mediations

Embracing the Embarrassing: History of PR

Well done Tom Watson for organising the hugely International History of Public Relations Conference #ihprc at Bournemouth University. Unfortunately I couldn't make day one but have watched the video of Karen Russell's opening keynote, Embracing the Embarrassing. 

Here's a very rough snapshot of what she said (begins around 12m30secs into the posted video):

Karen began by giving examples from PR's embarrassing past, including the Bernay's Torches of Freedom march, PR support for the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s, and "the guy we are all trying to get away from" circus showman PT Barnum. Citing German research (Bentele & Wehmeier?) she pointed out that all the PR textbooks tell a very similar story that traces the origins to Edward Bernays.

"PR started with Barnum and it has improved ever since. That is the mythic story that we have come up with and gets repeated over and over. Even though we keep telling ourselves it's not true it still keeps appearing." (16:27)

It is easy to understand the embarrassments but how should we embrace them? "I am not saying we have to hug these guys, what I am talking about is just claiming them - admitting that they are a legitimate part of historical past."

Karen built on her own work Miller, K. S. “U.S. Public Relations History: Knowledge and Limitations.” In M. E.
Roloff (Ed.), Communication Yearbook 23 (pp. 381-420). Thousand Oaks, Calif.: SAGE. which argued that we need to study earlier periods of PR, pre1900, because the way that the literature us the "PR emerged suddenly in the corporate sphere in the US" and her study with Carl Bishop, Understanding Ivy Lee's declaration of principles: U.S. newspaper and magazine coverage of publicity and press agentry, 1865–1904 (Public Relations Review Volume 35, Issue 2, June 2009, Pages 91-101).

She said that in St. Paul as a public relations practitioner: a metatheoretical speculation on messianic communication and symmetry,  Public Relations Review, Volume 29, Issue 1, March 2003, pp 1-12)  Brown argued that "PR theory as it rests on PR history is flawed because if we don't understand the history then any theory that rests on is also going to be mistaken (19:20)

(As they wrote in Margot Opdycke Lamme and Karen Miller Russell, “Removing the Spin: Toward a New Theory of Public Relations History.” Journalism & Communication Monographs). "We can't relegate that stuff that we don't like from PR history and say "Oh, that was press agentry or that was the Nineteenth Century and we are different now... It doesn't work that way."

Karen then went on (26:30) to give brief details of continuing research into mentions of press agentry that takes forward the Russell and Bishop study to look at 1875-1880, which she says marks the emergence of press agentry as we understand the term. She suggests, tentatively, that "press agent" might be a contraction of Associated Press agent (as in agent of AP). Most were allied to entertainment (but were well after Barnum): 

"We have been so busy demonising press agentry we have missed the whole fun of it, the purple dresses and the yo-yos..." (29:00)

"By overlooking press agentry as a relevant part of PR history we missed all that."

In closing Karen reminded delegates that although it was important to re-evaluate the roots of press agentry she hadn't even touched on propaganda....

PR and Mooning

I am sitting with the authors of the two best PR Theory books. A Fire engine just drove by.... with a naked bottom hanging out of the window. Only Jacquie and Vince didn't look up. Maybe that's why they are stars....

Credibility and flying BMWs: JPRR Social Media Special

"Social media are giving public relations theory a workout," writes guest editor Tom Kelleher, introducing the "brisk circuit of scholarship" he has brought together for a special edition of the Journal of Public Relations Research, Vol 22:3.

• Media Catching and the Journalist–Public Relations Practitioner Relationship: How Social Media are Changing the Practice of Media Relations, by Richard D. Waters, Natalie T. J. Tindall, and Timothy S. Morton
• Organizational Image Construction in a Fragmented Online Media Environment, by Dawn Gilpin
• A Losing Strategy: The Impact of Nondisclosure in Social Media on Relationships, by Kaye D. Sweetser
• Online Relationship Management in a Presidential Campaign: A Case Study of the Obama Campaign’s Management of Its Internet-Integrated Grassroots Effort, by Abbey Levenshus
• Diffusion of Social Media Among Public Relations Practitioners in Health Departments Across Various Community Population Sizes, by Elizabeth Avery, Ruthann Lariscy, Ellie Amador, Tayna Ickowitz, Charles Primm, and Abbey Taylor

Several of the papers set out to test the rhetoric of social media through grounded anlaysis. As Sweetser rightly points out, "the field finds itself facing more case studies of what not to do with little empirical data to support the anecdotes".

Her study begins from the view that if social media makes the relationships between organisations and publics are indeed little different that between individuals, it would be useful to examine whether the same conditions that damage interpersonal relationships also damage organization–public relationships.

"As Gallicano (2009) pointed out, the majority of public relations scholarship focuses on cultivation strategies and outcomes with regard to relationship theory. Few studies investigate concepts that damage relationships, as this study aims to do.

This leads her to two research questions:

RQ1: To what extent are relationship strategies correlated with the relational outcome of credibility?
RQ2: To what extent is there a difference in the relational outcome ofcredibility based on ethical public relations practice?

And to the hypothesis that "An organization’s failure to disclose in a social media environment will
damage perceptions of relationship strategies". 

Sweetser sets out to test this - commonly held - hypothesis with empirical research, namely an experiment conducted in August 2009, featuring a video used in BMW's ‘‘Rampenfest’ social media campaign. The car-maker created a series of 'mockumentary' videos about a town in Bavaria that was attempting to build a
ramp from which the town would launch a BMW across the Atlantic, and posted them on YouTube.

The video series was presented on what appeared to be the personal YouTube account of the director, with no mention of support or production backing from BMW. 

The researcher showerd the video to 509 students, telling one group it was created by the company, but BMW denied producing it, a second that BMW admitted it was a produced viral video from the beginning, and a control which didn't see the video.

The questions were designed to see whether non-disclosure affected the subjects' perception of BMW as an ethical organisation, and what influence it had on its credibility.

It is a complicated argument, and as always with PR research it is very hard to screen out external/ environmental factors which may heavily influence results, but Sweetser feels confident in asserting that "viewers take a viral video at face value when viewing a piece they know the company made; however, when viewers
discover that an organization lied, it challenges and erodes their opinion of the organization."