Pathways to Public Relations

Pathways to Public Relations

Over the centuries, scholars have studied how individuals, institutions, and

groups have used various rhetorical stances to persuade others to pay attention

to, believe in, and adopt a course of action. The emergence and establishment

of public relations as an identifiable and discrete occupation in the early

twentieth century led scholars to describe this new iteration of persuasion as a

unique, more systematized, and technical form of wielding influence. The result

was an overemphasis on practice that explained public relations’ ascendancy as

an evolution and refinement of persuasive communication tactics frequently

couched within an American historical context.

This volume responds to such approaches by expanding the framework for

understanding public relations history. It investigates broad, conceptual ques￾tions concerning the ways in which public relations rose as a practice and a field

within different cultures at different times in history, and in different places.

With its unique multicultural emphasis, it helps shift the paradigm of public

relations history away from traditional methodologies and assumptions.

Pathways to Public Relations provides a new entry point into a complicated

arena that no other edited volume has attempted. With its wide range of histor￾ical perspectives and multiple levels of analysis that fully contextualize public

relations, this book showcases a range of cultural and contextual aspects

offered by a diverse range of historians active within the public relations field.

Burton St. John III is an Associate Professor in the Department of

Communication at Old Dominion University, USA.

Margot Opdycke Lamme is an Associate Professor in the Department of

Advertising and Public Relations at the University of Alabama, USA.

Jacquie L’Etang is Chair of Public Relations and Applied Communications,

Queen Margaret University, Scotland.

Routledge New Directions in Public Relations and

Communication Research

Edited by Kevin Moloney

Routledge New Directions in Public Relations and Communication Research is

a new forum for the publication of books of original research in PR and related

types of communication. Its remit is to publish critical and challenging responses

to continuities and fractures in contemporary PR thinking and practice, and

its essential yet contested role in market-orientated, capitalist, liberal democracies

around the world. The series reflects the multiple and inter-disciplinary forms

PR takes in a post-Grunigian world; the expanding roles which it performs, and

the increasing number of countries in which it is practised.

The series will examine current and explore new thinking on the key questions

which impact upon PR and communications, including:

Is the evolution of persuasive communications in Central and Eastern Europe,

China, Latin America, Japan, the Middle East and Southeast Asia developing

new forms or following Western models?

What has been the impact of postmodern sociologies, cultural studies and

methodologies which are often critical of the traditional, conservative role of

PR in capitalist political economies, and in patriarchy, gender and ethnic roles?

What is the impact of digital social media on politics, individual privacy and

PR practice? Is new technology changing the nature of content communi￾cated, or simply reaching bigger audiences faster? Is digital PR a cause or

a consequence of political and cultural change?

Books in this series will be of interest to academics and researchers involved

in these expanding fields of study, as well as students undertaking advanced

studies in this area.

Public Relations and Nation Building

Influencing Israel

Margalit Toledano and David McKie

Gender and Public Relations

Critical perspectives on voice, image and identity

Edited by Christine Daymon and Kristin Demetrious

Pathways to Public Relations

Histories of practice and profession

Edited by Burton St. John III, Margot Opdycke Lamme and Jacquie L’Etang

Pathways to Public Relations

Histories of practice and profession

Edited by

Burton St. John III,

Margot Opdycke Lamme

and Jacquie L’Etang

First published 2014

by Routledge

2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

and by Routledge

711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

© 2014 Burton St. John III, Margot Opdycke Lamme and Jacquie L’Etang

The right of the editors to be identified as the author of the editorial material, and

of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with

sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or

utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known

or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any

information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the

publishers.

The editors are grateful for permission granted by Emerald Group Publishing for

the reproduction of “Writing PR History: Issues, methods and politics,” by

Jacquie L’Etang (2008), from the Journal of Communication Management,

Vol. 12, No. 4, pp. 319–335.

Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered

trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to

infringe.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Pathways to public relations : histories of practice and profession / [edited by]

Burton Saint John III, Margot Opdycke Lamme, Jacquie L’Etang. -- 1 Edition.

pages cm. -- (Routledge new directions in public relations & communication

research)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. Public relations. I. St. John, Burton, 1957- II. Opdycke Lamme, Margot.

