International Public Relations

Negotiating Culture, Identity, and Power

Patricia A. Curtin, T. Kenn Gaither

• Publisher: SAGE Publications, Inc
• Year: 2007
• Print ISBN: 9781412914154
• eBook ISBN: 9781452279015
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Communication Studies
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

International Public Relations: Negotiating Culture, Identity, and Power offers the first critical-cultural approach to international public relations theory and practice. Authors Patricia A. Curtin and T. Kenn Gaither introduce students to a cultural-economic model and to the accompanying practice matrix to explain public relations techniques and practices in a variety of regulatory, political, and cultural climates.

Key Features:

• Illustrates how theory informs practice: The cultural-economic model is built around the circuit-of-culture theory, and the associated practice matrix shows students how to apply this theory to any particular problem or issue.
• Offers a truly international scope: Going beyond the Western, democratic, corporate perspective, this book critically examines the global diversity of public relations practice with examples from countries around the world.
• Represents a paradigm shift in international public relations scholarship: Extending well beyond regional and case study approaches, the integrated critical-cultural technique of this book extends current theory.
• Emphasizes values and ethics: Guidelines for ethical practice are provided to more effectively negotiate the international terrain.

Intended Audience:

This text is designed for advanced undergraduate and graduate courses in International Public Relations. In addition, it is an excellent supplemental text for courses such as Public Relations Theory, Public Relations Campaigns, Public Relations Planning and Management, and Public Relations Case Studies.

1

The Challenges of International Public Relations

Public relations is coming of age around the world. In the 20th century, the United States took the lead in defining its practice and formalizing its structure. But in the new millennium, public relations is blossoming from a U.S.-based industry into a global industrial phenomenon spanning countries with vastly different cultures, economic and political systems, and levels of development. The number of public relations agencies and organizations that have sprung up around the world in the past few years are proof that public relations is recognized and formalized around the world, from the United States to sub-Saharan Africa to Asia.

Consider, for example, Ireland, Romania, Russia, and Italy, which are among the more than 20 different European nations with public relations associations. Public relations in Italy has grown so much that T. M. Falconi, president of the Italian Federation of Public Relations, claims 1 of every 1,000 Italians is a “public relations operator” (2003, p. 15). In Bulgaria, the public relations field is “developing too fast and it will be not overstated if we say that most of the public relations agencies and departments are as good as they [sic] colleagues from West Europe” (Boshnakova & Zareva, 2005, p. 12). In 1992, there was only one public relations agency in Bucharest, Romania; now there are 20 (GAPR, 2004).

According to a 2004 poll, China has more than 1,500 public relations firms, and public relations is one of the top five professions in the country. The growth of the profession in China has caused a shortage of qualified public relations professionals (Wood, 2005). In Russia, Mikhail Margelov, head of the Russian Information Centre, said, “The Russian experience since 1996 is one of rapid and steady growth of public relations work practically in all spheres of the life of the country” (in Fish, 2000, ¶ 53). The Middle East Public Relations Association anticipated a 30% surge in membership in 2005 (MEPRA, 2004).

But this talk of the growth of public relations is really about the increasing presence of institutional structures to define its practice and to legitimize it. Although public relations has been studied as a social science and formalized only in the 20th century, evidence of its practice can be traced back to ancient civilizations in Egypt, Babylon, China, Greece, and Rome, to name but a few. In medieval India, sutradhars, or traveling storytellers, spread rulers’ messages, serving a common public relations function. Egyptian leader Hatshepsut, the first woman Pharaoh, might not have been able to hire a public relations agency to help improve her image, but she was surrounded by advisors who guided her using public relations techniques (Photo 1.1). The elements of public relations are as old as ancient Egypt and older, and they have developed over the years around the globe in various ways.

To maintain the crown, Hatshepsut ruled as a man to fit patriarchal Egyptian society.

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Photo 1.1 Hatshepsut, Known for Her Skillful Ability to Curry Public Favor and Strong Leadership Qualities

SOURCE: Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Because of the varying forms of public relations in much of the world, the field is fraught with inconsistency and varied international views of its purpose and practice. There is still no overarching definition of public relations, and there is little consistency among practitioners for describing their profession. In Asia, public relations professionals commonly see their work as tantamount to sales and marketing, in Latin America event planning might be viewed as public relations, and in the United States it is often called a strategic management function. The gap between these forms of public relations is evident in the lack of a truly international public relations theory that addresses disparate nations, varying economic and sociopolitical systems, and different cultures. Recent scholarship has made progress toward addressing some of these needs. Still, the practice of public relations is far more progressive than its scholarship.

