INTERNATIONAL RESEARCH CONFERENCE

Communication as a Discipline and as a Field:

Sharing Experiences to Construct a Dialogue

"Global Public Relations as a Communication Subfield"

By

Dean Kruckeberg, Ph.D., APR, Fellow PRSA

The University of North Carolina at Charlotte

And

Katerina Tsetsura, Ph.D.

University of Oklahoma

In the Plenary Session:

The Development of the Communication Discipline Field:

Challenges, Tensions, Traditions, and Achievements

10 to 11 a.m., Friday, July 10, 2015

Department of Integrated Communications

National Research University — Higher School of Economics

Moscow, Russia

July 9 through 11, 2015

The next decade will bring unprecedented challenges to global

society, including the uncertainties of social, political, economic and

cultural sustainability in a world that is experiencing tremendous

changes within an incredibly compressed timeframe.

Today’s rapidly and chaotically evolving communication technology is the primary

intervening variable that is creating

1. globalism, as well as its obverse,

2. Multiculturalism — together with the latter’s accompanying tensions and

conflicts within a global environment that is replete with a host of critically

important issues that beg resolution.

These immense changes have societal implications that are:

1. inadequately understood, let alone sufficiently pondered, and

2. their profound impact on individuals remains insufficiently measured.

Seeking regress to a pastoral and isolationist existence can be

likened to a Canutian attempt to hold back the tides,

recognizing that:

– there can be no return to a pre-global and pre-technological society,

– nor is there any desire to do so by most people who readily embrace the

advantages and conveniences of contemporary communication technology.

But truly we are sailing in uncharted waters, which offer:

– little forgiveness for navigational errors—digital or otherwise—but suggest

– the possibility, if not the likelihood, of unintended consequences for society

both locally and globally!

A wide range of global issues remain unresolved today, including

questions about:

• Free trade

• Emerging democracies

• Transnational corporations

• Public distrust

• A rapidly changing media environment

• Corporate megamergers and globalization

• Harmful — perhaps irreversible — changes

in the physical environment

• Issues related to population growth,

poverty, hunger and war

• Questions about the management of

change

• Global class stratification

• Tensions resulting from the confluence of

technology, globalism and multiculturalism

• Fundamental changes in the relationships

among governments, corporations and

private citizens

• The tensions between nationalism and

globalism

• The tensions between modern and

traditional societies, including within

traditional societies, themselves, as they

face overwhelming pressures to modernize

• Tensions among what were once labeled

the First, Second and Third Worlds

• The control and direction of technology,

itself.

This list of threats must also include what Kruckeberg and Tsetsura

(2008, March) identify as contemporary “tribalism,”

which is a rebellion against:

– modern mass-mediated society

– nationalism and secularism by those seeking to re-established traditional

unmediated societies (who, ironically, are enabled in this quest for

traditionalism by the communication technology that is available to them

through modernity).

Tribalism is occurring within a global population that is:

– quite young

– with immense numbers of these young people having little or no education

and few prospects for employment that would lead to personal

sustainability,

– but who have technological proficiency and the wherewithal to use it —

resulting in:

– public relations problems for organizations, but also in

– civil unrest that is alarming and difficult to predict, let alone to control or even

to attempt to manage.

Communication technology is fundamentally changing us in at least

four dimensions:

1) socially, in which electronic channels of communication are replacing face-to-face

communication;

2) politically, in which power differentials are being flattened and sometimes

juxtaposed, with unpredictable power emanating quickly from unrecognized and

unseen sources;

3) economically, in which information that may appear inexpensive to send and to

receive results in a greed for this information that, ironically, can enslave consumers

both financially and through inordinate demands on their time; and

4) culturally, in which a global culture is emerging, not only in consumer tastes for

products and services, but also in in a melding of traditions and values.

Of particular significance is the question of power

— whether social, political, economic or cultural —

as public relations scholars and practitioners ponder these challenges during this

contemporary era that Debeljak (2012) identifies as the:

– third globalization in world history, that is, a corporate 21st Century, which

was preceded by the

– second globalization of the colonial 19th Century and the

– first globalization of the imperial 16th Century.

