Where to start with my Stirling conference paper on PR in fiction? Partly because I am reading The Information Officer by Mark Mills, I am thinking of a chronological sequence, beginning with its narrator, Max Chadwick, the eponymous information officer who is working in wartime Malta. Naturally, with Malta being pounded by German bombs (apparently much worse in tonnage than the London Blitz) his job is closer to propaganda than "information PR".
I will then move on to Roger Buckley's in John Christopher's 1950s novel, The Death of Grass. In both novels, the narrative is driven by the characters' access to highly confidential information, and examines the ethics of exploiting this knowledge for private purposes. Straightaway, this points towards what I see as one of the most challenging framings of ethical PR - to whom should the practitioners' loyalty lie? To him/herself? To the client? To society?
I will definitely be using Confessions of a Shopaholic's Luke Brandon's dilemma over representing dodgy finance firm Flagstaff Life when my MA PR Ethics class tackles this subject next year...
The chronological approach is of course problematical. Although it is set in 1942 it was published in 2009 and Mills' account is necessarily coloured by perceptions shaped over the ensuing 50-plus years. (It will become even harder if I decide to include 1984's Winston Smith in the paper!!!)
As a historian I can't believe I'm about to say this, but -- ditch the chronological approach. From what you say here (and I haven't read them, except 1984), it works much better thematically. Access to information, control of information, representation and advocacy, etc.
Why do you think chronology is important in this case?
Posted by: Karen Russell | June 29, 2009 at 01:33 AM
Thanks, Karen. I am toying with a chronological approach largely,because it might illustrate how the general public's reception of PR has developed over the years, and perhaps because I may loosely map depictions against a Grunigian evolution from propaganda to a two-way symmetry that is even less likely in fiction than in real life!
Posted by: Philip | June 29, 2009 at 07:53 AM
Hmm, then it seems to me they need to be chronological by publication date rather than setting -- as you mentioned, the later books are tainted by what came after.
Posted by: Karen Russell | June 29, 2009 at 03:35 PM
oh I would include 1984, I've just finished reading it, it could help show how pr people are not the evil, nasty people they are some times thought of but normal people trying to do a job, dealing with pressure from all sides
Posted by: Carl M | July 02, 2009 at 08:53 AM