Protest PR: Alternative Voices in Public Relations Theory and Practice

Session Submission Type: Panel

Abstract

This panel will explore the history of protest and its relation to public relations and critically investigate the PR lexicon dedicated to activist communication practices. In approaching this topic, the panel and its audience will engage in the discovery and discussion of bold, inventive and effective strategic communicative practices that often go unnamed, undescribed, unexamined and unacknowledged in public relations practice and scholarship. The panelists, all contributors to the forthcoming book Protest Public Relations: Communicating dissent and activism (Taylor & Francis, edited by Ana Adi), will share insights from their research into these alternative voices in the strategic communication mix.

Sub Unit

• Public Relations

Chair

• Ana Adi, Quadriga U of Applied Sciences

Individual Presentations

• Learning From History: From the Suffragettes to Gandhi - Michaela O’Brien, University of Westminister

• Digital Media, PR and Grassroots Power: Theoretical Perspectives - Marina Vujnovic, Monmouth U; Dean Kruckeberg, U of North Carolina at Charlotte

• Name Your Voice: Theory Paradigms, Democracy, and the History of Activism in Public Relations - Celia Kay Weaver, University of Waikato

• Public Relation Practitioner Self-Perception: Activism as an Inexistent Concept - Ana Adi, Quadriga U of Applied Sciences

Respondent

• Shiv Ganesh, The University of Texas at Austin