Public Relations Inquiry

In the context of public concern and negative media portrayals in regard to the civic impact of the public relations specialism of public affairs and lobbying, this article seeks to theorise normative roles in democracies alongside benchmarking the self-perception of practitioners against those of opinion forming elites. The article also explores how practitioners interpret their roles and locates a consensus in regard to their functional and civic contributions. A potential research agenda for testing the validity of these claims of a positive civic contribution is discussed. The article analyses the results of quantitative surveys of a representative sample of British members of parliament, and 722 UK opinion formers, plus 260 interviews with opinion formers in Washington DC. The results were complemented by a Delphi survey of UK public affairs practitioners that sought to identify and test areas of consensus in regard to both organisational and civic functions. The research finds that lobbying is perceived as legitimate by elites, but there are concerns over the quality of the information subsidy that is provided. Practitioners share an understanding with the public relations literature of their functional roles, and believe they make a social contribution by assisting policy-making, connecting society to politicians and as facilitators of participation and civic dialogue. This research will potentially be less applicable to the relationship between public affairs and society in other regions of the world, or in authoritarian states with low levels of interest group pluralism.

The article examines communication and public relations (PR) consultants as storytelling professionals, who legitimate their professionalism by telling stories in everyday encounters as they occupy new fields. I draw upon 26 interviews with communication and PR professionals working in communication and PR consultancies and show how they legitimate their expertise in political advocacy and lobbying. The analysis finds that they use four clusters of antenarratives to challenge the existing political order and traditional practices of political advocacy and to populate the political field with new actors and identities. In toto, the stories create a ‘living story’ of professionalism which is nevertheless hampered by contradictions between the logics of market and politics. While the consultants claim to be reformers of a closed political system, at the same time, they promote hidden practices and resist the effective regulation of openness.

This article discusses actor-network theory (ANT) as an approach in empirical public relations research. It is foremost a methodological reflection, but uses a case study to illustrate key points. The case, published as a full study elsewhere, revolved around the plagiarisms in the PhD-dissertation of former German Defence Minister zu Guttenberg and places special emphasis on the work of anonymous ‘plagiarism hunters’ organized in a so-called ‘swarm’. Here, the events that led to the minister’s resignation are discussed with an explicit reference to ANT and especially Bruno Latour’s approach. This article discusses the research questions inspired by the approach as well as observations leading to a new understanding of publics as actor-networks. It thus contributes to rare theoretical discussions of ANT’s relevance for public relations research.

This article asks how we might theorise empathy in public relations (PR) in the light of a widespread turn towards emotion in the academy, as well as in popular discourse. Two distinct notions of empathy are explored: ‘true’ empathy, as discussed in intercultural communication, is driven by a human concern for the other in order to understand experiences, feelings and situations that may be different from our own, whereas ‘instrumental’ empathy, reflecting a self orientation, is said to characterise much neoliberal market discourse in which corporations are urged to understand their customers better. Thus, while empathy may seem highly desirable as a means to enter into dialogue with an organisation’s publics, particularly during times of social upheaval and crisis, it is important to pay attention to empathy in PR discourses, including whose goals are served by empathetic engagement, and the type(s) of empathy called upon within a PR context. A literature review identified a sociocultural definition of empathy as ‘imaginary effort’. A review of the PR literature, however, found that while empathy is considered an important principle and personal attribute, notions of empathy, with a few exceptions, are under-explored. Nonfunctionalist, sociocultural research which examines the meanings that practitioners associate with empathy is distinctly lacking; therefore, in order to gain further insight into empathy, two sources of data were explored. The analysis of a popular online practitioner blog showed that other-centred empathic skill is discursively framed as instrumental in achieving clients’ business objectives. The analysis of three empathy statements drawn from 12 in-depth interviews with practitioners revealed complex empathic discourse in practitioner–client relationships. While the findings are limited to illustrative analyses only, this article challenges researchers to develop conceptualisations and perspectives of empathy as imaginary effort in PR.

In response to a series of race-related incidents in the United States in 2014, Starbucks launched the Race Together Initiative, a multifaceted public relations campaign designed to spark a national dialogue on race. The campaign generated a great deal of discussion in the public sphere including some praise and much criticism. This article uses critical race theory as a theoretical lens to analyze the Race Together campaign as well as reactions to it in the news media and on Twitter. The purpose of this article is to use critical race theory to enrich understandings of the Race Together campaign as well as to explore the implications of corporate public relations campaigns that attempt to address sensitive social issues such as race.