Explaining the Origins of Public Relations: Logics of Historical Explanation (original) (raw)

2011, Journal of Public Relations Research

AI-generated Abstract

This study reviews the historical narratives surrounding public relations (PR) by identifying and analyzing three primary logics of historical explanation: functionalist, institutional, and cultural. It highlights how these logics influence the construction of PR history, acknowledging that inherent ideological components complicate this narrative. The study argues for a more nuanced understanding of public relations as a social institution, emphasizing the importance of context and historical progression in shaping PR practices and theories.

Toward a Comprehensive History of Public Relations

1993

Standard histories of public relations privilege the field's association with business enterprise, and traditionally place the origins of the field in the press agentry of the 19th century and in the rise of corporate concern with public opinion in the first decade of the 20th century. However, the roots of public relations reach both farther and deeper into western history and cultural ethos than present histories reveal. Public relations history can only be accurately constructed by examining the ways that many diverse groups contributed through their use of informational (propaganda) campaigns to shape public opinion and manage human behavior through the centuries. These groups have been large and small, and they have represented both established authority and oppositional social movements. Brief case studies of the Catholic Church's propaganda campaigns during the holy crusades between the llth and 13th centuries and the women's suffrage campaign during the 19th and early 20th centuries serve as examples to illustrate this new, more comprehensive approach to the development of public relations history. (Contains 33 references.) (Author/NH)

Corporate voice and Ideology an alternate approach to understanding public relations history

Scholars in the U.S. generally agree that the origins of corporate public relations correspond to the rise of the U.S. Industrial Revolution during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This essay explores the under-theorized relationship between ideology and public relations by examining the role of the corporate voice in public relations history. Evidence suggests that public relations counsel, serving as the corporate voice, created messages that produced and reproduced certain ideological meanings about the corporation. These ideological meanings provided important guidance on how members of the public should think about, relate to, and experience the corporation as a necessary, natural and benevolent organization in society. By incorporating ideological theory as an analytical tool to study public relations history, this article explores an important, but not often studied aspect of public relations history – the development and use of the corporate voice as a site of ideological production.

Public Relations from the Dawn of Civilization

The profession of public relations lacks a serious, comprehensive history. Considering the power that we have evidenced throughout the years as practitioners, it seems somewhat ludicrous that we don't have at least one book we can point to with pride as a truly credible, challenging chronology and interpretation of PR's origins and actions, both good and bad. Suffice it to say, it will be a long time before we have such a tome. But all is not lost.

Writing PR history: issues, methods and politics

Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to argue that public relations (PR) history-writing has profoundly shaped the discipline and that its US bias may have limited theoretical developments. The author aims to explore the challenges in writing PR history and to consider some of the strategic philosophical issues and challenges that face historians. Design/methodology/approach -Historical interpretations are shaped by authors' social constructions and thus the paper is written reflexively. The author discusses the way in which histories are structured and patterned by their authors' assumptions and values about the nature of time; human civilisation, progressivism, situationalism, inevitability, human agency, cultural change, flux and transformation. Findings -Existing (largely US) PR historical writing is analysed in terms of its theoretical impact through the "four models" and it is argued that this typology is not appropriately applied to other cultures with different paths of historical evolution. As a way of demonstrating this point, key aspects of British developments in the twentieth century are drawn out to reveal a dozen "models" of PR practice that could potentially form the basis of theoretical research. Originality/value -Overall, the paper contributes a discussion of historical methodology in relation to PR; shows the connection between history and theory-building in PR; and demonstrates that history from other cultures can reveal alternative models for theoretical development.

Challenging accounts: Public relations and a tale of two revolutions

Public Relations Review, 2005

This article provides a brief account of public relations, and of those who use its practices, in the Zionist revolution that led to the formation of the state of Israel. In relating that narrative to aspects of the American Revolution, it explores similarities and differences with a threefold aim: (1) to describe the distinctiveness of Israeli public relations development, informed by, but not determined by, U.S. accounts; (2) to clarify how different national origins continue to impact on the contemporary profession; and (3) to encourage others to put forward their accounts of their specific histories, and their specific historical actors. In Kuhn's . The structure of scientific revolutions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press] classic account of paradigm revolutions in science, the impetus frequently comes from activities on the margins that conflict with core assumptions. The article's specific account of the formation of Israel, and its intertwining with public relations, adds to the recent growing movement to construct accounts of other national public relations histories. In contributing to this movement, it also points to how the American experience can be reconfigured as part, albeit a massive part, of a profession that is developing differently in different parts of the world. 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18

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