Public Relations and the Digital: Professional Discourse and Change

ISBN-13: 9783031139550 / Angielski / Twarda / 2022 / 230 str.

Clea Bourne

Opis

This book takes a people-centred approach to the ever-fluid and rapidly-transforming professional world of public relations (PR) in the age of digital platforms. As everyday PR work becomes increasingly shaped by the platform economy, this is transforming how the PR profession talks about itself, its issues and concerns. Drawing on different textual genres and discursive strategies, the author examines the shifting boundaries between PR and adjacent fields such as advertising, marketing and journalism - and illuminates varied lifeworlds of PR professionals from different backgrounds, races and genders. Written for academics, practitioners and those interested in the world of public relations, the book will also be enjoyed by young professionals working in this interesting and fast-changing occupation.

Spis treści

Chapter 1 – Public Relations in the Digital Age

Introduction: Platformising the Public Relations Profession

Disarticulating PR Skills

Stubbornness of Legacy Discourses

Public Relations as Professional Discourse

Different Cultures and Working Lives

Feminisation

PR in Societal Discourses

PR as Attractive, Creative Career

PR’s Critical Moment

“It is the People Who Dance…”

PR’s Professional Discourses: Theory and Method

Author’s Warrant

How the Book is Organised

 

Chapter 2 – Public Relations’ Professional Boundary Work

Introduction

PR’s Discursive Boundaries

Expansionary Discourses

Protectionist Discourses

Hybridising Discourses

Analysing PR’s Field-level Discourses

Working with Field-Level Textual Data

Genres Generated by Professions

Genres Generated about Professions

Genres Generated Adjacent to Professions

Discourse Limitations

Conclusion

 

Chapter 3 – Be Digital

PR’s Digital ‘Technophobia’

Hybridising Roles and Digital Capital

Recruitment Ads as Discursive Texts

Expansionary Language of Content Production

Hybridising: Data-driven Roles

Protecting Traditional PR Skills

Content Production – Platforms’ Knowledge Apparatus

Conclusion: Small World Relationships vs Big Data Personas

 

Chapter 4 – Be Creative

Who Owns Creativity?

Client-driven Creative Processes

Defining PR Creativity

Technocapitalism and Commodified Creativity

Platform Tools and Beta-creativity

Edelman Corporate Insights: Positioning ‘Earned Creative’ as PR Specialism

Protecting PR as a Stand-alone Discipline

Expanding into Advertising’s Creative Territory

Hybridising PR and Data

Conclusion: Blurring Creative Boundaries

 

Chapter 5 – Be Included

Introduction: Diversity Avalanche

Diversity and Racial Capitalism

Protecting Professional Habitus of Whiteness

Diversity: Driving Global Expansion

Creative Hybridisation through Diversity

CIPR Webinar and Race in PR Report

Diversity Dividend: PR’s Unwanted Morality Tale

Black Bodies, White Spaces: When Black Professionals are ‘Disappeared’

White Ignorance: Communicators Refuse to ‘Boundary Span’

Enforced Silences: Don’t Talk about Racism

Conclusion: Digital Platforms and Racial Capitalism

 

Chapter 6 – Be Social

PR in an Era of Hypervisibility

PR in Financial Markets

Monsters as Boundary Phenomena

Corporate Communicators and Journalists: Professional Imperatives

Monstrous Discourses: Goldman Sachs’ PR

Goldman Sachs in the News

Journalism vs PR Discourses

Financial Journalists Protect their Expert ‘Borders’ from Alt Media

Communication Chiefs Defend PR’s Professional Borders

Goldman’s PR Chief Mounts Defence by Proxy

Conclusion: Hypervisibility, Sociality and Professional Monsters

 

 

Chapter 7 – Be Posthuman

Introduction

Digital Humans, Digital Employees

Understanding AI

AI in Everyday PR

Professionalism, AI and the Posthuman PR Practitioner

Cheerleading ‘Digital Employees’

‘Digital Employees’ Expand into the Service Economy

Hybridised PR under Martech Control?

PR-AI Client Relations: The Everyman that’s Always On

What if the Client Were an Algorithm?

Conclusion: Whither the PR Strategist?

 

Chapter 8 – Conclusion

PR and the Digital: Field-level Discourses

The PR Profession: Boundary-work with Advertising and Marketing

Closing the Production-Consumption Gap: New Platformised Professions

The PR Professional: Individual Boundary Struggles

Reconfiguring PR knowledge in the Digital Age

Upstream: Big Data Ownership, Management and Strategy

Midstream: Evolving Roles and Influence

Downstream: Battle for Content Production

Platforms: Disarticulating Professional Work

PR Futures

Client vs Platform Imperatives

PR Problems, Solutions and Agency

PR: Representing the Digital Commons?

 

 

 

 

 

 

O autorze

Clea Bourne is Senior Lecturer and convenor of the MA Promotional Media: Public Relations, Advertising and Marketing at Goldsmiths, University of London, UK. Her research explores how twenty-first century economies are mediatised through various actors, practices and discourses. Clea is author of Trust, Power and Public Relations in Financial Markets, and has published widely in a range of journals and edited collections.

Blurb

This book takes a people-centred approach to the ever-fluid and rapidly-transforming professional world of public relations (PR) in the age of digital platforms. As everyday PR work becomes increasingly shaped by the platform economy, this is transforming how the PR profession talks about itself, its issues and concerns. Drawing on different textual genres and discursive strategies, the author examines the shifting boundaries between PR and adjacent fields such as advertising, marketing and journalism – and illuminates varied lifeworlds of PR professionals from different backgrounds, races and genders. Written for academics, practitioners and those interested in the world of public relations, the book will also be enjoyed by young professionals working in this interesting and fast-changing occupation.

Clea Bourne is Senior Lecturer and convenor of the MA Promotional Media: Public Relations, Advertising and Marketing at Goldsmiths, University of London, UK. Her research explores how twenty-first century economies are mediatised through various actors, practices and discourses. Clea is author of Trust, Power and Public Relations in Financial Markets, and has published widely in a range of journals and edited collections.