Promotional work : the case of public relations consultancy in the UK, 1995-2000

This thesis is about public relations as an occupation and a business. The study is focused on investigating the nature of the expertise utilised in public relations, ways in which it is exploited commercially, and the consequences such practices have for the occupational group and its economic existence. The theoretical framework for this thesis combines insights from the sociology of the professions, studies of cultural/creative professions, Bourdieu's approach to the study of cultural practices, and critical examination of professional services, such as management consultancy. In empirical terms, the thesis combines a range of data and analytical approaches. The key part of the thesis is a model of public relations expertise derived from an analysis of participant observation of professional training. Its component parts are identified as: picture of the world; conceptual frame; and working knowledge, which in turn is composed of problems, tools and truths. The thesis also offers a narrative analysis of competition case studies, a particular genre of practitionars accounts of their own work, leading to the conclusion that their role is to show practitioners how to make sense of the immediate experience of work within a more abstract and ordered professional framework. A range of secondary data on the industry and the labour force are reanalysed to show how expertise is transformed into a commodity that can be priced and sold. The transformation involves an understanding of demand and supply dynamics for PR services. Finally, through the analysis of routine practices, the thesis draws attention to the occupation's "split personality" - two coexisting yet contradictory ways in which practitioners think about public relations - and pursues it at the level of the group's strategies designed to counteract the weaknessess resulting from this unsettled identity

Looking back and going forward: The concept of the public in public relations theory

Magda Pieczka - ORCID 0000-0002-5979-1121 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5979-1121This contribution has been accepted for publication in the journal.This article examines the development of the public as a foundational concept in public relations theory. It provides an overview of the way in which public relations has understood the term as referring to two distinct phenomena of a public and the public. The article approaches public relations theory unfolding of a narrative identity of public relations. The discussion subsequently reaches to the work of Michael Warner and Judith Butler to consider the limitations and implications of the Situational Theory of Publics (STP) and the deliberativist approach to the public derived from the work of John Dewey and Jurgen Habermas. In its final sections, it redefines the public as a family of three distinct but at times overlapping terms: an audience as a public of shared spaces; a self-organized public of shared attention, and the public as a political and social imaginary. This article argues for adopting the performative approach to the public to tackle some of the biases in public relations theory. It also suggest the PESO model of communication as a useful starting point to create a more complex understanding of the formation of the public (in all three senses) in relation to processes of co-creation and circulation of a wide range of text.https://doi.org/10.1177/2046147X198702698pubpub

