Rhetorical and Critical Approaches to Public Relations II

Robert L. Heath, Elizabeth L. Toth, Damion Waymer

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2009
• ISBN:
  9781135220860
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Filología
• Subtopic: Estudios de comunicación

This volume illustrates the application of rhetorical theory and critical perspectives to explain public relations practices. It provides a systematic and coherent statement of the crucial guidelines and philosophical underpinnings of public relations. Rhetorical and Critical Approaches to Public Relations II addresses the rhetorical/critical tradition's contribution to the definition of public relations and PR practice; explores the role of PR in creating shared meaning in support of publicity and promotional organizational efforts; considers the tradition's contributions to risk, crisis, and issues dimensions of public relations; and highlights ethics, character, and responsible advocacy. It uses a rhetorical lens to provide practitioners with a sense of how their PR campaigns make a contribution to the organizational bottom line.

SECTION TWO
CREATING SHARED MEANING THROUGH ETHICAL PUBLIC RELATIONS PROMOTION AND PUBLICITY

Introduction: Rhetorical Rationale for Publicity and Promotion

Section Two undertakes the daunting challenge of offering thoughts that are useful to promotion and publicity. Five chapters offer insights, but don’t offer formulae for how to be effective in these traditional public relations endeavors. In fact, the chapters tend to focus more on what failures plague successful efforts to achieve effective promotion and publicity.

Broadly defined, publicity and promotion are the timeless public relations functions that work to draw favorable attention to an organization, product, service, event, or other matter typically used to increase revenue. These strategic options are used to give voice to an organization, to make it public, to create interest in and understanding of its persona. Used well, the organization’s character, what it does, the products it provides, and the services it can supply are brought into the community in constructive and reflective ways. To frame the topics discussed by the chapters let’s recall the principles and theory previously explained.

Publicity and promotion are the timeless public relations strategies that work to bring attention to some matter and work to make that attention positive—and motivational. Having said that, we note first the need to beware of the paradox of the positive or paradox of the negative, and we realize that some publicity and promotion is devoted to overstate benefits or harms of some matter. These paradoxes occur when cases are so positive that they ignore negative aspects of some matter. Likewise, the paradox of the negative so focuses on negative aspects of some matter that it ignores what may reasonably be positive aspects. Is this, then, a call for balance? Is it a corrective against incentives practitioners have for clients to give a clouded lens as they build their cases on some matter?

Publicity requires efforts to create awareness, to shine a spotlight on some matter. Promotion is more likely to entail sustained publicity. Both have a narrative quality. Publicity can capture the “once upon a time” theme, whereas promotion seeks to present a happily ever after story (see Heath & Coombs, 2006). Promotion plays out over time and features some positive outcome. These can include the use of a marathon to raise funds to fight a disease. The history of the marathon, its years, persons who participate, and those who benefit become the characters in the story. The goal is to create a happily ever after outcome.

Publicity and promotion work to create identification. For instance, describing the players, coaches, and other staff on a team helps fans to identify with the team—and motivating fans to attend games and root for the “home team.” Such promotion should strive toward what Trujillo (1992) called communitas rather than corporatas. Corporatas is a perspective fostered for the narrow good of an organization, perhaps even to the actual detriment of fans. If the owner of a professional team features it as “my” team rather than a part of the community it is corporatas. The logic is that the community is more willing to support a team when it is their team. They identify with it (and buy souvenirs and attend games) because they identify with the team and other fans. The same is true of college and university teams. Is it any different for our symphony, our musical event, our parks, or whatever else might be the theme of the public relations campaign? Such logics also reinforce the theme that public relations must attend to the quality of community. Each organization should live the narrative of sharing social construction of meaning rather than manipulating people into believing the team is theirs only to move the team or change it in ways that benefit the owner rather than the community.

Products and services of all kinds are part of socially constructed and collectively enacted narratives. We identify with them. We identify with companies and other organizations. We identify with employers. They tell us stories, create narratives in cooperation, that people live as undirected plays. Such strategies require a solid commitment for products, services, and organizations to be what they claim to be, to walk the walk as they talk the talk. Such principles are as true for non-profits and governmental agencies as they are for businesses. People like events, such as the start and finish of some civic project. Should there be a ceremony to inaugurate the start of rebuilding the levees in New Orleans that failed during Katrina? When they are finished, should that fact be celebrated? Should key accomplishments be celebrated over time? During that time should their success be celebrated, especially during or after a major storm? In 2007, substantial media attention was devoted to the opening of the Skywalk over the Grand Canyon. Is it wise to do that if the intent is to create it as a tourist attraction to raise income for a very poor group of Native Americans? Can an overly positive presentation of the tourist attraction overwhelm the genuine concern by various members of the Native American community who view it as raping Mother Earth?

