Perspectives on Public Relations Historiography and Historical Theorization

Other Voices

Tom Watson

• Publisher: Palgrave Pivot
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN:
  9781137404367
• eBook ISBN:
  9781137404381
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business Communication
• Index: Business

The National Perspectives on the Development of Public Relations: Other Voices series is the first to offer an authentic world-wide view of the history of public relations. It will feature six books, five of which will cover continental and regional groups. This last book in the series focuses on historiographical and theoretical approaches.

1

What in the World is Public Relations?

Tom Watson

Abstract: This chapter analyzes the antecedents, springboards and restraints that have shaped the development of public relations (PR) in more than 70 countries. Based on data from chapters in the preceding five books in the series, it proposes three common antecedents of PR activity – early corporate communication, governmental information and propaganda methods and cultural/religious influences. The springboards for PR’s growth have been professionalization and education, along with the opening of economies and political plurality. The restraints have been political and economic, such as one-party states, dictatorships and closed economies. PR’s historiography is also explored, and the chapter identifies periodization as the primary method. Future research should move on from the current discovery stage into more analytical and critical processes.

Keywords: antecedents; historiography; history of public relations; PR; restraints; springboards

Watson, Tom (ed.) Perspectives on Public Relations Historiography and Historical Theorization: Other Voices. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. DOI: 10.1057/9781137404381.0005.

One of the purposes of this series was to encourage scholarship that, from greatly varying national and cultural perspectives, brought new perspectives to our understanding of the development of public relations. In the five books that focus on ‘national perspectives’, insights and data have been gathered from 73 countries in all continents and regions outside North America, whose public relation history is already well recorded and interpreted.

Specifically, the series sets out to identify ‘contextualized emergent theoretical frameworks and historiography that value differences, rather than attempting to “test” an established theoretical framework or historiographic approach’ (Watson 2014/15, p. x). This is a relatively new field of historical research and, in many countries, is still at a stage of discovery and the first production of historical research and written outputs. It is, thus, lacking theoretical and historiographical frameworks, and of scholars who have built a corpus of research that can be debated and reinterpreted. However, this rawness can be an advantage in that scholars ask fundamental questions, discover connections and linkages, create new oral and text archives and start writing their own historiographical approaches.

Two examples of unexpected linkages that were exposed in the series but have yet to be explored are (1) the role of the US Government in promoting public relations in Europe in the immediate post-World War II era of the Marshall Plan (European Recovery Plan). Examples from Greece, Italy, France and Belgium show that PR was promoted as an element in democratization; (2) there is a similar example in Eastern Europe after 1989/91 when Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet bloc collapsed. Both periods need greater exploration but the ‘democratization’ factor only became evident when all these histories are analyzed together.

There was a similar instance of an individual PR adviser, Eric Carlson, who first primed public relations’ development in Brazil in 1953 (Nassar, de Farias and Furlanetto, in Watson, 2014d) and then appeared in Costa Rica the following year (Fallas, in Watson, 2014d). Carlson is described as a professor from the US and it would be interesting to know more about him: Who was he? Which organization(s) sponsored his visits? What were their objectives? How was PR presented and defined at that time? There were other academics and trainers from the US who appeared in Latin American countries in the 1950s and helped shape PR’s development, but there is cursory information about them and none appear to have contributed to PR scholarship or its body of knowledge.

In Middle Eastern and African Perspectives on the Development of Public Relations, chapters from Kenya, Uganda, Botswana, Zambia and Zimbabwe and Nigeria reflected on the colonial inheritance of British governmental information dissemination processes, and how those methods continued to influence these countries for a decade or two after independence. This colonial connection is also evidenced in the chapter on the United Kingdom. It is also a confirmation that governmental communication was probably more sophisticated and engaged with ‘best practice’ concepts than scholars of propaganda and public administration history have previously been prepared to allow.