III. L’Etang, Jacquie.

HM1221.P38 2015

659.2--dc23

2013029032

ISBN: 978-0-415-66035-8 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-0-203-07418-3 (ebk)

Typeset in Times New Roman

by Taylor & Francis Books

Contents

List of contributors viii

Foreword: the challenges of engaging public relations history xii

JACQUIE L’ETANG

Foreword: writing PR history: issues, methods and politics xix

JACQUIE L’ETANG

Introduction: realizing new pathways to public relations history 1

BURTON ST. JOHN III, MARGOT OPDYCKE LAMME, AND JACQUIE L’ETANG

PART I

Public relations history and faith 9

1 The strategic heart: the nearly mutual embrace of religion

and public relations 11

ROBERT BROWN

2 State and church as public relations history in Ireland, 1922–2011 28

FRANCIS XAVIER CARTY

3 The public relations and artful devotion of Hildegard Von Bingen 41

CYLOR SPAULDING AND MELISSA D. DODD

4 An alternative view of social responsibility: the ancient and

global footprint of caritas and public relations 56

DONN JAMES TILSON

PART II

Public relations history and politics/government 75

5 The coercion of consent: the manipulative potential of FBI

public relations during the J. Edgar Hoover era 77

MATTHEW CECIL

6 Forgotten roots of international public relations: attempts

of Germany, Great Britain, Czechoslovakia, and Poland

to influence the United States during World War I 91

MICHAEL KUNCZIK

7 Government is different: a history of public relations in

American public administration 108

MORDECAI LEE

8 Building certainty in uncertain times: the construction of

communication by early medieval polities 128

SIMON MOORE

9 I, Claudius the Idiot: lessons to be learned from reputation

management in Ancient Rome 144

CHRISTIAN SCHNEE

10 The utilization of public relations to avoid imperialism

during the beginning of Thailand’s transition to modernization

(1851–68) 160

NAPAWAN TANTIVEJAKUL

PART III

Public relations history and reform 175

11 Between international and domestic public relations: cultural

diplomacy and race in the 1949 ATMA “Round-the-World Tour” 177

FERDINANDO FASCE

12 Shell Oil as a window into the development of public relations

in Nigeria: from information management to social accountability 193

ISMAIL ADEGBOYEGA IBRAHEEM, ABIGAIL ODOZI OGWEZZY-NDISIKA,

AND TUNDE AKANNI

13 The intersection of public relations and activism: a multinational

look at suffrage movements 206

DIANA KNOTT MARTINELLI

14 Ubuntu, professionalism, activism, and the rise of public

relations in Uganda 224

BARBRA NATIFU AND AMOS ZIKUSOOKA

15 Sarah Josepha Hale, editor/advocate 239

ERIKA J. PRIBANIC-SMITH

vi Contents

PART IV

Public relations history and the profession 255

16 The historical development of public relations in Turkey: the rise

of a profession in times of social transformation 257

A. BANU BIÇAKÇI AND PELIN HÜRMERIÇ

17 An agent of change: public relations in early

twentieth-century Australia 273

ROBERT CRAWFORD AND JIM MACNAMARA

18 The “new technique”: public relations, propaganda, and the

American public, 1920–25 290

MARGOT OPDYCKE LAMME

19 Arthur Page and the professionalization of public relations 306

KAREN MILLER RUSSELL

20 The good reason of public relations: PR News and the

selling of a field 321

BURTON ST. JOHN III

21 Defining public in public relations: how the 1920s debate

over public opinion influenced early philosophies of

public relations 340

KEVIN STOKER

Index 352

Contents vii

List of contributors

Tunde Akanni is a lecturer in the Journalism Department of the Adebola

Adegunwa School of Communication, Lagos State University, Nigeria.

Akanni is an alumnus of Columbia University’s School of International and

Public Affairs, and a 2003 NUFFIC Fellow at Eras Mundus University’s

Institute of Social Studies at The Hague, Netherlands.

A. Banu Bıçakçı, Ph.D., earned her doctoral degree in public relations in 2009

at Anadolu University. She has been a member of Yeditepe University’s

Public Relations and Publicity Department since 2002, where she has been

giving lectures since 2006.

Robert Brown, Ph.D., teaches in the Communications Department of Salem

State University in Massachusetts and the graduate division of management at

Harvard University School of Continuing Education. He has been com￾missioned by Routledge to write a book on public relations, the working

title of which is The Public Relations of Everything.

Francis Xavier Carty, Ph.D., was born in Dublin, Ireland, in 1941. He lectured

in public relations and journalism at Dublin Institute of Technology (DIT)

where he led the public relations program for 20 years. His Ph.D. thesis (2006)

was on Archbishop John Charles McQuaid of Dublin and the Second Vatican

Council.

Matt Cecil, Ph.D., is an associate professor and the director of the Elliott School

of Communication at Wichita State University, specializing in media his￾tory. He is the author of a forthcoming book, J. Edgar Hoover and the

American Press: Journalism, Public Relations and the Legitimation of the

FBI. He is working on a new book exploring the work of iconoclastic

journalist George Seldes.

