Critical Theories in Public Relations

• In Event: Typology Teasing: Extending on Sociological Approaches in Public Relations

Abstract

This paper aims to reflect on Critical Studies in public relations guided by Deetz’s definition of the term. It focuses on a number of key themes to argue that the field’s understanding of the critical approach is perhaps more firmly located elsewhere, in what Deetz calls the Dialogic or postmodern approach.

The starting point is a brief introduction of the location of the “critical approach” in the scheme offered by Deetz (1996) where it’s understood as a Dissensus-focused approach, driven by what he calls Elite/A Priori concepts and theories that realizes itself in a particular kind of discourse. The discussion is then developed by confronting this model with the author’s view of lines of critical inquiry in public relations, specifically in the work that probes internal contradictions, deconstructs the ideological edifice, and looks for blind spots of normative theory (e.g., Excellence Theory). The main lines of this critique could be seen as directed at: the normalization of the liberal-pluralist regime of thought with its lack of attention to ideological and hegemonic processes; positivistic approach to knowledge; the teleology of the open systems theory, which underpins the strategic imperative of the Excellence approach, and its moral consequences; and a universalist predilection in offering the Excellence Theory as a ‘global concept’ and, a tendency to fetishize symmetry.

The second part of the paper will offer a more fleshed out reflection on Critical Studies in public relations and is guided by a number of “prototypical discursive features” (Deetz, 1996, p.199), specifically its: focus on domination as the key problem; hope to reform the social system; and on systematic distortion in communication. The view put forward here is that this type of critique is driven by debates inspired by the concept of the public sphere and Habermas’s Theory of Communicative Action (1984, 1987), and that it reflects the shape of a broader cultural critique articulated by Wernick’s Promotional Culture (1991) and exemplified by Ewen’s PR! A History of Spin (1996).

Author

• Magda Pieczka, Queen Margaret U