The University of Queensland, School of Journalism and Communication
Abstract
Little research has questioned the sociological root of the adoption and adaptation of Western originated public relations (PR) in a non-Western context. To fill in this gap, this research explores how Chinese actors, ranging from PR agency consultants, in-house PR practitioners, media people, and regulatory body, reflexively and creatively navigate the pre-existing cultural contexts to construct and institutionalize the field of PR practices in China. Specifically, this research aims to understand how China’s hybrid contexts foster the complexities and dynamics of the PR field, as well as how the field actors’ creative agency reshapes the broad contexts. This research contributes an alternative to the dominant managerial-functionalist scholarship of PR through a critical examination of PR as a socially constructed field in China.
To investigate the interplay between PR actors’ practices and the pre-existing contexts, this research applies an institutional theoretical approach, specifically by applying the key notions of field and institutional work. The notion of field is used to examine the complexities and dynamics of Chinese PR practice, which is governed and legitimized by multiple logics, and which is influenced by actors’ evolving inter-relation. The notion of institutional work is adopted to uncover Chinese PR actors’ strategic responses to various institutional pressures, and particularly their “broad agentic work” to create PR as an institution. In addition, Chinese culture, in the form of guanxi and harmony, are incorporated in the institutional analysis of PR of this thesis. Bourdieu’s concept of social capital is used to interpret the role of guanxi in both PR practices and institutional work of Chinese PR.
This research employs a multi-method qualitative approach consisting of 70 semi-structured interviews, participant observation, and document review. Participants were selected from the cities of Chongqing (n=16) and Beijing (n=54), comprising four groups of actors — PR agency consultants, in-house PR practitioners, media people and PR association regulators. Participant observation was conducted in a top local PR agency in Beijing, from which extensive documents, such as PR proposals, agency-client service contracts, internal training materials and the like were accessed and collected. The data set was analyzed through interpretive thematic analysis.
This research provides significant insights into the extant body of PR knowledge in three ways. Firstly, studying PR at a field level enables a sociological account of PR practice in terms of logic and legitimacy. As found in this research, the field of Chinese PR is co-shaped by multiple, interwoven logics that are derived from China’s hybrid contexts. While the market-oriented logic leads to multi-way interactive and pragmatic PR practices, the state authoritarian logic wields constraints of ideological surveillance and domination. Guanxi is creatively used by Chinese PR actors to facilitate PR practices through exploring room for negotiation over the fuzzy edges of ambiguous rules. The logic of harmony mediates those potential conflicts (e.g., market vs. state) while allowing for actors’ ongoing contestation and compromise to achieve consensus about PR practice in China.
Secondly, confronted with various institutional pressures (e.g., state, media), Chinese PR actors apply different strategies, ranging from camouflage, seeking logic resonance, and harnessing the social capital of guanxi to accomplish specific PR tasks. Moreover, those active PR actors, who initiate the creation of PR as an institution, adroitly convert those pressures to opportunities through cultivating coalition and leveraging resources from other powerful or even rival actors. Such field level institutional work has led to the increasing marketization and democratization of state level PR practices. The Chinese government appears to be gradually loosening its ideological control over the field of PR, and shifting away from the top-down, propagandistic logic towards marketorientated, multi-way interactive logic of PR.
Thirdly, the perspective of social capital extends current understanding of power in the PR literature. This thesis argues that power in PR may not necessarily mean domination or manipulation. Rather, power can be understood from the perspective of negotiating policies and empowering PR initiatives. As exemplified in this research, Chinese PR practices are empowered by the social capital like guanxi through its fluidity within social networks and its convertibility to other economic, cultural and symbolic forms of capital
