequally because of fundamental differences; and (3) part of larger, vastly complex social systems through which intersectionality is demonstrated at structural, political and representational levels. In essence, applying this revised understanding of publics at systemic levels to future publics-centric research and campaign development may shift the standpoint and epistemology of public relations scholars and practitioners.

Intersectionality challenges basics of public relations

This article pointed out the methodological realities of accessing the intricate experiences of publics when we acknowledge that publics’ backgrounds go beyond additive, categorical demographics. The challenges discussed remind scholars of the unique responsibility we have to our publics and our clients to know the issues and situations our publics experience, initiate and respond to. Ideally, practitioners would invite publics into the organizational community to contribute to decision making about campaigns, and this may reduce differences that exist between how organizations and publics view an issue (Heath and Palenchar, 2009). A precursor to this bridge-building is conducting research to get at the essence of publics’ experiences, which presents a distinct set of ethical questions and quandaries (Pompper, 2010), such as whether to study ‘hot’ publics or whether to study practitioners’ power. However, this reflection also highlights painful critiques of power and practitioners, the challenging the ideal of boundary spanning, and problematizing the empowerment of public relations.

Painful critiques of power and practitioners

Our reflections helped us realize the difference between intersections of practitioners, researchers and publics, and it troubled us to justify the decisions we made in designing intersectionality studies, particularly with practitioners. The process identified an important tension: How can we be critical of practitioners and still advocate public relations purposes?

This question has been little addressed in our scholarship, and few reflective examinations of how to conduct this type of practice/research have been offered (Woodward, 2003). But, an intersectional approach frames the relationships between practitioners and publics as dependent on one another because of the reliance on sociological otherness (Mattis et al., 2008). In other words, practitioners exist because of intersecting identities that result in inequitable outcomes for publics (e.g. persistent health and social disparities, unhappy organizational constituents, increasing globalization that further divides nation states, etc.). Conversely, publics form because of the influence organizational communication (or lack of) has on their (lack of) resources to solve everyday problems. It has been argued often that organizations have more power because of their overwhelming access to media, financial and personnel resources (Dozier and Lauzen, 2000; Rakow, 1989; Salmon, 1990), whereas others have suggested publics may have more power because they may have less to lose in advocating their perceived rights (Grunig et al., 2002; Holtzhausen, 2000). 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. These questions are uncomfortable but important for working toward intellectual shifts in our practice that will hone our capabilities. Practitioners and researchers should continue ethnographic research of the intersectionality of publics and of themselves to reveal the awkward gaps of ‘us’ versus ‘them’.

Challenging the ideal of boundary-spanning

Boundary spanning is a fundamental principle of public relations in which a practitioner liaises the interests of publics to organizations and vice versa (e.g. Ankley and Curtin, 2002; Leichty and Springston, 1996). But, the intersectionality differences, power differentials and stressed organizational–public relationships that result from these reflections suggest that traditional notions of boundary spanning – pure objective advocacy on behalf of organizations – may be impossible. Rather, to effectively communicate the needs of publics to organizations to create meaningful solutions that reduce power differentials, some base similarity with publics – or at least a deeper understanding of the lived situations of publics – is required.

The tenets of intersectionality (identity interdependence, reliance on othering, and spatial and temporal contextuality; Mattis et al., 2008) suggest that we should rethink our roles more as power agents/advocates rather than equals with or representative of publics. Because of our loyalties to our organizations and the intellectual discipline and practical function of public relations, we suggest that practitioners and researchers can never wholly be representative of publics’ voices. Even in research, public relations professionals and researchers hold a powerful position in relation to participants from publics. For example, academics embody the complexity of boundary spanning or the shifting between multiple worlds (academic and professional, theoretical and practice/atheoretical). We consult for organizations, speak on behalf of the field to external publics and teach future practitioners. Using an intersectional analysis, we must look at our identities as relevant to how we obtained and manage this power. Those who study the practice and performance of public relations have the ability and privilege to highlight identity politics as an important problem in public relations over other issues; we automatically have privilege because of our organizational and scholarly situation. We suggest that admitting the limitations of boundary spanning may be important to establishing more honest relationships with publics. Research should further investigate how practitioners can adopt more realistic understandings of their power and roles as related to publics, and research can explore how alternative practitioner–public stances may be more meaningful to publics.

