It's Excellence, Jim - but not as we know it! Grunig revisited

When David Phillips and I wrote Online Public Relations 2nd Ed (2009) we confidently claimed that the digital media revolution had changed PR forever, and that such changes meant that scholars needed to rethink the theoretical paradigms that have dominated academic conceptions of the discipline.

We still do.

We were therefore delighted to read that James Grunig, the driving force behind the hugely influential Excellence models and the general theory of PR which underpins these models, used our book as a prime focus for a significant PRism journal article, Paradigms of global public relations in an age of digitalisation.

Although beginning by appearing to lump in social media with other 'fads' that have momentarily distracted some from more fundamental matters, Grunig declares:

If the social media are used to their full potential, I believe they will inexorably make public relations practice more global, strategic, two-way and interactive, symmetrical or dialogical, and socially responsible.

Clearly, David and I agree. But for me, the interesting point is that the areas in which Grunig sees social media as having significant impact are framed within contexts drawn from Grunigian "general theory". These are the very assumptions from which we asked one of our key questions:

The issue now for those trying to understand the changes being brought about by the internet society is to determine whether the developments outlined in this book are sufficiently dramatic to challenge the Grunig model. Let’s try.

I have been arguing for several years that social media has flipped what I call the vector of communication through 90 degrees and that the significance of this change - or perhaps more accurately, this potential change - is a long way from being understood and embraced by PR theory.

So I am agreeing with Grunig that digital media makes no fundamental attack on many of the principles of his team's general theory, but I do maintain that the aggregation of individual opinions that is empowered by the searchable web is transforming conceptions of reputation. I am not convinced the general theory does or perhaps even can, accommodate this change.

Yes, we are in truth challenging what Grunig characterises one of his middle range theories, in particular the those elements which deal with conceptions of publics, persuasion, engagement and relevance.

But, for me, these are the most important aspects of public relations. I think writers like David and myself have only just begun to consider the implications of the changes we are trying to identify.

Meanwhile, thank you Professor Grunig for many valuable insights. Like the dutiful and dilligent students I try to nudge along at Sunderland, I will go away and spend the festive period in critical reflection.

Comments

[David Phillips]

Philip, I too have an excellent Christmas ahead of me digesting Professor Grunig's commentary.

Perhaps a blog post or two in time but I am fascinated by the network effect. We tend to consider it as an internet phenomenon but it has worked for mankind throughout history. As long as there was some form of communication, there has been the network effect.

Now we can follow semantic events through the internet network, we have much better research tools to inform PR theory.

I think this is where we can make an additional contribution to Professor Grunig's paper.

[Jim Grunig]

Philip and David,

We may be splitting semantic hairs here, but I do not believe the digital media have changed the fundamental theoretical principles that underlie the formation of publics, the need for symmetrical communication, the principles of relationship cultivation, or the formation of reputation.

John Dewey articulated the concept of a public in his book "The Public and Its Problems," written in 1927. I merely expanded on that concept in my situational theory of publics. Publics form around life problems, and the publics of an organization develop because of problems caused by the organization or problems publics want an organization to solve. With the digital media, it's simply easier for people with similar problems (publics) to communicate with each other, with other publics, with organizations, and with third parties such as media and government. Reputations were always what people thought and said to each other about an organization. Now it's just easier to say it to a lot more people, anywhere in the world. Relationships have always been cultivated most effectively through symmetrical means. The new media now make symmetrical communication easier to accomplish. The major question, I think, is whether relationships can be cultivated as effectively online as they can be interpersonally.

The ways in which public relations practitioners actually do public relations is very different with the social media. However, the principles underlying the most effective ways of doing what they do have not changed. I think the Excellence theories are strengthened by the new media, not challenged.

I do want to congratulate you on your excellent book. I found very little in it that I disagreed with, and it was enormously useful to me in writing this article. I was only puzzled that you would say the new media challenge the theories embodied in our Excellence paradigm. I have had just the opposite reaction, which was the major point of my article.