It's Not Just PR E-Book

W. Timothy Coombs

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 289

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Beschreibung

In the second edition of their award-winning book, W. Timothy Coombs and Sherry J. Holladay provide a broad and thorough look at the field of public relations in the world today and assess its positive and negative impact on society’s values, knowledge, and perceptions.

• Uses a range of global, contemporary examples, from multi-national corporations through to the non-profit sector
• Updated to include discussion of new issues, such as the role and limitations of social media; the emergence of Issues Management; how private politics is shaping corporate behavior; and the rise of global activism and the complications of working in a global world
• Covers the search within the profession for a definition of PR, including the Melbourne Mandate and Barcelona Principles
• Balanced, well organized, and clearly written by two leading scholars

Leseprobe

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction to the Second Edition

1 Does Society Need Public Relations?

Media Use and the Term “PR”

Criticisms of Public Relations

Popular Press Books Describing the Importance of Public Relations

Positioning Public Relations

Social Media: Revolution or Evolution?

Public Relations and the Marketplace of Ideas

Public Relations Literacy

Re-focusing Public Relations

Conclusion

2 Ethical Implications of Public Relations

What Is Public Communication?

Ethical Responsibilities of PR as a Form of Public Communication

Ethical Perspectives

Professional Associations and Ethics

The Boundary spanning Role of the PR Professional

Tensions for PR Practitioners

Power Relationships

The Power of PR Professionals in the Corporation

A Postmodern Perspective on PR

Conclusion

3 Who Practices Public Relations?

Corporate-centric Histories of Public Relations

Antagonistic Views of Corporations and Activists

Power and Marginalization

First Reform Era: Abolitionism and Temperance

Second Reform Era: The Muckrakers

Public relations aspect

Saul Alinsky: Activism in the 1960s

Public relations aspect

Birth of Issues Management

Public relations aspect

Internet Activism: Going Digital

Public relations aspect

Labor Unions and Public Relations

Public relations aspect

Conclusion

4 Public Relations Influences Society

Issues Management: A Framework of Effects on Public Policy

Shaping Public Behavior

Initiative Neue Soziale Marktwirtschaft (INSM)

Private Politics

Mixing Policy, Social, and Private Changes: Direct-to-Consumer Advertising and Big Pharm

Conclusion

5 Shifting the View of Public Relations

Reconsidering the Positioning of Public Relations: A Societal Focus

Revisiting the Definition of Public Relations

Where We Have Been

References

Index

‘For Megan, Molly, Ben, Martha, Matthew, and Brandon who are the future.’

About the Authors

W. Timothy Coombs is Professor in the Nicholson School of Communi­cation at the University of Central Florida. His books include the award-winning Ongoing Crisis Communication (2007) and Code Red in the Boardroom (2006). With Sherry J. Holladay, he is co-author of Managing Corporate Social Responsibility (Wiley Blackwell, 2011) and PR Strategy and Application (Wiley Blackwell, 2009) and co-editor of The Handbook of Crisis Communi­cation (Wiley Blackwell, 2010). He has worked with consulting firms in the U.S. and Europe on ways to improve crisis communication efforts for their clients.Sherry J. Holladay is Professor in the Nicholson School of Communi­cation at the University of Central Florida. She teaches courses in public relations and corporate communication and her research interests include corporate social responsibility, crisis communication, reputation management, activism, and stakeholder relations. Her work appears in the Journal of Public Relations Research, Public Relations Review, Management Communi­cation Quarterly, Journal of Communication Management, and International Journal of Strategic Communication.

This second edition first published 2014© 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Edition history: Blackwell Publishing Ltd (1e, 2007)

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Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Elizabeth Swayze and Wiley Blackwell for their support of this book over the years. The book was a bit of a risk given its topic and format but it seems to have worked for all involved, including its readers. We also would like to thank Allison Kostka and Julia Kirk for their patience and help with the revisions, and to thank those reviewers who provided feedback to the revision plan. It takes a team to publish a book, and we are happy to be part of such a great team.

Introduction to the Second Edition

When we had the opportunity to write the first edition of this book, our task of developing a title was challenging due to the book’s unconventional approach and topic coverage. But the title, It’s Not Just PR: Public Relations in Society, seemed to capture our ideas quite well. The title was designed to reflect the frustration of many academics and practitioners who feel the term “public relations” is trivialized, misunderstood, and misused. Its colloquial use tends to be tainted with negative connotations as critics lament the substitution of “public relations” for facts, substance, or the “real story.”

We welcome our opportunity to broaden readers’ understanding of public relations by offering a perspective designed to “complicate” public relations by addressing corporate uses and limitations of a corporate-­centric view of public relations but also presenting alternative views and analyses to expand our thinking about “what counts” as public relations.