In all stories, we expect the details told to be true and coherent (Fisher, 1987). We expect organizations to stand and deliver, to be what they say they are, to do what they say they will. To the extent that they do not, their rhetoric and public relations fail because they were the telling of a false tale where reality was distant from and even contradictory to the story. For this reason, we are let down when we are encouraged to vote for a candidate who turns out to be a dud, buy a product that fails to produce as promised, or support a government project that is a waste of money. We expect businesses, non-profits, and government agencies to deliver, in fact to help us collectively manage risks. Those risks could be medicating a headache, curing a disease, or waging a just and effective war. We expect public relations to solve rhetorical problems by bringing fact, value, and policy to prevail in a manner that is mutually beneficial. And, according to enactment theory, all of what the organization does has communicative impact. In that sense, the organization is and says what it does.

Given this foundation, what do the chapters that follow contribute to our discussion? Chapter 7 reasons that publicity and promotion can only advance the image of organization if they are transparent, in ways that demonstrate consistency between statement and action, avoid hypocrisy, and reflect honest and responsible efforts to continually engage in constructive change that meets expectations of key publics.

Chapter 8 reasons that in sports and sports teams, brand equity depends upon achievement, often subject to empirical, statistical analysis. If such is the case, and it is, then what happens to the brand equity of a sport, team, or athlete if they achieve statistical distinction by “impure” means? That question presumes that purity of athleticism is the essence of achievement, not something else such as thrown games, corked bats, scuffed balls, or use of performance-enhancing substances, as in the case of baseball. It asks how a sport can responsibly balance its promotional messages with such tainted achievement.

Chapter 9 reasons that the Federal Drug Administration’s approval is a vital regulatory hurdle to protect the public interest, and facts about products are the essence of the brand equity of the industry. Drugs—pharmaceuticals—are promoted and publicized to feature health benefits, conclusions that can be empirically assessed in probabilistic terms. What damage is done if the facts are manufactured, biased, and distorted to the benefit of a company, and potential or actual harm of customers? Recall the continuing focus on the importance of responsibly demonstrating conclusions proposed through public relations. Product promotion and publicity call upon organizations to put facts before those who seek to make enlightened choices. What if those facts are crafted to the benefit of the sponsoring organization, and even against the health benefit outcomes of customers?

Chapter 10 features the theme that events such as the July 4th celebration can so positively assert some theme, such as freedom and liberty, that they ignore or marginalize instances where members of society do not actually enjoy those virtues of collective behavior. Such was the case of slavery (and, for instance, females’ lack of franchise before an amendment to the Constitution granted them the right to vote). The great abolitionist and advocate of equality free from racism, Frederick Douglass, used the Fourth of July as a day to condemn the overly positive sense that liberty and freedom were universally enjoyed in America prior to the Civil War. His case demonstrates how activists use publicity and promotion to call attention to the case they are making, often by defining some problem, relating it to the ideals of a key public, and addressing how the problem needs to be solved despite hurdles to be overcome—classic rhetorical form and substance. Such advocacy can increase the thoughtful attention to the issue and motivate publics to learn more and take action. This chapter gives rationale for understanding and guarding against the paradox of the positive.

Chapter 11 addresses how the discourse of management can serve to create constructive or destructive relationships with employees. Climate and culture are vital to the full functioning of organizations. To that end, the quality of what is thought about work and workers, as well as the purpose of the work can define harmony or dysfunction within an organization.

As you read the chapters in this section, try to think of an organization with actions that match (or do not match) its rhetoric. Why do you think the organization has been successful in establishing its character well? When an organization faces an issue, such as the Native Americans who permitted the Skywalk to be built on sacred land, how do they reconcile their choice with public perceptions in what they do and why?

One last caveat, for those who assume that the voices of dominant organizations go unchecked, we offer these chapters to challenge students to consider the consequences suffered when organizations fail to engage in responsible and reflective promotion and publicity. And, we demonstrate (such as the case of Douglass) that activists can use the tools of publicity and promotion against some dominant voice in society in the pursuit of positive change.

References

Fisher, W. R. (1987). Human communication as narration: Toward a philosophy of reason, value, and action. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press.