The series has also brought forward forms and practices of public relations that have evolved very differently from Western models or which started with these ‘international’ types of PR practice but then modified them. The prime examples of the culturally developed public relations are Buddhist (Thailand), Confucian (China, Taiwan and Vietnam), Islamic (Egypt, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the Arab Gulf nations). Although ‘international PR’ is available for multinational corporations and those who seek uniformity of corporate and brand expression, there are parallel, confident models of culturally flavoured PR that have emerged over the past century (or more in the case of Thailand).

To further understand the variegated history of public relations, four themes will be explored in this chapter:

Antecedents – Proto-PR (Watson, 2013) and early influences that shaped public relations practice.

Springboards – The factors such as economic, political and social conditions, events and personalities that enabled PR to advance into a distinct field.

Restraints – Cultural, economic, political and social aspects that delayed the emergence of PR as a fully fledged practice.

Historiography – The interpretation of the history of public relations by scholars.

The chapter will conclude with suggestions for future research.

The data for the discussion that follows have been drawn wholly from the preceding five books in the National Perspectives on the Development of Public Relations: Other Voices series. They are referenced as Watson 2014a (Asian), 2014b (Eastern European), 2014c (Middle Eastern and African), 2014d (Latin American and Caribbean) and 2015 (Western European). As this is the most extensive collection of scholarly writing on the history of PR outside North America, this author contends that they are a robust basis for analysis. Where references are drawn from specific chapters, authors are identified. Otherwise, readers should make a general presumption that analysis and commentary is based on the book series.

To prepare this thematic analysis, national histories have been scrutinized to identify key stages of development of public relations in a linear manner in order to identify the baseline influences and areas of practice that followed. Here are three culturally and politically varied examples:

Hungary: [Soviet era] Propaganda → “Economic propaganda” → [1990/91] Local PR Agencies and Professional Association → Education

This indicates that Soviet era propaganda and later ‘economic propaganda’ (a euphemism for promotional publicity) were the Antecedents, with the emergence after 1990/91 of local PR agencies and the early formation of a professional association being the Springboards for the formation of an expanding practice. This led to the creation of education and training which supported the institutionalization and professionalization of the field.

Thailand: Cultural antecedents [Buddhist; monarchical; proto-PR] → Governmental [1930s informational] → Corporate/Governmental [state agencies] → Corporate [US models in 1960s and 1970s] → Less developed Agency sector → Education → Corporate [local models]/MNC Corporate [Western models]

For Thailand, the Antecedents for public relations are much earlier than Hungary and are embedded in culture, religion and society through Buddhist practices and reverence for the monarchy. Public relations in a governmental informational form (Antecedent) can be traced to the latter part of the 19th century and was confirmed in the 1930s with the formation of a central governmental public relations and advertising organization. Subsequently, the growth (Springboards) of public relations has been gradual, mainly from corporate and governmental influences. Only in the past 20 years, has an agency sector formed and international models of public relations been introduced by multinational corporations (MNCs) and international agency networks.

Turkey: [1950s] Sub-category of Public Administration → [1960s] Governmental → Education → Corporate → [1970s] Agencies → [1990s] International agencies → Municipal/NGOs.

In Turkey, which has a vibrant PR sector, the Antecedents, like Thailand, were in government but with PR considered as an element of public administration practice rather than having evolved from journalism and advertising, as found in other countries. The Springboard for growth was PR’s emergence within government as a separate communication practice for which training and education were required. Subsequently, the field has both expanded and contracted, largely due to governmental attitudes and respect for communication with the populous.

Antecedents

Asia: PR began from three separate sources: colonial governments, cultural influences and governmental communication. Of the 11 nations reviewed in this chapter, only Thailand was never colonized or significantly occupied. Thus the impact of British, Dutch, French, Spanish and US colonial administrations can be found in Australia, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, New Zealand, the Philippines and Vietnam. These administrations developed informational systems, assisted the formation of newspapers and performed propaganda duties during wartime and when countering independence movements (India, Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines). The French and US influences in Vietnam were, however, negated by Communist party control from the mid-1970s onwards (Van, in Watson, 2014a). As indicated above, Buddhism was a formative antecedent in Thailand, while Confucianism shaped PR in China, Taiwan and Vietnam. In Japan, post-World War II US occupation government helped create a public relations sector, although there were earlier propagandist practices.