This book addresses these issues by using a cultural studies approach to develop international public relations theory that is culturally sensitive, reflexive, and dynamic. Its purpose is to provide a comprehensive theoretical base to inform the wide array of global public relations practices and to demonstrate its applicability in formulating and executing campaigns around the globe. As a caveat, you’ll find that public relations resists easy categorizations. It’s too new and its practice too uneven to generate a uniform and logical narrative. Instead, you might find the discussion of international public relations in this book unpredictable, complex, and even illogical at times. This is the peril of studying public relations around the globe; it rarely makes sense, even less so when terms such as international and culture are applied.

This chapter centers on fundamental issues in public relations by attempting to define it and summarizing how it’s practiced around the world. We begin by examining various definitions of public relations as a foundation for what it means to do and to study international public relations. The next section illustrates some types of public relations practice around the world to demonstrate the breadth and diversity of the field. The final part of the chapter brings this information together to provide a context for the remainder of the book, which informs international public relations theory development. A logical starting point is an issue that has puzzled scholars for decades and continues to divide practitioners around the world: What is public relations?

IN SEARCH OF AN IDENTITY: DEFINING PUBLIC RELATIONS

Pick up any textbook on public relations from anywhere in the world, and chances are it begins with a chapter devoted to defining public relations. The practice of public relations is most formalized in the United States, which has the greatest global concentration of public relations education programs and degrees, public relations agencies, and associations and generates a disproportionate amount of public relations scholarship. Many U.S. textbooks present their own definition of public relations, often citing researcher Rex Harlow, who compiled more than 470 definitions of public relations before creating his own 87-word definition. The Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) promulgated a shorter, widely accepted definition in 1988: “Public relations helps an organization and its publics adapt mutually to each other.”

More recently, scholars have sought to develop more parsimonious definitions and, rather than providing a definition per se, identify key words that describe the practice of public relations. A study of U.S. public relations educators and practitioners (Reber & Harriss, 2003) identified four words linked to the profession: strategy, managerial, tactical, and responsive. The researchers found public relations too complex to fit into a single definition. Hutton (1999) and Bruning and Ledingham (1999) offered relational definitions that emphasize the management of strategic relationships. Other descriptive definitions commonly include words such as reputation and credibility, which describe general concerns of public relations that shape its form.

Another approach is to develop a composite definition of public relations from the Web sites of international public relations agencies, including Burson-Marsteller, Weber Shandwick Worldwide, Fleishman-Hillard, Porter Novelli, and Edelman. Such a definition might be as follows: A form of strategic communication directed primarily toward gaining public understanding and acceptance and the process of creating a good relationship between an organization and the public, especially with regard to reputation and to communication of information.

The individual definitions public relations agencies use to describe their field reflect the collective definitions espoused by public relations associations worldwide. Consider those of the Middle East Public Relations Association (“the discipline that looks after reputation with the aim of earning understanding and support, and influencing opinion and behavior”) and the Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR) in the United Kingdom (“the discipline which looks after reputation, with the aim of earning understanding and support and influencing opinion and behavior. It is the planned and sustained effort to establish and maintain goodwill and mutual understanding between an organisation and its publics.”). In the Netherlands, a professional public relations organization met for the express purpose of defining public relations and eventually gave up, concluding that such an endeavor was fruitless (van Ruler, 2003).

These functional definitions of public relations are balanced by normative approaches to defining the field, which describe what public relations should be and give us guidelines for practicing public relations. In the United States, the dominant definition among scholars is that of Grunig and Hunt (1984, p. 6): “management of communication between an organization and its publics, best accomplished using two-way symmetric communication.” This definition illustrates the sweeping scope of public relations practice; an organization could be a few individuals rallying around a cause or a multi-billion-dollar corporation. Publics could include internal publics, such as employees, or external audiences, such as other governments, nongovernment organizations (NGOs), stockholders, strategic alliances, and citizens.

The range of publics in the public relations arena is one of the factors that complicate efforts to provide a functional definition of the field, tilting it toward normative approaches. Skeptics of normative approaches and theories contend that there is a difference between how things should be and how things are, and that’s where normative theories fall short. This book focuses on describing rather than prescribing to complement the strengths of normative stances while recognizing the key role ethics plays in any practical communicative endeavor.

Normative theories are based on empirical research, so they are likewise grounded on observation and data. That research is then extended to make inferences about public relations under given circumstances. The problem is whether those theories apply in circumstances that differ from the research that developed them. In international public relations, it is especially important to reflect critically on theory and whether it effectively translates across borders and socioeconomic and political systems different from its country of origin. Western European countries and the United States are the countries of origin for many public relations theories. These same regions have led the way for defining public relations. We’ll examine the implications of the Grunig and Hunt definition, including how it privileges a certain perspective and its relevance to international public relations, in more detail in chapter 3.

