Public Relations and the History of Ideas

Simon Moore

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781136206764
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

This innovative book explores ten great works, by well-known thinkers and orators, whose impact has been intellectual, practical and global. Most of the works significantly precede public relations as a phrase or profession, but all are in no doubt about the force of planned public communication, and the power that lies with those managing the process.

The works are stimulating and diverse and were written to address some of society's biggest challenges. Although not traditionally the focus of public relations research, they have all had a global impact as communicators and as the foundation for fundamental ideas, from spirituality to war and economics to social justice. Each addresses the implications of structured communication between organizations and societies, and scrutinizes or advocates activities that are now central to PR and its morality. They could not ignore PR, and PR cannot ignore them.

This book will be essential reading for researchers and scholars in public relations and communication and will also be of inter-disciplinary interest to study in sociology, literature, philosophy, politics and history.

1 PR and the history of ideas

Public relations (PR) has a history, and a pre-history. PR also must reflect social conditions. These commonplace remarks apply to many activities, but perhaps to PR more than many. PR must be highly alert to changes in the ways people see themselves collectively or individually, use technology and organize into groups to fulfil social functions. This very public activity leaves a historical trail that is intellectual, as well as tactical and technological.

PR’s basic method has been followed from the earliest times, but most of that time it has not had the mixed blessing of a name. In the last century and a half its practitioners have had several names (including press agents, propagandists, publicists) that have changed with the emerging profession. The current name is highly unlikely to last forever, but the activity itself will continue to exist, generating new specialisms and tactics as organizations, societies and communication tools change. Change keeps the activity alert and alive. What is generally called PR, and its specialisms from crisis communication and public affairs to digital or entertainment PR, will thrive as long as an organization has something it needs to tell or hear from numbers of people, and must be alert to the best way of doing it.

To ignore the history and pre-history of an activity because it has or has not yet been named is of course absurd, as is accepted in most fields of study. The works in this book do not ignore the activity under consideration here, indeed cannot. They aimed to powerfully influence society and individual self-perception, which compelled the authors to consider how this could be achieved by the organizations best positioned to communicate their ideas. Through those ideas we can therefore see how public communication has been viewed and managed over millennia. Whatever the merits of this particular book, then, the works themselves deserve attention as PR artefacts, if for no other reason than their immense historical impact.

“Works” is used here in preference to “books” because it is more accurate, if unsatisfying. Some of these thinkers did not produce books, but essays, manifestos, theses, unfinished manuscripts, or observations that were recorded by others. Not all of it would count as scholarly output by today’s unimaginative standards. A related question arises: why then these ten thinkers and not some other ten? Are they the top ten? The answer can only be that there is no top ten, but if there were, they would be vying for a place in it. Humans, thank goodness, cannot be ranked with such precision. Perhaps great thinkers can be ranked least of all as they have a habit of escaping the parameters that define greatness or influence at any particular moment. I have chosen people who are hopefully interesting, and have had an immense influence on organizations, society, power and eventually PR. There are others: not many, but others, and we must hope for further studies. While writing this book, I admit that I struggled and sometimes failed to ignore several other writers, one or two of whom I have previously written on: they include Kierkegaard, Machiavelli, Sir Thomas More, Wittgenstein. The ten works selected here demanded sufficient space and attention, and repaid it, but it was Kierkegaard, however, who in 1847 perhaps gave the clearest raison d’être for managed public communication, and thus for all books on the subject of PR: “There is a view of life which holds that where the crowd is, the truth is also, that it is a need in truth itself, that it must have the crowd on its side” (Kierkegaard, 2009, “There is a”).

It is also fruitless to seek a single, unalterable, crystal clear point of origin or line of descent, as fruitless in PR as for any activity, technology or person. There are too many points of origin in all things, and to pick up one piece of bone or two or three in the vast Rift Valley of human history cannot lead us to an exact lineage—but we do come upon a broad downstream flow. For that reason, the ideas in these works pursued a set of themes that culminated in much of what we see today in the world of managing perception. Arguably, they were even more influential on PR than many modern scholars or commentators on the subject.

Perhaps a tentative, questioning, even impressionistic approach is best fitted for this book, as it should be for the field in general. PR knows, or should know, how difficult people are to pin down, to pin to products, ideas or desires. As a one-time historian who has written on past communication practice, I feel this and take comfort from it, for it is a sign of human autonomy, and one of the themes in this book is the impact of managed communication on human autonomy. Different views about this subject shaped the approaches of each work, perhaps also their philosophy as much as their views on its communication. Their approaches are often prescriptive, sometimes highly prescriptive, because they are not studying the world and its affairs, but offering concrete policies. There are no ivory towers here (although when I think of Michel de Montaigne’s essays written in seclusion near Bordeaux, it must be said that at least some towers may have inspired works of value). Whether prescriptive or not, even these works could not avoid the possibility that individual autonomy, or contrariness, might assert itself; a contrariness which raises more questions than it answers and may ultimately confound attempts to manage public perception too closely or “scientifically”. The noted twentieth-century historian G. M. Trevelyan made a useful observation about that tendency in a lecture to Britain’s National Book League, two weeks after the end of the Second World War:

If you find out about one atom you have found out about all atoms, and what is true of the habits of one robin is roughly true of the habits of all robins. But the life history of one man, or even of many individual men, will not tell you the life history of other men. Moreover, you cannot make a full scientific analysis of the life history of any one man. Men are too complicated, too spiritual, too various, for scientific analysis.