Robert Crawford, Ph.D., is an associate professor of public communication at

the University of Technology, Sydney. He has published widely on the history

of advertising and public relations in Australia, including But Wait, There’s

More: A History of Australian Advertising, 1900–2000 (Melbourne University

Press, 2008).

Melissa D. Dodd, Ph.D., is an assistant professor of advertising–public relations

at the University of Central Florida. Her research interests include social

capital theory, corporate social responsibility, social media, and measure￾ment as they relate to public relations. Connect with her via her personal

website: www.ladypr.com.

Ferdinando Fasce, Ph.D., is a full professor of modern and contemporary history

at the University of Genoa, Italy. His interests focus on the history of U.S.

public relations and advertising. His books include The Hearts and Souls of

Business: Advertising and Consumption in the American Century (Rome, 2012,

in Italian).

Pelin Hürmeriç, Ph.D., completed her doctoral degree in public relations and

publicity in 2009 at Marmara University. She has been a member of Yeditepe

University’s Public Relations and Publicity Department since 2001, where

she has been giving lectures since 2006.

Ismail Adegboyega. Ibraheem, Ph.D., is a lecturer in the Department of Mass

Communication, University of Lagos, Nigeria. He also worked for several

national and international organizations as communication consultant.

Michael Kunczik, Ph.D., is a professor emeritus at the Johannes Gutenberg

University in Mainz, Germany. His main fields of research are public rela￾tions, media and violence, journalism research, war reporting, mass media

and social change, and images of nations.

Margot Opdycke Lamme, Ph.D., is an associate professor in the Department

of Advertising and Public Relations at the University of Alabama. She has

more than 15 years’ experience as a practitioner, and she is accredited in

public relations (APR). Her book; Public Relations and Religion in American

History Evangelism, Temperance, and Business (New York: Routledge), is

scheduled for publication in 2014.

Jacquie L’Etang, Ph.D., is Chair of Public Relations and Applied Commu￾nications, Queen Margaret University, Scotland. She has written historical

and historiographical articles in Public Relations Review and the Journal of

Communication Management, and is author of Public Relations in Britain:

A History of Professional Practice in the 20th Century (2004). She has also

published on a range of critical themes since the early 1990s, including

CSR, rhetorics, ethics, and professionalism.

Mordecai Lee, Ph.D., is a professor of governmental affairs at the University of

Wisconsin–Milwaukee. He is author of Congress vs. the Bureaucracy: Muzzling

Agency Public Relations (2011) and The First Presidential Communications

Agency: FDR’s Office of Government Reports (2005). He also co-edited

The Practice of Government Public Relations (2012).

Jim Macnamara, Ph.D., is a professor of public communication at the University

of Technology, Sydney. He is the author of 12 books, including The 21st

List of contributors ix

Century Media (R)evolution (Peter Lang, 2010) and Public Relations

Theories, Practices, Critiques (Pearson Australia, 2012).

Diana Knott Martinelli, after 15 years of professional communications

practice, was named a Park Fellow at the University of North Carolina–Chapel

Hill, where she earned a doctorate in mass communication. Currently the

Widmeyer Professor in Public Relations at West Virginia University, her

research primarily involves government and political communications practice,

and public relations history.

Simon Moore, Ph.D., is an associate professor in the Information Design

and Corporate Communication Department at Bentley University in Mas￾sachusetts, which he currently chairs. He writes on communication

in relation to global business and public affairs, issues and crisis management,

and history. Moore has a doctorate in history from Oxford University.

Barbra Natifu is a doctoral student in the Department of Media and Com￾munication, University of Oslo, where her dissertation research topic is

“Co-orientation in Reputation Management: A Makerere University Study

(1960–2010).” Her approach to studying public relations as a social practice

within organizations is embedded in communication research, historical

analysis, and sociological theory.

Abigail Odozi Ogwezzy-Ndisika, Ph.D., teaches mass communication at the

University of Lagos, Nigeria, with an emphasis on corporate and develop￾ment communication. She has industry experience in the various professions

of mass communication. In addition, she consults for various ministries,

departments, and agencies (MDAs) of the Federal Government of Nigeria.

Erika J. Pribanic-Smith, Ph.D., is an assistant professor in the Department of

Communication at the University of Texas at Arlington. A veteran of print

and online journalism, Pribanic-Smith conducts research on political commu￾nication in newspapers and magazines of the nineteenth and early twentieth

centuries.

