Abstract
This issue consists of four articles and two topics: social change and social media. The first two papers tackle the question of public relations and social change from two different angles. To put it very simply: the first argues that publicity can perform an important role in activism; the second argues that corporate activism boils down to self-publicity. The remaining two articles address the use of social media for organizational purposes, be they influencers and sales, or organizational image. Different as these articles are what connects them is that they both implicitly take an interest in forms of digital labour made possible by social media and activated to serve organizational purposes. There is of course much more to read and think about in these papers and I attempt to show this in my short discussion below.
The issue opens with Ciszek’s ‘The man behind the woman: Publicity, celebrity public relations and cultural intermediation’, a study of the work performed by Alan Nierob, publicist to transgender celebrity Caitlyn Jenner, in managing her coming out in 2015. The extended interview material is subject to a Bourdieusian analysis to reveal how ‘publicists leverage their personal and professional relations to legitimize their clients’. The pleasure in reading this study, however, lies in the way in which this analytical detail is combined with an eloquent argument to rehabilitate publicity: not ‘a dusty remnant from public relations history [but] a vibrant contemporary practice of celebrity public relations’. This effort develops along two lines. On the one hand, we see the evidence for the contribution to social change made by this promotional work of ‘rendering transgender legibility within popular discourse’. On the other hand, a balance in public relations research is being redressed by returning sexual and gender minorities into the picture of the field.
Hoffmann, Nyborg, Averhoff, Olesen’ contribution, ‘The Contingency of Corporate Political Advocacy: Nike’s “Dream Crazy” Campaign with Colin Kaepernick’ investigates Corporate Political Advocacy (CPA) ‘as a communication strategy that responds to the challenges of public relations in divided societies and business legitimacy’. Empirically, this study is based on social media content analysis conducted at a particular point when Nike’s promotional campaign intersects with Colin Kaepernick’s political activism. There is some fascinating qualitative detail presented here. However, it is perhaps fair to say that the real focus of this study is theoretical and placed at the macro- rather the meso-level of analysis. The authors probe a difficult question: whether it is consensus and symmetrical communication or dissensus and the agonistic communicative stance, such as Corporate Political Advocacy, that is truly productive of social change and justice. Their conclusions show that, on closer inspection, CPA speaks to established ideology rather than challenges it. Consequently, they reaffirm the need for critique and finish with an apposite quotation from one its masters, Theodor Adorno.
Coco and Eckert in their article ‘#sponsored: Consumer Insights on Social Media Influencer Marketing’ investigate an aspect of women’s lives on social media, specifically their engagement with influencers’ blogs. Through an exploratory study, the authors inquire into ‘sense making about the sponsored content aspect of their [subjetcs’] relationship with influencers’. The findings bring some very interesting insights and the explanation is synthesized into three themes emerging from the interview data: follower motivation (prior topic interest, escapism, community, and relatability): emotional responses to sponsored content (disgust, annoyance, distrust, and support), and concerns about the authenticity of influencers. The authors’ conclusion articulates the need for a more nuanced approach to relationship management by proposing a specific Influencer-Follower Relationship Management Theory. This promises to be useful in explaining more accurately how relationships may translate into purchase decisions. Yet for me, it is the implications for our understanding of “the entangled online-offline relationships of social media users” that are perhaps more interesting. The authors reveal the hybrid nature of the influencers’ communication space where brands’ promotional operations interact with followers’ personal worlds, which appear as complex and already pre-structured by, for example, “aspects of identity, such as gender and race”. Let’s hope for more research into how people co-create such promotional spaces by creating their own logics for how to act in them.
The final article, Cassinger and Thelander’s “Voicing & performative approach to employee voice” presents a study of Instagram takeover as a public relations campaign conducted by a public health organization in Sweden. The authors analyse what happens when Instagram is handed over to employees, albeit with the organization retaining means of control, to facilitate employee voice. So, what did happen? According to this case study, employees who participated in the takeover, did so in two distinct ways, conceptualised by the authors as two kinds of performance: the Public Relations Officer and the Instagrammer. This in itself is a useful contribution, but the authors offer more. Their research is framed within Goffman’s dramaturgical approach, and consequently, voice is seen as performance conducted ‘to create favourable impressions and exert an influence on how the situation is understood and defined.’ The study thus connects a public relations perspective to extensive work on social media conducted outside our own field but, most importantly, directs our attention to interesting critical questions about the interaction between communication, organization, and individual autonomy. For me, this leads to the need to unpack the digital (i.e. communication) labour performed by organizational members, whether or not communication is what they are paid to do.
I hope that all our readers will be able to find intellectual pleasure and stimulation in research presented in this issue