(Trevelyan, 1945, p. 12)

Several of the works included here were written to impose more uniformity on societies, because the authors believed it would make those societies better places, especially those in times of turmoil—although when has there not been turmoil? Others were written to recover individual autonomy, for the same reason, and in the same conditions of turmoil or danger. The sheer variety of approaches they adopted suggests caution about their recommendations is sometimes necessary. We can be more definitive about their impact, and their influence on what may be called managed public communication, in the absence of PR’s emergence as a name and profession though not as an activity, for that had happened already.

“Managed public communication” will at any event be the name risked most frequently here, for the reasons just given. On this question of naming, however, it must be admitted that I feel a little of what Edmund Blunden felt in his Great War poem, “Trench Nomenclature”:

Ah, such names and apparitions! name on name! what’s in a name? From the fabled vase the genie in his cloud of horror came.

(Blunden, 1976, p. 90)

An alternative, “proto-PR”, has strong claims but in this context seems too focused on the activities themselves. With the authors studied here we shall also explore their ideas for society and their relevance to PR. I hope the reader will see the implications of, say, Confucius’ ideas for shaping social perceptions by managed public communication, and also see they are a direct ancestor of today’s PR, and have something to say to it; but modern PR it is not. Naming is a necessary business, but not restrictive over-exactitude. A nomenclature-based system of taxonomy along Linnaean lines may obstruct historical understanding and ignore that debatable, blurry ground where ideas flourish and change emerges.

Nevertheless, all of these thinkers were deeply concerned with managing communication. None could escape it. Edward Bernays’ “invisible government” (Bernays, 2005, “The conscious and”) is frequently or always present, often very visible indeed in their work, even if it is missed in much subsequent scholarly analysis. In every case the thinkers see that managing social perceptions by large-scale communication is critical. It might be said that their own thinking would not have been complete without it, as much as it could be said that their thinking has shaped it in turn. As far as PR is concerned I argue these ten works have influenced our views of society, about what constitutes audiences, about what those audiences need to perceive and how they should learn of it, and which organizations must do that communicating. They form the intellectual, historical, origins of PR, but as I have already suggested, there are others.

“Master Zeng!” Confucius tells one disciple “All that I teach can be strung together on a single thread” (Slingerland, 2003, 4.15). This is true of the works studied here. Their big ideas are simple to grasp. Great ideas are often simple ideas, and can be simply expressed. Knots and complexities tied into them are occasionally the result of less liberated thinkers over-thinking that simplicity, or perhaps not daring to express it. Their underlying simplicity is one reason for their enduring popularity. It is also apparent to the student of PR that the existence and type of managed communication the authors envisaged for their “big ideas” tells us much about what kind of society was likely to be produced. The methods used to propagate the legitimacy of a society are almost as revealing as the big ideas themselves. Perhaps this understanding is underrated by any students of political economy, and any misguided practitioners of politics and business who persist in seeing PR as no more than a delivery vehicle, or something to do with marketing, even at the dawn of our Information Revolution, when its pervasive authority stares them in the face.

What useful PR-related themes appear in these works? They include some that trouble and some that empower the field today: the relationship between the individual and collective, expressed in the creation of audiences best fitted to receive certain messages; the balance of power between what may be called “scientific” and “non-scientific” approaches to public communication; views about the messages and media that best connect with target audiences; the problem of preserving liberty out of uniformity, and using communication to bring order out of chaos. All the works are interested in the communication relationship between State and citizen, or subject. This is because for many centuries only the State—and organized religion endorsed by the State—could marshal the resources for communication on a large scale, and also because the first need for society was order. This need preoccupies the earliest works studied here. How to achieve it? By propagating justice, or virtue, or piety, or harmony? We almost immediately face the issue of managing perception. Much later, a new factor appears: the rise of large-scale industrial production leading to intensive urbanization and more power to collectively manage perception. Most of the later authors—Mill, Hayek and Jung—view it as a problem; others—Marx, Engels and Gandhi—as an opportunity; von Clausewitz as a necessity.