Komunikacja i działanie: odczytywanie Habermasa na nowo w dobie aktywizmu

The combined effects of digital communication technologies, political upheavals around the world, waves of powerful activism and protests have injected a new urgency into communication research. How communication theory is able to respond to this challenge is a matter of discussion, including the question of the adequacy of older theories to the new circumstances. This paper, aims to add to this discussion by returning to Habermas’s pragmatics, one of the 20th century communication classics, to reflect on how communication and other forms of action interact in campaigns for social change in the context of the growing reach of strategic communication and the growing role of social media in activism. This article starts by posing theoretical disjuncture as a problem shared by a number of communication subfields, such as public communication, public relations, communication for social change, and my particular example, development communication. The more recent scholarship, however, has moved away from this state of knowledge. Instead, scholars highlight the need to embrace non-linear models of communication for social change, and appear to embrace hybridity to deal with the theoretical confusion in the field. The analysis presented in this article aims to demonstrate that Habermas’s communication pragmatics works well to explicate complex campaigning practices in a consistent and yet theoretically expansive way. Re-reading Habermas makes it possible also to respond to the call articulated by social movement scholars to move beyond the limits of strategy and to recognize the importance of larger cultural conversations and scripts. Conceptualizing public campaigning as chains of speech acts, defined here as both linguistic and nonlinguistic acts, offers an analytical tool that works across different levels, spaces, and actors involved in social change efforts and that privileges communication as the explanatory mechanism for the contemporary social change praxis. Finally, returning to Habermas’s work underscores the importance of a valid position, rather than a desirable identity, from which to engage with others in the social world. This invites a clear and consistent focus on action and its basis (moral position) rather than on attributions ascribed to organizations and campaigners (identity). The key question thus shifts from ‘Do you like me/trust me sufficiently follow me?’ to a more substantial, ‘Is this a good thing to do?’.Technologie komunikacji cyfrowej, światowe wstrząsy polityczne, fale silnego aktywizmu i protesty spowodowały, że badania nad komunikacją znów stały się niezbędne. Można dyskutować, jak teoria komunikacji jest w stanie odpowiedzieć na to wyzwanie i czy stare teorie są adekwatne w stosunku do nowo zaistniałych warunków. Niniejszy artykuł jest w zamierzeniu częścią tej dyskusji i zwraca się ponownie do pragmatyki Habermasa, jednego z klasyków komunikacji XX w., aby podjąć refleksję nad tym, jak komunikacja i inne formy aktywności oddziałują na siebie w kampaniach dotyczących zmian społecznych, w kontekście rosnącego zasięgu komunikacji strategicznej oraz rosnącej roli mediów społecznościowych w aktywizmie. Artykuł zaczyna się od przedstawienia teoretycznego rozłamu jako problemu wielu podobszarów komunikacji, takich jak komunikacja publiczna, PR, komunikacja dla zmiany społecznej oraz komunikacja rozwojowa, którą opisuję jako szczególny przykład. Nowsze badania odstąpiły od tej problematyki. W zamian badacze podkreślają potrzebę przyjęcia nieliniowych modeli komunikacji dla zmiany społecznej i decydują się na przyjęcie hybrydowości jako rozwiązania teoretycznego zamętu w ramach tej dziedziny. Celem analizy przedstawionej w niniejszym artykule jest wykazanie, że pragmatyka komunikacji Habermasa dobrze objaśnia skomplikowane praktyki prowadzenia kampanii w sposób spójny, a także ekspansywny teoretycznie. Odczytanie Habermasa na nowo umożliwia również udzielenie odpowiedzi na postulaty wysuwane przez badaczy ruchów społecznych, aby wyjść poza granice strategii i uznać znaczenie szerszych konwersacji i skryptów kulturowych. Konceptualizacja publicznych kampanii jako ciągów aktów mowy, zdefiniowanych tutaj jako akty językowe i pozajęzykowe, daje nam narzędzie analityczne do pracy na różnych poziomach, w różnych miejscach oraz z różnymi aktorami zaangażowanymi w działania promujące społeczną zmianę, a także uprzywilejowuje komunikację jako mechanizm wyjaśniający współczesną praktykę zmiany społecznej. I wreszcie, powrót do dzieł Habermasa podkreśla znaczenie uzasadnionej pozycji, z której wchodzimy w reakcję z innymi w świecie społecznym, stawiające ją ponad pożądaną tożsamość. Zachęca to do poświęcenia uwagi działaniu i jego podstawie (pozycji moralnej), a nie atrybutom przypisanym organizacji i działaczom (tożsamość). A zatem, nacisk przesuwa się z pytania „Czy lubisz mnie/ufasz mi wystarczająco, aby za mną podążyć?” na ważniejsze pytanie „Czy to jest dobre działanie?”

Communication and action: Re-reading Habermas in the age of activism

Magda Pieczka - ORCID 0000-0002-5979-1121 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5979-1121Replaced AM with VoR 2020-02-27The combined effects of digital communication technologies, political upheavals around the world, waves of powerful activism and protests have injected a new urgency into communication research. How communication theory is able to respond to this challenge is a matter of discussion, including the question of the adequacy of older theories to the new circumstances. This paper, aims to add to this discussion by returning to Habermas’s pragmatics, one of the 20th century communication classics, to reflect on how communication and other forms of action interact in campaigns for social change in the context of growing reach of strategic communication and the growing role of social media in activism. This article starts by posing theoretical disjuncture as a problem shared by a number of communication subfields, such as public communication, public relations, communication for social change, and my particular example, development communication. The more recent scholarship, however, has moved away from this state of knowledge. Instead, scholars highlight the need to embrace non-linear models, of communication for social change and appear to embrace hybridity to deal with the theoretical confusion in the field. The analysis presented in this article aims to demonstrate that Habermas’s communication pragmatics works well to explicate complex campaigning practices in a consistent and yet theoretically expansive way. Re-reading Habermas makes it possible also to respond to the call articulated by social movement scholars to move beyond the limits of strategy and to recognize the importance of larger cultural conversations and scripts. Conceptualizing public campaigning as chains of speech acts, defined here as both linguistic and nonlinguistic acts, offers an analytical tool that works across different levels, spaces, and actors involved in social change efforts and that privileges communication as the explanatory mechanism for the contemporary social change praxis. Finally, returning to Habermas’s work underscores the importance a valid position, rather than of desirable identity, from which to engage with others in the social world. This invites a clear and consistent focus on action and its basis (moral position) rather than on attributions ascribed to organizations and campaigners (identity). The key question thus shifts from ‘Do you like me/trust me sufficiently follow me?’ to a more substantial, ‘Is this a good thing to do?’https://doi.org/10.18778/2450-44912pubpub

Public relations as dialogic expertise?