Today, power exists everywhere, yet it exists nowhere!

Globalization has resulted in changing differentials of relative

power and influence among governments, civil society

organizations (nongovernmental organizations) and corporations.

For good or for ill, traditional stabilizing forces have been greatly diminished, and

sometimes marginalized, through communication technology that provides

unprecedented digital opportunities to challenge and to defeat traditional institutions

and loci of power and influence.

Today, an infinite number of highly volatile publics worldwide can form:

– Immediately

– Unpredictably

– and with unforeseen power

in response to readily and inexpensively available information and opinion.

Communication technology, through which organizations and

citizens can communicate:

– instantaneously and inexpensively with one another

– In which transparency exists as never before

has tremendous implications in relative power in public opinion formation and

influence.

Communication barriers today are more ideological than physical, creating

dramatically changing social relationships.

Control and authority, whether by

– rule-of-law within discrete nation-states or by

– cultural traditions,

are being challenged and threatened, including by those beyond the increasingly

porous borders of these nation-states.

The dynamics and relativity of power and influence among

corporations, civil society organizations and governments are

changing rapidly, creating dramatic changes in the relationships

among these three social actors and in their relative power and

influence over one another.

Most significant is the empowerment of private citizens worldwide.

However, this perceived citizen power may be at least partly illusory.

Communication technology upon which people are dependent consumers:

– is neither fully understood nor controlled by them

– its withdrawal and/or failure would result in mass helplessness because of the

social, political, economic and cultural infrastructures that have been built

around this communication technology

One indicator of a revolution is an individual’s inability to ignore it.

We must continually question whether the existing role and function

of public relations is most appropriate and whether public relations

must be more encompassing in its service to its clients and to

society-at-large.

Public relations practice commonly focuses on organization-public relationship

management, in most instances with the goal of influencing public opinion of those

who have power or who are perceived to have potential power.

Such organization-public relationship management role and function assuredly will

remain of critical importance.

However, professional strategies must embrace a wider range of goals, together

with far more scholarly and practitioner introspection that must include continuing re-

examination and relentless attempts at criticism of predominant theoretical

paradigms.

Rather than placidly building on existing literature and assumptions on which it is

based, and on a reliance on the ostensible best practices of public relations as they

have evolved historically, scholars and practitioners must identify the most critical

and pressing public relations problems, which extend beyond a pre-occupation with

organizations as units of analysis and with organization-public relationships.

Kruckeberg questioned whether existing public relations theories

and best practices are sufficiently heuristic to address the needs of

a 21st Century global society.

Public relations scholars and practitioners must fully participate in policy

deliberations that attempt to reconcile

– cultural

– ideological

– historical

tensions throughout the world.

A paradigmatic shift in public relations may not be exclusively or primarily Western

in perspective, but

– must consider changes occurring in 21st Century global society and

– should provide a normative direction for practicing public relations globally.

We are long overdue in questioning 20th Century theories of public

relations and the base assumptions supporting them.

Interrogation must include the public relations literature’s:

– concepts and those concepts’ dimensions

– empirical generalizations/propositions

– theories and meta-theories

– resulting paradigms that have grounded 20th Century professional practice.

Kuhn said new paradigms gain prominence by being more

successful than are their competitors in solving acute problems.

When existing paradigms:

– cease to function adequately and

– crises result,

scientific revolutions occur and scientists respond to a different world.

Equally importantly, public relations scholarship must extend its theoretical boundaries beyond

that of communication science.

We must invite those in other disciplines and professionalized

occupations to help us to address questions about the role and

function of public relations in contemporary global society.

An examination of the role and function of public relations must

begin with a normative theory of society.

20th Century public relations paradigms must be challenged, with critical inquiry

beginning with an examination of fundamental assumptions about an ideal society

upon which 20th Century public relations paradigms have been predicated.

Public relations has evolved for:

– different reasons

– at different times

– in different places

Contemporary practice, despite its increasing globalization in its theory and best

practices, has been—and to a great extent remains—influenced by culture, ideology

and history.

Public relations has evolved throughout time to align itself to its

environment.

