Trust, Power and Public Relations in Financial Markets

Trust, Power and Public Relations in Financial Markets
Author: Clea Bourne
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 176
Release: 2016-12-08
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1317963946

The public relations profession positions itself as expert in building trust throughout global markets, particularly after crisis strikes. Successive crises have tainted financial markets in recent years. Calls to restore trust in finance have been particularly pressing, given trust’s crucial role as lubricant in global financial engines. Nonetheless, years after the global financial crisis, trust in financial markets remains both tenuous and controversial. This book explores PR in financial markets, posing a fundamental question about PR professionals as would-be ‘trust strategists’. If PR promotes its expertise in building and restoring trust, how can it ignore its potential role in losing trust in the first place? Drawing on examples from state finance, international lending agencies, trade bodies, financial institutions and consumer groups in mature and emerging financial centres, this book explores the wide-ranging role of PR in financial markets, including: State finance and debt capital markets Investor relations, M&A and IPOs Corporate communications for financial institutions Product promotion and consumer finance Financial trade associations and lobbying Consumerism and financial activism. Far reaching and challenging, this innovative book will be essential reading for researchers, advanced students and professionals in PR, communication and finance.

Public Relations

Public Relations
Author: Chiara Valentini
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 630
Release: 2021-02-08
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 3110552604

What is public relations? What do public relations professionals do? And what are the theoretical underpinnings that drive the discipline? This handbook provides an up-to-date overview of one of the most contested communication professions. The volume is structured to take readers on a journey to explore both the profession and the discipline of public relations. It introduces key concepts, models, and theories, as well as new theorizing efforts undertaken in recent years. Bringing together scholars from various parts of the world and from very different theoretical and disciplinary traditions, this handbook presents readers with a great diversity of perspectives in the field.

Public Relations and the Digital

Public Relations and the Digital
Author: Clea Bourne
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 244
Release: 2022-09-29
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 3031139569

This book takes a people-centred approach to the ever-fluid and rapidly-transforming professional world of public relations (PR) in the age of digital platforms. As everyday PR work becomes increasingly shaped by the platform economy, this is transforming how the PR profession talks about itself, its issues and concerns. Drawing on different textual genres and discursive strategies, the author examines the shifting boundaries between PR and adjacent fields such as advertising, marketing and journalism – and illuminates varied lifeworlds of PR professionals from different backgrounds, races and genders. Written for academics, practitioners and those interested in the world of public relations, the book will also be enjoyed by young professionals working in this interesting and fast-changing occupation.

The Routledge Handbook of Critical Public Relations

The Routledge Handbook of Critical Public Relations
Author: Jacquie L'Etang
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 447
Release: 2015-08-11
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 131791886X

Critical theory has a long history, but a relatively recent intersection with public relations. This ground-breaking collection engages with commonalities and differences in the traditions, whilst encouraging plural perspectives in the contemporary public relations field. Compiled by a high-profile and widely respected team of academics and bringing together other key scholars from this field and beyond, this unique international collection marks a major stage in the evolution of critical public relations. It will increasingly influence how critical theory informs public relations and communication. The collection takes stock of the emergence of critical public relations alongside diverse theoretical traditions, critiques and actions, methodologies and future implications. This makes it an essential reference for public relations researchers, educators and students around a world that is becoming more critical in the face of growing inequality and environmental challenges. The volume is also of interest to scholars in advertising, branding, communication, consumer studies, cultural studies, marketing, media studies, political communication and sociology.

Depth Public Relations

Depth Public Relations
Author: Johanna Fawkes
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 203
Release: 2022-12-23
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1351121898

Contemporary global culture, rooted in neoliberalism and free market forces, increasingly emphasises appearance over substance. People and organisations are judged by image and reputation while social media encourages and enables us to develop our own public persona. This book explores the rise of promotional communication with a particular focus on public relations (PR) and its role. Organisations, from local charities to multinational corporations, employ professional PR staff to manage promotional communication, and even public institutions must position themselves in the marketplace to secure funding and approval. To what extent has PR contributed to this culture of display, this masquerade of emptiness? This book argues that the climate crisis demands not more performance but a new approach, one of ‘depth public relations’. This concerpt builds on ideas not only from public relations, but also psychology, sociology and philosophy, as well as introducing the voices of climate activists and others seeking a deeper relationship with the human and non- human worlds. The proposed principles of depth public relations offer suggestions for theory and practice, with profound implications for PR and related fields, and will interest all scholars of the changing communication environment.

