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Over the centuries, scholars have studied how individuals, institutions and groups have used various rhetorical stances to persuade others to pay attention to, believe in, and adopt a course of action. The emergence of public relations as an identifiable and discrete occupation in the early 20th century led scholars to describe this new iteration of persuasion as a unique, more systematized, and technical form of wielding influence, resulting in an overemphasis on practice, frequently couched within an American historical context. This volume responds to such approaches by expanding the framework for understanding public relations history, investigating broad, conceptual questions concerning the ways in which public relations rose as a practice and a field within different cultures and countries at different times in history. With its unique cultural and contextual emphasis, Pathways to Public Relations shifts the paradigm of public relations history away from traditional methodologies and assumptions, and provides a new and unique entry point into this complicated arena.
Winner of The American Journalism Historians Association Book of the Year Award, 2015 This study of American public relations history traces evangelicalism to corporate public relations via reform and the church-based temperance movement. It encompasses a leading evangelical of the Second Great Awakening, Rev. Charles Grandison Finney, and some of his predecessors; early reformers at Oberlin College, where Finney spent the second half of his life; leaders of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union and the Anti-Saloon League of America; and twentieth-century public relations pioneer Ivy Ledbetter Lee, whose work reflecting religious and business evangelism has not yet been examined. Observat...
Embracing listening as a useful tool for strengthening organization-publics and organization-employee relationships, this book offers theoretical and practical insights for listening across myriad strategic communication contexts. Chapters authored by a diverse global collective of communication scholars and professionals present original research and case examples of listening for strategic communication in corporate, government, and nonprofit environments. They explore topics such as utilizing artificial intelligence and social media; activism, social justice, and ethics; and fostering diversity, equity, and inclusion within and outside organizations. Each chapter concludes with recommendations for strategic communication practice. This book will be of interest to researchers and advanced students in public relations and strategic communication, organizational communication, and listening.
While public relations offers numerous assets for organization-stakeholder relationship building and for ethical corporate social responsibility and sustainability communication, it also faces challenges linked to negative perceptions of the profession which can lead to accusations of "greenwashing." This innovative book critically explores the growing, complex and sometimes contradictory connections among public relations, corporate social responsibility and sustainability. This book advocates a postmodern insider-activist role for public relations which can transform organizations into moral places committed to people, planet, and profit. By amplifying voices of nearly 100 for-profit and n...
The silver screen and the gold standard -- The Panama Caper -- Empire of liberty -- Liberty bonds -- The State of extension -- The work of film in the age of Fordist mechanization -- The Pan-American road to happiness and friendship -- Highways of Empire -- League of corporations -- The silver chains of mimesis -- The golden harvest of the silver screen -- Welfare media -- The world of tomorrow' today!
This innovative book explores ten great works, by well-known thinkers and orators, whose impact has been intellectual, practical and global. Most of the works significantly precede public relations as a phrase or profession, but all are in no doubt about the force of planned public communication, and the power that lies with those managing the process. The works are stimulating and diverse and were written to address some of society’s biggest challenges. Although not traditionally the focus of public relations research, they have all had a global impact as communicators and as the foundation for fundamental ideas, from spirituality to war and economics to social justice. Each addresses the implications of structured communication between organizations and societies, and scrutinizes or advocates activities that are now central to PR and its morality. They could not ignore PR, and PR cannot ignore them. This book will be essential reading for researchers and scholars in public relations and communication and will also be of inter-disciplinary interest to study in sociology, literature, philosophy, politics and history.
Do professions really place duty to society above clients' or their own interests? If not, how can they be trusted? While some public relations (PR) scholars claim that PR serves society and enhances the democratic process, others suggest that it is little more than propaganda, serving the interests of global corporations. This is not an argument about definitions, but about ethics - yet this topic is barely explored in texts and theories that seek to explain PR and its function in society. This book places PR ethics in the wider context of professional ethics and the sociology of professions. By bringing together literature from fields beyond public relations - sociology, professional and p...
It is widely assumed that a competitive political environment of public distrust and critical media forces political parties to manage communications and reputations strategically, but is this really true? Comprehensive control of communications in a fast-moving political and media setting isoften upset by events outside the communicator’s control, taking over the news agenda andchanging the political narrative. Based on interviews with leading communicators and journalists, this book explores the tensions between a planned, strategic communications approach and a reactive, tactical one. The interviewees, who over the past 15 years have been instrumental in presenting and shaping the publi...
Known most prominently as a daring anti-lynching crusader, Ida B. Wells-Barnett (1862-1931) worked tirelessly throughout her life as a political advocate for the rights of women, minorities, and members of the working class. Despite her significance, until the 1970s Wells-Barnett’s life, career, and legacy were relegated to the footnotes of history. Beginning with the posthumously published autobiography edited and released by her daughter Alfreda in 1970, a handful of biographers and historians—most notably, Patricia Schechter, Paula Giddings, Mia Bay, Gail Bederman, and Jinx Broussard—have begun to place the life of Wells-Barnett within the context of the social, cultural, and politi...
In this book, Johnston seeks to put the public interest onto the public relations ‘radar’, arguing the need for its clear articulation into mainstream public relations discourse. This book examines literature from a range of fields and disciplines to develop a clearer understanding of the concept, and then considers this within the theory and practice of public relations. The book’s themes include the role of language and discourse in establishing successful public interest PR and in perpetuating power imbalances; intersections between CSR, governance, law and the public interest; and how activism and social media have invigorated community control of the public interest. Chapters explore the role of the public interest, including cross-cultural and multicultural challenges, community and internal consultation, communication choices and listening to minorities and subaltern publics.