Problematizing the empowerment of public relations

The dominant paradigms of public relations have tended to maintain the position of public relations organizations as the ‘normal’, default standpoint in our research (Dozier and Lauzen, 2000; Motion, 2005), thereby neglecting a reality that ‘the politically and economically advantaged … often have the most access to the benefits of public relations practice’ (Curtin and Gaither, 2005: 95, citing Mickey, 1997). A basic assumption about power between public relations and publics is that power is distributed between organizations and publics according to the relationships, time, money, access and expertise competing groups have to politics and policy making, sociopolitical institutions and media representations. As a result, publics typically have less access to information and communication resources (Motion and Leitch, 2007; Motion and Weaver, 2005; Rakow, 1989; Salmon, 1990).

Furthermore, publics have been positioned as the other to organizations in public relations research. These characteristics suggest an organizational and managerial bias of public relations theory in how publics’ power has been studied (Kim and Dutta, 2009; McKie et al., 2004; Waymer and Heath, 2007). Publics have received little attention about how power is perceived, used and shared among publics. Furthermore, the times when publics’ power has been conceptualized, it has been theorized as an independent variable, such as in the situational theory of publics’ constraint recognition variable. We agree that this constraint is perceptual; but, we also argue that power is relevant to the discussion of organization–public relationships, is contextualized within the larger structural and political systems of society, and cannot be removed as if the barriers exist in a vacuum. If communicators do not situate publics within their lived ecological, intersectional contexts (Aldoory, 2009a), our strategic management theories continue to exist merely in the rhetorical sense with limited practical application. As public relations has been characterized as the empowerment function of management (e.g. Holtzhausen, 2000), intersectionality then asks: Are practitioners and researchers decontextualizing publics out of their real-life communicative environments? Our field must acknowledge that if publics are encouraged to change but are not given information to change that is meaningful according to the constraints of their identities and contexts, communication efforts may be wasted.

Future research

Finally, as suggested by Vardeman-Winter and Tindall (2010), other manifestations of intersectionality may exist in public relations relationships. A next important phase of this research would elaborate previous intersectionality work of the personnel (practitioners, educators) of public relations (Pompper, 2007, 2010; Tindall, 2009). In particular, learning about the different political, structural, and representational expressions of practitioners’ interlocking identities may help alleviate some of the stigmatized issues of the public relations discipline by uncovering enabling macro-systems.

Footnotes

Funding

Funding was made available for incentives for participants through an internal award from the Women’s, Gender, & Sexuality Studies program at the University of Houston, Texas.

Notes

Author biographies

Jennifer Vardeman-Winter (PhD, University of Maryland, USA) is an assistant professor at the University of Houston’s Jack J. Valenti School of Communication and an affiliate faculty member in University of Houston’s Women’s, Gender, & Sexuality Studies Program. She teaches issues management, public relations theory, public relations management, crisis management, and critical and cultural public relations. Her studies are concentrated in public relations campaigns, health communication, and multicultural feminist research; specifically, using the theory of intersectionality and the situational theory of publics, she explores how underserved publics understand mediated information about health and risk, as well as how communicators can improve campaigns and messages with diverse communities. Her work has been published in Journal of Public Relations Research, Public Relations Review, Feminist Media Studies, Health Communication, PRism and Howard Journal of Communication. She is a former public relations practitioner from the high-tech field and continues to practice by working with groups such as the Women’s Health Initiative of Texas.

Natalie Tindall (PhD, University of Maryland, USA) is an assistant professor in the Department of Communication at Georgia State University. Her research interests include diversity in media; identity and power of public relations professionals; intersectionality and the situational theory of publics; fundraising and philanthropy for higher education; and health communication. Her research has been published in non-profit management, higher education and public relations journals.

Hua Jiang (PhD, University of Maryland, USA) is an assistant professor at S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, Syracuse University. She teaches public relations undergraduate and graduate courses, such as Principles of Public Relations, Public Relations Campaigns, Research Methods and Public Relations Theory. Her major research areas include relationship management, work–life conflict, public relations leadership, social media, global public relations and public diplomacy. Her work has been published or accepted to be published in Journal of Public Relations Research, Public Relations Review, Journal of Health Communication, Asian Journal of Communication, Journal of Public Affairs, Public Relations Journal and Global Media Journal. Her single- and co-authored research has also been included in edited books including Handbook of Communication and Corporate Reputation, Handbook of Public Diplomacy and Gender and Public Relations: Critical Perspectives on Voice, Image and Identity.

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