Public Relations Capitalism

Public Relations Capitalism
Author: Anne M. Cronin
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 123
Release: 2018-01-24
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 3319726374

This book argues that we are witnessing the emergence of ‘commercial democracy’ in which public relations, promotional culture and the media play a new, central role. As the conventional democratic promise of political representation loses traction with the public in many countries, commercial culture steps into this vacuum by offering mirror forms of democracy. Commercial democracy promises representation, voice and agency to the public and in doing so creates new forms of social contract. Based on empirical material, this book examines the Public Relations (PR) produced by corporations and communications produced by charities in an intensely mediatized society. It presents a novel analysis of the shifting significance of brand and reputation. It analyses the ascendancy of commercial speech, PRs’ relationship to post-truth politics, and the transformation of cultural intermediaries into ‘social brokers’. As PR and promotional culture come to inhabit the realm of the social contract and new forms of politics, ‘the public’ and the very idea of ‘publicity’ are transformed.

Public Relations and the Corporate Persona

Public Relations and the Corporate Persona
Author: Burton Saint John III
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 190
Release: 2017-07-20
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1317370716

For much of the last century, large, predominantly US corporations used public relations to demonstrate that their missions resonated with dominant societal values. Through the construction and conveyance of the "corporate persona", they aimed to convince citizens that they share common aspirations - and moreover that their corporate "soul" works as a beneficent force in society. Through examining key examples from the last 80 years, this book argues that PR, through the corporate persona, works to create a sense of shared reality between the corporation and the average citizen. This has been instrumental in conveying, across generations, that the corporation is an affinitive corporate persona - a fellow companion in the journey of life. The construct is obviously ripe for manipulation, and the role of PR in creating and promoting the corporate persona in order to align corporations and stakeholders is potentially problematic. From wage inequality to climate change, preserving the corporate status quo may be negative. This original and thought-provoking book not only critically analyses how PR and its role in the corporate persona works to solidify power, but also how that power might be used to further goals shared by the corporation and the individual. Scholars and advanced students of public relations, organizational communications and communication studies will find this book a challenging and illuminating read.

Public Relations as Emotional Labour

Public Relations as Emotional Labour
Author: Liz Yeomans
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 223
Release: 2019-06-04
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1317417313

Inextricably linked to neoliberal market economies, public relations’ influence in our promotional culture is profound. Yet many aspects of the professional role are under-researched and poorly understood, including the impact on workers who construct displays of feeling to elicit a desired emotional response, to earn trust and manage clients. The emotionally demanding nature of this aspirational work, and how this is symptomatic of "always on" culture, is particularly overlooked. Drawing on interviews with practitioners and agency directors, together with the author’s personal insights from observations in the field, this book fills a significant gap in knowledge by presenting a critical-interpretive exploration of everyday relational work of account handlers in PR agencies. In underscoring the relationship-driven, highly contingent nature of this work, the author shows that emotional labour is a defining feature of professionalism, even as public relations is reconfigured in the digital age. In doing so, the book draws on a wide range of related contemporary social and cultural theories, as well as critical public relations and feminist public relations literature. Scholars, educators and research students in PR and communications studies will gain rich insights into the emotion management strategies employed by public relations workers in handling professional relationships with clients, journalists and their colleagues, thereby uncovering some of the taken-for-granted aspects of this gendered, promotional work.

Secrecy in Public Relations, Mediation and News Cultures

Secrecy in Public Relations, Mediation and News Cultures
Author: Anne M. Cronin
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 63
Release: 2023-01-19
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1000857069

This book investigates the relationship of secrecy as a social practice to contemporary media, news cultures and public relations. Drawing on Georg Simmel’s theorisation of how secrecy produces a ‘second world’ alongside the ‘obvious world’ and creates and reshapes social relations, Anne Cronin argues for close analysis of the PR industry as a powerful vector of secrecy and an examination of its relationship to news cultures. Using case studies and in-depth interviews, as well as recent research in media and cultural studies, sociology, journalism studies and communication studies, the book analyses how PR practices generate a second, shadow world of the media sphere which has a profound impact on the ‘obvious world’. It interrogates both the PR industry’s and news culture’s role in shaping social relations for a digital media landscape, and those initiatives promoting transparency of data and decision-making processes. An insightful, interdisciplinary approach to debates on media and power, this book will appeal to students of public relations, sociology, media studies, cultural studies and communication studies. It will also be of interest to scholars and practitioners working at the intersections of media, social relations and public trust.