Practitioners must also contextualize this latitudinal knowledge,

which includes that of:

– Culture

– Ideology

with longitudinal understanding, that is:

an historical knowledge of the practitioner’s:

– Clients

– those clients’ publics

– indigenous societies-at-large.

For cultural, ideological and historical reasons, different societies

may have:

• different stakeholders who are more powerful than are others

• different speakers and agenda-setters who dominate the discussion on

issue arenas

• different social, political, economic and cultural contexts

that can either propel or impede public relations goals.

An environment’s history affect organizations and their publics.

Public relations practitioners must be able to “hypothesize” and “theorize” based on

far more than what a “snapshot” public opinion survey may reveal;

Rather, public relations practitioners must contextualize research findings from a

knowledge base that includes, not only cultural and ideological knowledge, but also

an understanding of an environment’s history.

Critical interrogation of public relations, its literature and

contemporary practice has markedly increased in recent years,

– not only by scholars from other parts of the world

– but also by U.S. public relations scholars.

Alternative models may vary in their perspectives on advocacy, mutual

understanding and relationship management

However, they mostly maintain their organization-centric units of analysis, focusing

on organizations’ relationships with their identified publics.

Goals appear by-and-large to be measured by financial and other tangible Returns

on Investment (ROI) that benefit the self-interest of those paying for the public

relations counsel and services.

we argue that organization-centric units of analysis are heuristically limited, indeed

insufficient.

In recent years, provocative and likely heuristic streams of

scholarship have involved an examination and deliberation of who

is the client, expanding from an exclusive or primary focus on

organization-public relationships.

Public relations practitioners are capable of—and must assume—a greater role and

more encompassing responsibilities,:

– in building and maintaining mutually beneficial relationships with their

organizations’ primary stakeholders

– in their organizations and professional community’s contributions to society-

at-large.

Some scholars have proffered a three-dimensional “organic model”

of public relations, in which each organization is only a part of the

whole social system that public relations practitioners must

consider in its entirety.

In their view, an organization has responsibility to all members of society.

– Thus, public relations practitioners should not view their organizations—

whether these are corporations, civil society organizations or

governments—as hubs having satellites of stakeholders,

– but rather as one part of a three-dimensional social system in which

organizations cooperate with one another in their support of society.

Kruckeberg and Starck argue that a fundamental reason why public relations

practice exists today is the loss of community that has resulted from new means of

communication and transportation. They propose that an appropriate approach to

practicing community (and thus public) relations should be derived through an

active attempt to restore and maintain the sense of community that has been lost in

contemporary society.

Botan and Taylor first divided the various approaches toward public

relations into two categories: functional and co-creational.

– A functional approach places the organization at the center of communication,

building on the argument that public relations is a management function.

– the co-creational approach to public relations recognizes, not a managerial,

but a societal, function of public relations. This approach puts publics, not the

organization, at the center of communication and is concentrated around the

idea advanced by Kruckeberg and Stark of community-building.

Heath investigated the centrality of public relations in building a fully functional

society in which all institutions, governments, corporations, and nongovernmental

organizations, have a strong presence and voice and co-exist organically

Importantly, Tsetsura (2011) reminds us that public relations and its function are

socially constructed .

The global scholarly and practitioner community must continually

re-examine the role and function of public relations and its

assumptions, in particular to:

– question whether the existing role and function of public relations is most appropriate in

today’s global society and whether public relations must be more encompassing in its

service to its clients and to society-at-large;

– embrace a wider range of goals, together with far more scholarly and practitioner

introspection that must include continuing re-examination and relentless attempts at

criticism of predominant theoretical paradigms;

– identify the most critical and pressing public relations problems, which extend beyond a

pre-occupation with organization-public relationships;

– interrogate the literature’s concepts and those concepts’ dimensions, empirical

generalizations/propositions and theories and meta-theories, as well as the resulting

paradigms that have grounded 20th Century professional practice;

– attempt to reconcile the cultural, ideological and historical variances throughout the world;

– pro-actively and imaginatively extend our theoretical boundaries beyond communication

science, inviting those in other disciplines and professionalized occupations to help us to

address questions about the role and function of public relations in contemporary global

society.

Let us begin our exploration with energy and courage.

Thank you!

Dean and Katerina

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