Heath, R. L., & Coombs, W. T. (2006). Today’s public relations: An introduction. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Trujillo, N. (1992). White knights, poker games, and the invasion of the carpetbaggers: Interpreting the sale of a professional sports franchise. In E. L. Toth & R. L. Heath (Eds.), Rhetorical and critical approaches to public relations (pp. 257–278). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

7
PUBLIC RELATIONS AND THE STRATEGIC USE OF TRANSPARENCY

Consistency, Hypocrisy, and Corporate Change

Lars Thøger Christensen University of Southern Denmark

Roy Langer University of Aarhus

In spite of considerable developments over the past century, the field of public relations continues to struggle with the issue of its proper position in the world. What is its role in the pursuit of a good or “full functioning” society? How can public relations add value to a global community? What are, in other words, its points of legitimacy in a world of growing complexity and interdependency (e.g., Heath, 2006)? These are complicated issues and public relations should not be blamed for failing to resolve them fully. The ongoing questioning, which has become part of the field’s self-reflective institutionalization, holds some important merits in itself (cf. Holmström, 2005). While the discipline continues to have a widely acknowledged image problem (Callison, 2001; Edwards, 2006; Hutton, 1999; Newsom, Ramsey, & Carrell, 1993), the quest for an ethical public relations paradigm has been shaping the field for several decades (Grunig & Hunt, 1984; Grunig, 1993, 2000; see also Bowen, 2005; David, 2004; Edgett, 2002; Kent & Taylor, 2002; Woodward, 2000) to the effect that it is now considered central to the field’s self-understanding (Seib & Fitzpatrick, 1995; Starck & Kruckeberg, 2003). Consequently, public relations has the potential to become a key driver towards a better society. The aim of this chapter is to add new dimensions to our understanding of that challenge and how it can be met in a society focused on increased information about organizations and their activities.

A recurrent theme in writings on public relations’ contribution to a better society is the concept of “enlightened choice” (Heath, 2006, p. 108): the notion that public relations can and should participate in an ongoing provision of knowledge and insight and thus help citizens, consumers, and other stakeholders make decisions that are in the interest of the common good (e.g., Gallhofer, Haslam, & Roper, 2001; Heath, 2006; Motion & Weaver, 2005). Public relations, in these writings, is charged with the obligation of securing a steady flow of information about all matters of societal relevance concerning corporations and social institutions. In such perspectives, a crucial dimension of a good and just society is the availability of information, availability that limits opaqueness and complexity and thus helps reduce the potential for power abuse, fraud, corruption, and other types of corporate or institutional evil. Committing itself to support and facilitate the provision and circulation of information in order to build or rebuild trust and healthy stakeholder relationships, public relations places itself in the business of transparency (Jahansoozi, 2006). While transparency is a general managerial concern, holding promises of operational efficiency and control (e.g., Berggren & Bernshteyn, 2007), it has a special place in the context of contemporary public relations where transparency is often regarded as a precondition for trust, collaboration, dialogue, insight, accountability, rationality, and freedom (Kent & Taylor, 2002).

In the public relations literature, these issues have typically been phrased in terms of communication symmetry. With their model of excellent public relations, James Grunig and his colleagues have consistently argued that collaboration, trust, and accountability are based on genuine dialogue, negotiation and two-way relationships in which all parties are able to bring their interests and viewpoints to the table (e.g., Grunig, 1992; 2001). The model, thus, is essentially egalitarian, seeking to facilitate a balanced flow of communication and avoid the power relations that often shape debates and disputes between corporations and their stakeholders (see also, Toth, 2007). In spite of these qualities, the model has frequently been challenged from the epistemological, ontological, and geographical margins of the literature (e.g., Brown, 2006; Holtzhausen, 2000, 2002; Holtzhausen & Voto, 2002; Holtzhausen, Petersen, & Tindall, 2003; McKie & Munshi, 2005; Wehmeier, 2006). While some writers, for example, question the possibility for real power balance between two parties (e.g., Leitch & Neilson, 2001), others argue that the model promotes a “procedural correctness” that does not in itself guarantee that the decisions made in so-called two-way symmetrical forums are legitimate and socially or environmentally acceptable (Leeper, 2001; see also Cheney & Christensen, 2001b). Some critics even claim that the concept of symmetrical communication reflects a process of compromise designed to deflect crit...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• List of Illustrations
• Notes on Contributors
• Introduction
• SECTION ONE Rhetorical Heritage and Critical Tradition
• SECTION TWO Creating Shared Meaning through Ethical Public Relations Promotion and Publicity
• SECTION THREE Activism, Issues, Crisis, and Risk: Rhetorical Heavy Lifting
• SECTION FOUR Character, Ethics, and Legitimacy in the Practice of Public Relations