Public relations activities continue to be equated with distortion, manipulation, and stonewalling, and depicted in negative ways. The public’s dependence on the media, coupled with the media’s misuse of the term, translates into a lack of understanding of the practice. Unfortunately, there are far too many incidents where corporations have used public relations in unethical ways to pursue economic self-interests at the expense of the public interest, thereby reinforcing its tainted image. In spite of reports of activist actions that positively impact on society, such as those of Greenpeace, Labour Behind the Label, UK Uncut, and PETA, the public is unlikely to identify these as examples of public relations. Negative connotations of public relations may lead people to wonder if society would be better off without public relations.

Consistent with the vision of the first edition, the second edition of It’s Not Just PR invites readers to develop a more complex and complete understanding of the practice of public relations. Societal developments, including the increasing effects of globalization and communication technologies on business and activist practices, as well as events that spotlight both ethical and unethical uses of public relations, are well represented in this new edition. New extended examples that illustrate the use and growing importance of social media as a communication tool are included.

This second edition of It’s Not Just PR should help readers understand why society benefits from the practice of public relations. The new ­edition expands our examination of the role of power in public relations and the use of public relations by non-corporate entities. At the time the first ­edition was written, the concern with power along with critical and postmodern approaches to public relations were underdeveloped, especially within the United States. We are proud to have helped introduce readers to these perspectives and are gratified with the positive responses we receive to our presentation of these ideas. In many ways we were well ahead of the curve in exploring these ideas, which is not always the most comfortable position for publishers. We hope that the increasing interest in power and activism, along with greater acceptance of more “radical” ideas in the published academic literature, confirms the value of our vision that guided the development of the first edition.

This edition examines both the microlevel and macrolevel (societal, global) processes and outcomes of the practice of public relations. The microlevel examines what defines and constitutes public relations. We focus on the relationship between organizations and their stakeholders, people who are affected by and can affect the organizations. The issue of power is central to our exploration of the relationship dynamic. People often think of corporations, especially multinational corporations, as very powerful compared to average citizens. Sources of power for stakeholders and organizations are discussed with an eye to demonstrating stakeholders’ potential for influence on corporations and society. As suggested by stakeholder theory, stakeholders can develop power resources to participate in the marketplace of ideas. However, in most cases the power advantage lies with the corporation. The interdependence between organizations and stakeholders is central to our appreciation of power dynamics and ethical practices in the web of relationships.

The macrolevel focuses on how public relations can impact society by influencing laws, behaviors, and values. A macrolevel examination exposes limitations of a purely corporate-centric approach to public relations. We address how the practice of public relations extends well beyond corporations and national borders and must be considered within the global context. Global public relations as a form of transnational activism and public diplomacy has been growing. Its expansion and effectiveness has been aided by the Internet. Case studies illuminate how activists, including PVOs, use the Internet and public relations practices to influence corporate and governmental practices around the world.

We are not so naive as to believe that public relations is not used to pursue or to obscure courses of action that harm stakeholders and society. Public relations is not all-powerful, exclusively corporate, or always harmful to stakeholders and society. Nor is it only used by activists and non-profits to benefit stakeholders and society. The reality is that public relations is a complex mix of all these factors and more. Our goal is to complicate your thinking about public relations by peering behind the misuses of the term to examine its role in society. In the end, we hope this book demonstrates how public relations does have a place in and can be beneficial to society.

1

Does Society Need Public Relations?

Conceptualizations of what constitutes public relations cast a wide net and demonstrate a lack of consistency. And when something is labeled by the media as a “public relations” action, it seems to be with a negative, disparaging tone (e.g., “mere public relations,” “PR spin,” “PR hype,” “PR rhetoric,” or “a public relations stunt”). As described in the media, virtually anything that a corporation or its representatives does may be labeled as “public relations” and treated with suspicion. Activities as diverse as attempts to explain a negative financial report, launch a new product, encourage employees to volunteer in the community, and donate money to a charity, have all been identified as “public relations.” What, then, is not public relations?

Critics of public relations tend to focus attention on what they call public relations efforts involved in defending the most obvious and egregious violations of the public trust: cover-ups (such as Enron, Tyco, and HealthSouth), CEO/CFO scandals, the spokesperson who deceives the public in order to defend the actions of the organization, and illegal dumping of toxic chemicals. Attempts to minimize or conceal these scandalous actions often are cast as “PR ploys” designed to deflect the negative impacts of questionable corporate actions ­including suspicious financial reports, management misbehavior, dubious environmental records, or human rights violations. Public relations becomes equated with stonewalling. Stonewalling is the attempt to hide information or delay its release. The public relations practitioner becomes a barrier to the truth, not the bringer of truth.