The article argues that, despite the key normative position occupied by the concept of dialogue in much mainstream public relations scholarship, public relations as an academic discipline has not engaged extensively with the theory of dialogue. While other academic and expert practitioner fields have developed much theoretical reflection, a range of dialogical tools, and created spaces in which the expertise is applied, public relations' normative interest in dialogue seems not to have translated into developing expert dialogic tools or spaces in which public relations experts routinely use such tools.div_MCaPA15pub2917pub

Action Research and Public Relations: Dialogue, Peer Learning, and the Issue of Alcohol

This paper presents an action research project, which transformed dialogic techniques used policy making and community development into an innovative approach to education about alcohol. The project was developed by a group of teenage volunteers, the AlcoLOLs, and two public relations researchers, tested in a local school, presented at the Scottish Parliament to policy stakeholders concerned with alcohol, and subsequently extended to a number of schools across the city of Edinburgh (Scotland). The paper makes a contribution to public relations by offering a detailed analytical account of dialogue as a method of inquiry and a mechanism for change. The paper also introduces the concept of extended epistemology as a fresh perspective on the phenomenon of relationship and on relationship management. Finally, the paper argues that action research has the transformative potential for the development of academic knowledge in the field and as an approach to education and training of practitioners.div_MCaPATake action on alcohol marketing and children- (15/08/2011) [News]. Available at http://www.alcohol-_-focus-_-scotland.org.uk/view/article/94-_-take-_-action-_- on-_-alcohol-_-marketing-_-and-_-children (accessed 15 July 2012). Alcoho2pub3181pub

Mediating the contributions of Facebook to political participation in Italy and the UK: The role of media and political landscapes

Over the last decade, an increasing number of academic studies have examined how digital technologies can contribute to political participation, with numerous publications focusing on social networking websites. This article adds to this strand of research by tackling the scarcity of cross-national comparative studies in the field. Drawing from an original dataset acquired by combining a cross-national comparative approach and a mixed-methods methodology, this paper explores how media and political landscapes mediate the contributions of Facebook to citizens’ political participation in Italy and the United Kingdom. A participatory gap between Italian and British participants, with Italians displaying higher levels of political participation through Facebook, is found and explained with reference to three contextual factors: the greater diffusion and relevance of other online platforms such as Twitter in the UK; Italian participants’ more negative perception of traditional media linked to the high level of political parallelism typical of the Italian media system; and the presence in Italy of a political party such as the Five Stars Movement making full use of the communicative and organizational affordances of Facebook. The findings indicate that the contributions of Facebook, and digital technologies in general, to political participation must be analysed in context, within the larger patterns they fit into, and cannot be examined in isolation. Such contributions are better understood if considered within the hybrid media system in which different digital platforms interact, merge and compete. Similarly, the political scenarios in which citizens and political parties operate need to be accounted for when looking at the links between the Internet and politics.https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-018-0109-545

AlcoLOLs, Re-thinking Drinking: Developing a shared leadership approach for alcohol education

Final Report available at: https://eresearch.qmu.ac.uk/handle/20.500.12289/8988Objective: The aim of this article is to extend and elaborate ways of conceptualising, enabling and practising peer leadership in whole-school alcohol education programmes.Design: Qualitative study involving individual and group interviews.Setting: The AlcoLOLs project took place in six secondary schools in North East Edinburgh (Scotland) from 2013 to 2015.Methods: 21 individual and 4 group interviews with young people aged 14-18 who acted as peer leaders in the AlcoLOLs project. Interviews were conducted throughout the duration of the project as a means of hearing peer leaders’ individual voices, monitoring progress and evaluating the intervention. Data were analysed using the principles of thematic analysis.Results: The intervention demonstrates transformative multilevel learning (i.e. cognition, civic/communal attitudes, self-identity, self-efficacy, specific communication/team skills) for peer leaders resulting from the shared leadership process. Results indicate that there is an element of continuity between antecedents, process and outcomes of shared leadership which, in the context of peer education, needs to be seen as an iterative rather than a linear process. Drawing on these findings, a model for a whole-school alcohol peer education intervention is developed. The model is underpinned by critical dialogic principles and reframes alcohol consumption as action rather than behaviour.Conclusion: This article redefines peer leadership in alcohol education interventions for young people as a process involving formal, informal, individual, and shared leadership. Combined with a whole-school dialogic intervention, this approach can lead to the development of alcohol consumption/abstinence as a practice that focuses on articulation of a self-identity drawing on both individual/personal and civic aspects.https://doi.org/10.1177/001789691988336479pubpub

The dialogic turn and management fashions

This paper examines Dialogue as a managerial fashion that has emerged since the early 1990s. While the early parts of the paper rely on well-tried approaches to and arguments about the phenomenon, the middle part of the paper attempts to define dialogue as a fashion, and offers a discussion of the dynamics of fashion-setting. Finally, we attempt to extend the theoretical framework by paying particular attention to the synchronic and diachronic dimension of a management fashion.div_MCaPAunpub2923unpu

Dialogue in Scotland?: A forum with communication practitioners.

On the 2nd of June 2009 a group of 30 communication practitioners, organisational leaders, academics and policy makers met at Queen Margaret University (Edinburgh) to explore the role of dialogue in Scotland. What follows is a review and commentary of the practical and theoretical issues that emerged during the Forum.div_MCaPApub2718pu