Eastern Europe: The interpretation of the history of PR has two camps: those countries (Bulgaria, Poland, Russia and Ukraine) for which it is a late 20th-century phenomena that followed the breakup of the Soviet bloc from 1989 to 1991 and subsequent democratization; and those (Croatia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania and Slovenia) for which there was proto-PR during the 20th century and, in the case of Romania, back to the 19th century. For the first group, PR emerged as the US agency model, primarily engaged in political communications, and followed by promotion of branded consumer products. In the second group, there were strong indications of PR in commercial and governmental applications in Croatia, Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovenia, before and during the Soviet era when the term was applied in the marketing of exports.

Middle East and Africa: As in Asia, there are three antecedents – colonial (Botswana, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Kenya, Nigeria, Uganda), cultural (Arab States of the Gulf, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia) and governmental (Egypt, Israel, South Africa, Turkey). The colonial influences were all British and expressed as informational processes from governments. It is notable that these processes have persisted. In the Arab world, the influence of Islam and tribal connections set the basis for indigenous PR, although a parallel model of US-style promotional activity evolved in the latter part of the 20th century. Governmental communication, sometimes political and propagandist, was linked to public administration practices as exemplified in the Turkish model discussed earlier.

Latin America and Caribbean: This regional grouping had corporate (Argentina, Brazil, Central America, Colombia, Mexico) and governmental (British Caribbean, Peru) beginnings of PR. The British Caribbean practices across three countries (Barbados, Jamaica, Trinidad & Tobago) evolved from colonial governments, although there is little record, other than in Argentina, of Portuguese or Spanish colonial influence on Antecedents.

Western Europe: Other than in Germany and the UK, PR is mostly positioned as a post-World War II phenomenon. In the Netherlands, the voorlichting (information diffusion) tradition can be traced to the 18th-century Enlightenment and there is evidence of pre-World War II organized propaganda in Italy, but Germany with a strong corporate and governmental communications culture from the second half of the 19th century onwards and the UK with colonial and national governmental communications in the first half of the 20th century can be positioned in the pre-World War II period. In the aftermath of 1945, corporate (Belgium, Denmark, France, Greece, Italy, Netherlands,) and governmental (Austria, Finland, Germany, Greece, Italy, Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, UK) communication processes and operations set the base on which PR was to develop, followed soon after by the formation of professional associations. In some nations, notably Greece, Italy and the Netherlands, there was almost simultaneous evolution of corporate and governmental practices. In most of Western Europe, other than Spain, the influence of US approaches to organizational and promotional communication can be identified and will be discussed later.

In summary, there were three common Antecedents of PR practices: early corporate communication; governmental (often colonial) information and propaganda methods; and cultural influences drawn from dominant religions (Buddhism, Confucianism and Islam). The timescale varies widely from timeless cultural influences to formation of German practices in the mid- to late 19th century and on to the final decade of the last century in Eastern Europe, following the fall of the Berlin Wall and the break-up of the Soviet bloc.

Springboards

Asia: Across most of Asia and Australasia, the evolution and rapid growth of agency PR in the 1970s and 1980s was part of a worldwide expansion, which was characterized by the formation of professional associations, the commencement of organized training and education and expansion of employment in the field. In this region (and others discussed later), the ‘agency boom’ was an outcome of the Springboards of PR’s growth. The time scale varied: For example, Australia’s development had a m...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Introduction
• 1  What in the World is Public Relations?
• 2  Problems of Public Relations Historiography and Perspectives of a FunctionalIntegrative Stratification Model
• 3  Where the Quiet Work is Done: Biography in Public Relations
• 4  Where is Public Relations Historiography? Philosophy of History, Historiography and Public Relations
• 5  Historiography (and Theory) of Public Relations History
• Index