An ounce of time, a pound of responsibilities and a ton of weight to lose: An autoethnographic journey of barriers, message adherence and the weight-loss process

This article uses an autoethnographic approach to determine how the intersectionality of identities affects message perceptions about weight loss from the lens of two doctoral students. This autoethnography links our personal experiences with the societal and cultural phenomena of obesity and weight loss, and the rhetoric of messages. We know there is a gap in public relations literature about autoethnography, health communication and intersectionality, and we hope to fill it. We also know health communicators seek more effective ways to reach an increasingly diverse audience; we hope to shed light on the issue. We know that many women want to lose weight and hope our narratives will resonate with them. Finally, we recognize autoethnographic skeptics exist in academia, and we hope our article provides insight into and understanding of the usefulness of autoethnographies in the field of public relations.Yeshttps://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/manuscript-submission-guideline

Apprehending public relations as a promotional industry

This special issue examines the growing social and political importance of promotional activities and public relations. For decades, promotional tools have been deployed to foster the aims of various societal agencies, be they corporations, political actors, public institutions, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) or citizen movements. In today’s turbulent political and media environments, promotional practices have become more inventive, coordinated and ubiquitous, crossing transnational borders and circulating across business, politics and social institutions. Public relations is an essential tool in the promotional mix and is increasingly a stand-alone strategy for organisations of all kinds to manage their visibility, legitimacy and relationships with stakeholders. However, its influence and power in the context of an increasingly promotional culture are under-researched. In this introduction, we set out the landscape of promotional culture in which public relations activity takes place and consider how existing research on promotional work may illuminate our knowledge of contemporary public relations work

Professionalizing corporate professions: Professionalization as identity project

Professional bodies have traditionally played a core role in professionalization, setting the ideals for professional identity, knowledge and practice. However, the emergence of corporate professions has problematized the role of the professional body in contemporary professionalization. This article examines the role of the professional body and its ability to resonate with practitioners’ professional identity construction through empirical analysis of public relations. The article introduces the concept of professionalization as identity project as another means by which to understand attempts at social closure in emergent corporate professions. For professionalization as identity project to be fully realized, the research suggests the blending of traditional discourses of professionalism with emergent discourses of entrepreneurialism is required. Consequently, the study highlights that corporate professionalization as identity project reflects the contemporary tensions and contradictions between the lived reality and orthodox ideology of ‘being a professional’

A liquid profession: An ecological approach to the theory and knowledge that underpin the practice of public relations

This is a conceptual essay that explores the concept of knowledge as it relates to PR. It suggests an ecological knowledge architecture as a lens through which to understand the theories and concepts that support practice. It does so by drawing on the work of Zygmunt Bauman and his reflections on liquid modernity to inform and shape thinking and uses it as a thread to help synthesise scholarship from PR literature, knowledge and career scholarship and debates around professionalisation. It argues that by sub-dividing knowledge into explanatory, interventionist and practice principles greater clarity can be given to the know-how (functional skills) and know-that (theoretical knowledge) of PR. Additionally, by overlaying a postmodernist and liquid concept to this tripartite division of knowledge PR can be well placed to take advantage of the change in careers and capabilities necessary for work in the twenty-first century

Other voices? The state of public relations history and historiography: Questions, challenges and limitations of ‘national’ histories and historiographies

This essay offers an overview of public relations history and historiography, using a review of a recently published book series as a starting point. In offering sometimes previously undocumented national histories and regional and non-US perspectives, National Perspectives on the Development of Public Relations: Other Voices opens up the field. However, the series also raises philosophical and methodological issues regarding the role of history, the positioning of public relations, tensions within the field and public relations’ relationship to societal communication and powerful strategic interests. Scholars have not always grounded their histories within wider historical literature that contextualises the public relations occupation and its role in a particular societal context. We argue that a renewed focus on historiography is needed to better address the influence of US progressivist accounts, the scientisation of western public relations and the narrow confines of the public relations discipline

Tourism and public relations: A Complex Relationship?

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