Karen Miller Russell, Ph.D., is an associate professor at the University of

Georgia and is editor of the Journal of Public Relations Research. She recei￾ved the 2001 Pathfinder Award from the Institute for Public Relations in

recognition of the significance of her original research on US public relations

history.

Christian Schnee, Ph.D., is a senior lecturer in public relations at the Univer￾sity of Worcester. He studied history, political science, and public relations.

For his doctoral research, he explored strategic reputation management in

British politics. Before becoming an academic in 2008, he worked for 10 years

as a practitioner in Germany.

Cylor Spaulding, Ph.D., is an assistant professor of public relations at Towson

University. His research primarily focuses on historical perspectives in

x List of contributors

public relations, and public relations and the LGBT community. Previously,

he worked for a number of public relations agencies, including Rogers &

Cowan and Weber Shandwick.

Burton St. John III, Ph.D., is an associate professor in the Communication

and Theater Arts Department at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, VA.

With more than 15 years’ experience as a practitioner, his research focuses

on the historical and contemporary aspects of the influence of public rela￾tions rhetoric, especially in such arenas as corporate social responsibility,

community relations, ethics, and news framing.

Kevin Stoker, Ph.D., is an associate professor and associate dean of faculty in

the College of Media and Communication at Texas Tech University. He

researches in media ethics and philosophy, and media history, and is espe￾cially interested in the philosophical implications of intersections in public

relations and journalism history.

Napawan Tantivejakul, Ph.D., is an assistant professor in the Department of

Public Relations, Faculty of Communication Arts, Chulalongkorn University,

Thailand. Her areas of interest include media effects, message strategy, audi￾ence analysis, brand and corporate communications, and public relations, with

a particular interest in the history of public relations.

Donn James Tilson, Ph.D., associate professor at the University of Miami, has

published on public relations and religion. His book, The Promotion of Devo￾tion: Saints, Celebrities and Shrines (2011, Common Ground), is a pio￾neering work on communication, religion, and culture. He is developing

research, curriculum, and programming initiatives on issues of diversity

and public relations, including interfaith dialogue.

Amos Zikusooka is a lecturer in public relations and advertising in the

Department of Mass Communication, Makerere University. He has previously

worked as a strategic communication researcher, trainer, and consultant in

Uganda, where he has developed and participated in implementing over

50 public relations and communication strategies in the last 10 years.

List of contributors xi

Foreword

The challenges of engaging public

relations history

Jacquie L’Etang

Editors’ note: The following presents further thoughts since the publication of the

author’s “Writing PR history: Issues, methods and politics,” which directly follows

this piece.

This volume opens up the field of public relations in many ways, yet in so doing,

it highlights fundamental questions and challenges that concern historical work

in public relations. Some of these challenges are common to all historical

writing, others are particular to historical research specifically in public relations.

In this foreword, I outline a range of issues that confront public relations historical

projects and argue specifically for the importance of historical sociology (L’Etang,

2013). It is argued that historical sociology offers a route toward critical engage￾ments with public relations history and a clear alternative to functional glo￾balizing frameworks that endeavor to totalize and simplify. The key issues

outlined in this forward concern: (1) authorship, credibility, and professionalism;

(2) aims, projects, and functionalism; and (3) theoretical and methodological

considerations.

The first challenges that face the would-be public relations historian are

those of credibility and legitimacy. Expertise in communication theories does

not necessarily mean that a public relations academic is equipped to take on a

historical project, and professional historians (those with doctorates in history

employed by universities to teach and carry out historical scholarship) might

well look askance at those who attempt such work. Although established schools

of mass communication historians exist in the US, it seems inevitable that

full-time historians might regard the work of enthusiasts from other disciplines

as amateur at best, and resist such efforts. From the perspective of historical

scholars the efforts of public relations historians may be seen as an encroach￾ment on their field. There are two major implications emerging from this obser￾vation. First, that there is existing work relevant for understanding public

relations and its development that has to be extracted from within existing

historical and political literature. Second, that there is a burden on all public

relations scholars attempting historical work to engage fully with historical para￾digms, theory, and methodology—or their work will have no purchase within

mainstream history and likely be sidelined, or worse, disparaged. On a more

positive note, there are opportunities to draw into the public relations aca￾demic community scholars from history, politics, economics, and international

relations whose work encompasses strategic communications.

The next challenges are determining the object, purpose, and scope of public

relations history, with some public relations historians opting for a narrow

contemporary occupational approach, while others reach out more expansively

(as a number of scholars do in this book) to embrace public communication

such as religious communication. Neither approach can be taken for granted

and requires justification and explanation within the context of the culture under

review.

