A Strategic Nature: Public Relations and the Politics of American Environmentalism

ISBN-13: 9780190055349 / Angielski / Twarda / 310 str.

A Melissa Aronczyk (Associate Professor; Depart Maria I. Espinoza (PhD Candidate

Opis

A look at how public relations has dominated public understanding of the natural environment for over one hundred years. In A Strategic Nature, Melissa Aronczyk and Maria I. Espinoza examine public relations as a social and political force that shapes both our understanding of the environmental crises we now face and our responses to them. Drawing on in-depth interviews, ethnography, and archival research, Aronczyk and Espinoza document the evolution of PR techniques to control public perception of the environment since the beginning of the twentieth century. More than spin or misinformation, PR affects how institutions and individuals conceptualize environmental problems - from conservation to coal mining to carbon credits. Revealing the linkages of professional strategists, information politics, and environmental standards, A Strategic Nature shows how public relations restricts alternative paths to a sustainable climate future.

Recenzje

Not every public relations scholar or practitioner will agree with the authors' depiction of public relations' often pernicious role in democratic and deliberative society. But this rich, wholly worthwhile, generative journey into a strategic history of "nature" and the constitutive role of communication in society's relationship to the environment serves as a crucial and essential text. It will help public relations and communication scholars, advanced undergraduate and graduate students, and professionally minded practitioners ask the right questions about the ethics and foundations of how we teach, research, and practice public relations and strategic communication.

O autorze

Melissa Aronczyk is an associate professor at Rutgers University in the School of Communication & Information. She is the author of Branding the Nation: The Global Business of National Identity (Oxford 2013). Maria I. Espinoza is a PhD candidate in the Sociology department at Rutgers University.