Defining public relations is even more complex when semantics are considered internationally, that is, in different countries and languages. The term public relations was coined in the United States. Where the term has been adopted around the world, the functions associated with it in the United States have also tended to be adopted. The Japanese language has no word for public relations, and many European languages such as German similarly don’t have a commensurate term (Sriramesh, 2003; Valin, 2004). Public relations in Japan has meant “press relations” (Cooper-Chen, 1996). In South Korea, an idiomatic expression for public relations, hong-bo, is often used (Kim, 2003). Romania has a term for public relations, but it’s often confused with relations with the public, which describes the customer and information service desk function (GAPR, 2004). Undermining the definitional complexities of public relations is the extent to which public relations practice varies by region of the world.

Regardless of the hundreds of definitions of public relations, there is one certainty: Public relations is a communicative process; that is, it involves some form of communication, whether it be written, verbal, or neither, as a purposeful choice, and it is a process. As such, it isn’t static, fixed, or immutable; rather, public relations is largely about creating and recreating ideas and generating meaning. Such a nonlinear view of public relations defies strict parameters and complicates the quest for a single definition. Yet this view offers a rich vein for reanalyzing concepts that have blurred public relations internationally, such as propaganda and persuasion. These are just two contested meanings that merit some consideration in discussions of international public relations processes.

We believe that international public relations must be inclusive to accurately reflect the diversity of worldwide communication processes. In this light, a single definition of public relations may be less important than an informed worldview that embraces diverse meanings and the recognition that meaning in international public relations is a generated and iterative process.

MYRIAD FORMS OF PUBLIC RELATIONS

A wide base of public relations research, generated mostly in the United States, holds that public relations exists only in certain conditions, which commonly include democracy, economic and press freedom, and civil liberty. Significant parts of the world fail these conditional criteria, and we believe those areas have much to offer the development of a theory that is truly international in scope. In those areas, public relations is practiced in some form or another, although that form might differ from the U.S. conception of public relations as an organizational function that precludes propaganda and persuasion. Most U.S. theories posit that two-way communication is needed, with an organization using research to initiate a dialogue with targeted publics. Through that research, traditional symmetric theory holds, it’s possible to build meaningful relationships by adapting and remaining flexible. One-way concepts of communication, such as propaganda and persuasion, are subsequently rejected, cast into an ill-defined area other than legitimate public relations.

But what are we to make of some Eastern European countries, where propaganda is still seen as a tool of centralized governments? Or countries in Latin America, Africa, and Asia, where government control of information and media conflict with democratic principles? Or the many countries around the world that hardly differentiate between public relations, propaganda, and persuasion? Our position is that these questions must be explored to inform public relations as an international practice: Public relations is being practiced around the world, independent of Western theories and definitions, whether or not traditional theories have adequately accounted for that practice and its diversity.

Research suggests that propaganda can be either a phase in a process that leads to traditional public relations or synonymous with public relations, particularly in countries emerging from dictatorships and authoritarian governments. When propaganda is considered as a form or relative of public relations, it becomes part of a process of generating meaning, influenced by cultural norms and perceptions depending on region of the world. This idea explains why “public relations” in one country might be “propaganda” or “information” in another.

This section describes international public relations in the 21st century by examining some of the developing dominant forms of practice, including regional perceptions of public relations and the roles of government, economies, and politics, among others. Collectively, these considerations have shaped the global form and development of public relations. Note that organizing international public relations in this manner is a departure from many studies of international public relations that group its practice into regions through country-by-country case studies or continental overviews.

With increasing globalization, shared situations transcend national lines and contiguous boundaries as key factors. Globalization h...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• 1. The Challenges of International Public Relations
• 2. Opening Global Gateways
• 3. Global Public Relations and the Circuit of Culture
• 4. The Regulatory Environments of Global Public Relations Practice
• 5. The Face and Shape of Global Public Relations Campaign Materials
• 6. Practicing Public Relations in a Global Environment
• 7. Consumption: Rethinking Publics and Practice
• 8. Contested Identities, Shifting Publics in a Globalized World
• 9. Capturing the Synergy of the Circuit: The Cultural–Economic Model
• 10. Circuiting the Globe: A Practice Matrix
• 11. Ethical Considerations in Global Practice
• 12. The Future of International Public Relations Practice
• Bibliography
• Index
• About the Authors