Furthermore, the deployment of strategic communications in the formation

and maintenance of states and state structures (accompanied by elite networks

that support these structures) necessarily weaves some public relations his￾tories into issues of power and hegemony. One of the challenges of public

relations history is that it is bound to socio-political and economic contexts

that require a broad scope, as the US public relations historian Cutlip dis￾covered in his effort to document the evolution of US public relations practice

from the Colonial era (L’Etang, 2004, 2008; Cutlip, 1994). Cutlip realized

that, in order to tackle this project, he would need to write a full American

history to contextualize the practice. Faced with this momentous task, he deci￾ded instead to limit the work to a history of American public relations agen￾cies and their founders (L’Etang, 2004, 2008; Cutlip, 1994). The pragmatics of

this approach were useful in gathering detailed data about the agency business,

but arguably less useful in understanding the role of public relations in US

society, the rationale for its emergence and growth, or its impacts. A narrower

scope on the occupation or occupational bodies facilitates insights into key

players and influential individuals and the values of an insider group, but may

privilege biographical approaches that imply that “the history of the world is but

the biography of great men” (Carlyle, quoted in L’Etang, 1995, p. 11). Occu￾pational approaches possibly reveal less about public relations’ influences—or

the wider emergence of promotional discourses by individuals and organiza￾tions—than they reveal about cultural mores as they change over time. For

example, in Britain, until at least the mid-twentieth century, individual self￾promotion or boosting was considered bad form and criticized in various

issues of the Institute of Public Relations Journal in the 1940s and 1950s,

although now it is common practice on social media. Additionally, although it

may be assumed that Anglophone public relations is a homogenous practice,

the public relations histories of, for example, Australia, New Zealand, the UK,

Canada, and the US are distinctly different. This volume does introduce a

range of cultural perspectives on public relations, which hint at the potential

for engagement with wider socio-cultural trains of thought within the public

relations academy (Edwards and Hodges, 2011). Such work has the potential

to correct the initial imbalance that saw the domination of a singular US

typology—the four models—which was employed inappropriately as a frame

both to interpret the emergence of public relations in many different cultural

Foreword xiii

contexts—and to theorize more widely about the role, scope, and functionality

of public relations.

It is noticeable that US scholars often refer to public relations history

without seeing the need to qualify their references as being specifically related

to the US experience—it appears to be assumed either that the US experience

was the first, primary, or most important public relations phenomenon. Further￾more, there has been a tendency for some scholars outside the US to assume

the emergence of public relations within strict limits of globalized practice and

the presence of international consultancies, rather than exploring more deeply

forms of public communication within their socio-cultural contexts. This may

have been to avoid connections with propaganda or political regimes, which

reiterates the point that public relations history writing is itself political and

ideological, not neutral.

A further layer to be taken into account when embarking upon a historical

project is the political values of the author. Free-market neo-liberal values or

neo-Marxist values, to take just two examples, will shape a historical account

as clearly as will functionalism or critical theory, Foucauldian genealogy, radical

feminism, or queer theory. Such influences need to be acknowledged and incor￾porated into the strategic methodological choices that precede any detailed

archive work or interviews. Pearson’s analysis of early US public relations

histories provides an example of such meta-analysis (Pearson, 1992).

Historical work is more complex than simply telling a story or stories, or

presenting simplified models that apparently explain or even evangelically pro￾selytize the development of neatly packaged public relations practices into

typologies or straightforward determinist cause–effect explanations. Historical

work demands the maintenance of foresight on the detail, and the cultivation

of the long sight on broader-level developments and societal dynamics, as well

as more theoretical zeitgeists. Meeting these demands at the technical level

requires flexibility and patience in engagement.

Thus the projects and purposes of public relations necessitate an intellectually

honest reflexivity from the outset that deepens and complexifies as a consequence

of long-time immersion in historical data (whether oral history interviews or

archives) and a struggle with sense-making. In the first instance, those explor￾ing public relations histories and “herstories” need to consider their position

in relation to the definition of the object of their research. Are they taking the

narrow definition of the specific occupation that displays aspirations (as yet

unrealized) toward obtaining a professional status? Or are they taking the

broader public communication definition that permits the inclusion of the pre￾modern? Although a major paradigm in public relations is that of rhetoric, and

despite the fact that early public relations scholars made reference to classical

origins in Greece, Rome, and Egypt, the focus has largely been on heritage and

empire-building, not on connections to other pre-modern ideas related to social

influence such as magic and mythology (L’Etang, 2008, 2013b). At present

the history of ideas in public relations is quite limited, not least in its temporal

and imaginative scope.

xiv Foreword