I have chosen to look at each work separately and chronologically, rather than contrast and compare around particular themes. One reason for that is that the works are famous in their own right, and the product of highly original thought. I declare myself a confirmed believer that “Great” men and women exist in history, and are not just the product of particular social conditions. Two of the thinkers in this book are remembered and studied 2,500 years after they lived, and the others have developed or look like developing similar powers of endurance. It is valuable for PR as a scholarly and professional discipline to reflect on its own place in the work of these thinkers. Individual character matters: in their own lifetimes or posthumously several of the authors became PR assets, with valuable “PR equity” created from their real or imagined personalities by later generations. Another reason for this approach is that their ideas are often uniquely rather than collectively influential. Sometimes common themes develop, and are followed here, but others that must not be neglected are unique to the authors. This is why it matters to set the works in the context of their own times, so that we can understand which ideas transcend time and which ones (no less valuable) have something to offer because they are rooted in the author’s contemporary experience.

Each work, being set in its particular time, represents a new stage for thinking about our relationship with managed communication. But Great persons do stand above trends to some extent. They create and build new edifices, as well as restore existing ones. Greatness is not always about newness. These are not necessarily flawless people and nor are their works, either by the less than perfect standards of our own bloodthirsty era, or more importantly by absolute and eternal standards of human decency, but that is to miss the point about their value as subjects for communication study.

So these authors and works, to repeat, tell us something about the origins of PR actions, ideas, about aspects of PR, because they offer prescriptions for society and cannot possibly avoid the question of communicating. Only one of the thinkers, al-Farabi, seeks to erase as much of it as possible, but naturally fails to do so altogether. The others recognize that overall control is more helpful, or propose ways of understanding and influencing the existing process. Their proposals for communication help or hinder their ideas, and we must remember that these were in almost every case adopted by or imposed on billions of people over time and space. What they prescribe for communication is in fact essential for their own success, and for the future of the people subjected to their recommendations.

For that reason, it seems helpful to include an approach that looks concretely at what is being said about key audiences and messages, strategy, media platforms, especially because another trait shared by these works is that they cannot avoid these subjects, although not necessarily in the order above because, to reiterate, the authors need to talk about communication between organizations and audiences. The organization that every author save Luther, Gandhi, and possibly Marx and Engels, makes their priority is the State, and what it must do to people in order to govern, sometimes justly and virtuously. The approach to “target audiences” grows a little more sophisticated over time, as we will see, gradually shifting in the search for a proper relationship between audiences and organizations.

We must not allow ourselves to think the works closest to us in time or space (wherever our particular space may be) are always the most relevant. That is certainly not the case, especially as many principles and contradictions PR faces today were discerned early on in the rise of highly structured societies. I shall here insert a sentence by Churchill which I have used before: “That is the wisdom of the past, for all wisdom is not new wisdom” (Hansard, 1938, col. 367).

The works build a loose “philosophy of PR” from diverse subjects. Some describe an ideal society; others accept the world as it is, and offer guidance for reforming or prospering in it. Some take a collective, communal perspective; others concentrate on the individual. Several are actively political and address the public sphere; others advocate enlightenment from within. Two explore the intersection of society, communication and economics, and one the intersection of the State, communication and armed force. Several are directed at a particular culture or belief; others address humanity in the round. PR cannot altogether ignore such subjects.

Because the elements of PR are evolving in the works selected for study, it might in turn be asked if they have had a strong if overlooked influence on the history of ideas. I wish to suggest that they have. Much of the thinking and continuing impact of the people studied here is in fact determined—inevitably, as I have mentioned—by the activity we now know as PR, but which for much of human history had no settled name. These works are reacting to the control of communication by certain organizations; how those organizations were currently communicating, how they should communicate and the implications for the intended audiences. I wish to explore the ways their ideas are affected by their views on communication practice and its relationship to the problems of freedom. Those thinkers who actually advocate change are also proposing a communication strategy, often involving the creative use of multiple media platforms and the careful coordination of powerful messages. Many of those recommendations have left creative and often unexpected operational legacies for PR to consider, but it was clearly a two-way process. Public relations has indeed contributed to the history of ideas, which must be understood by scholars and students, in order to perceive the substantive nature of the field.

It is therefore possible that PR may help us reappraise the thinkers themselves. Plato for instance is considered an essentialist, seeking an underlying ideal and essence in all things. This made him attractive to later scholars in the Christian tradition and, as we shall see with al-Farabi, in Islamic philosophy. Plato’s communication recommendations for a perfect State give a different impression of him, as indeed Plato himself does in Parmenides, when Parmenides famously points out to Socrates the problem of applying essentialism to: “Things that might seem absurd, like hair and mud and dirt, or anything else totally undignified and worthless”. Plato’s Socrates sticks to his principle, but adds: “Not that the thought that the same thing might hold in all cases hasn’t troubled me from time to time” (Cooper, 1997, 130c-d). I suspect “Platonic PR” (I am being slightly facetious) also further ex...