Often seen as the purveyor of âspin ,â manipulation, or outright lies, the public relations industry has a very negative public image. This book presents the case that PR should be assessed in a more nuanced way while also arguing that, in one key respect, PRâs social and political impact is far more detrimental than that suggested by straightforward critiques of its partisanship or mendacity. I argue that a new relationship is being forged between political culture and commercial culture that is mediated by PR and other promotional industries. This shifts the terrain of politics and creates a form of commercial democracy that rearticulates public engagement and social values . Any attempt to understand peopleâs disenchantment with contemporary representative democracy and neoliberal capitalist commercial culture should take into consideration the enhanced significance of PR and other promotional forms which now interface in far more profound ways with the foundations for social and political organisation and stability.
PR is used by organisations, governments, elites, and the wealthy as a mode of exerting influence and control, and some analyses present PR as an anti-democratic force that sets out to warp the flow of information that is provided by the media to inform the public. Other accounts present PR as a potentially democratic force, offering voice to various groups, providing â public engagement,â and staging public debate. PR is also used by activists , NGOs, and charities as a form of resistance and political intervention or a way of altering the terms of public debate. This framing of a phenomenonâs significance as a tension between positive potential and negative impactâand between power and control set in contrast to subversion and resistanceâis a familiar trope in media and cultural studies research. My account of PR takes a rather different angle of analysis. Based on empirical research, I focus on PRâs implication in what has been called the â democratic deficitâ and current shifts in the publicâs (dis)engagement with, and distrust of, formal politics, government, the state, and its institutions. The research for this book is based on the UK, but the scope of my argument extends to other European countries and beyond. Accounts such as Wendy Brownâs (2015) argue that neoliberal democracies have been evacuated of true democratic content while retaining discourses of democracy , freedom, choice, representation, and public voice . I argue that public relations has come to inhabit and exploit this democratic gap, speaking the language of democracy and offering to both publics and organisations modes of engagement, agency, and voice . As such, PR forms a key element in the broader â public engagementâ industry (Lee 2015) in which governments and state institutions increasingly set up forms of âstakeholder engagementâ to act as the public voice that is required to legitimise policy initiatives. My account builds on work such as Leeâs (2015) but presents a different perspective by arguing that PR intervenes in political and social processes on a more fundamental levelâthe level of the â social contract.â The social contract is a bond or promise established between government and the people in which government undertakes to represent the people and the public interest, while the public agrees to submit to democratic processes of representation and the rule of law. Drawing on Hannah Arendtâs (1998 [1958]) work on the social contract as âpromise ,â I argue that PRâs relationship both to the public and to its commercial clients can be understood as a form of promise that displaces politics and rearticulates peopleâs engagement with conventional representative democracy . In reformulating the social contract or promise, PR and other promotional industries offer a form of â commercial democracyâ which has far-reaching social and political consequences.
The bookâs empirical research is based on PR practices in UK corporations and in charities. It uses the major shifts in public engagement in the social contract as the starting point for drawing out the new significance of brands and corporationsâ reputation and for analysing how charities mediate social values in a new way. Some would argue that PR simply follows and promotes the logics of capital using its capacities for interest-driven communication and skills in manipulation. But I argue that PR is an active transformational force rather than simply a transparent medium. PR acts to create publics, shape a stage for public dialogue, and promise a form of democratic representation and agency. In this way, PR certainly amplifies neoliberal capitalismâs practices and ideologies, but it also enacts something new in terms of âpublicityâ and politics. I argue that promotional culture now interfaces explicitly with the social contract and thus attains a new, heightened social and political significance.
Chapter 2 situates the book within a range of debates in PR and promotional culture and contextualises my argument in relation to key discussions about neoliberal capitalism and democracy , public engagement, the creation of publics and âpublicity ,â and the media and the public sphere and outlines Hannah Arendtâs work on the social contract as âpromise.â I introduce empirical data from my project when sketching out the contemporary UK media context and PRâs intervention in this shifting context. Chapter 3 focuses on PR produced by corporations . Through an analysis of the everyday practices of PR and an account of PR in times of crisis for a corporation , I argue that contemporary PR has begun to offer what I term commercial democracy . PR associated with corporations , commodities, and brands now operates through promising forms of representation, voice , and agency, while public faith in conventional representative democracy has declined. The phenomenon of âconsumer citizenshipâ has been tracked by academics for some time, examining the ways in which consumer culture and consumption offer experiences of agency, identity, pleasure, and status (as citizen, as political actor). But commercial democracy shifts the terrain of politics by forging important links between the social contract as foundational basis for the publicâs acceptance of democracy to forms of commercial culture embodied in corporations , commodities, and brands and mediated by PR (and other promotional forms such as advertising and marketing ). Commercial democracy is a new vernacular form of democracy that speaks the language of representation and agency but is disconnected from the practices and formal legitimacy of conventional representative democracy . It displaces the political and, in the publicâs eyes, it relocates politics, power, and agency to the popular, the everyday, and especially to consumption .
Forms of commercial democracy have gained purchase in the UK through years of austerity measures, the erosion of public faith in politicians, establishment institutions, and the formal apparatus of democracy . I examine how PR enacts promises to the public that hold considerable appeal in this context of disenchantment. PR appears to mirror the contract or bond of representative democracy by offering multiple promises to the public: in mediating between a corporation or institution and the public PR promises representation; it promises public âvoiceâ through their engagement as consumers or stakeholders ; it provides a media forum and stages debate. It is part of, and attempts to shape, the realm in which the public witnesses itself as a collective entity. This collective witnessing is a form of âpublicityâ as described by Michael Warner (2002). This promise of publicity offered by PRâthe promise of being part of a publicâhas all the more force as it is not associated with formal state institutions which have lost so much public trust . I show how an analysis of the social contract as promise, as a foundational social bond between the public and those who govern, provides traction for understanding the major shifts and realignments that are occurring between political culture and commercial culture . In this analysis I offer a new account of the social and political significance of brands and corporate reputation. Using crisis PR as an example, I argue that the intensity of the publicâs investment in the promise (as a form of social contract ) can be seen in peopleâs reaction to the breaking of promises. This, I maintain, is at the core of reputation and brand . For corporations , PRâs role is to enhance and repair reputation, buffering them at times of crisis when, for example, a corporation is exposed as misleading the public. Considerable research on PR focuses on this re...