PART I: OVERVIEW Introduction In the absence of a general theory that describes the rise and growth of public relations, scholars have tended to organize public relations and its antecedents into time periods that present a progressive evolution from unsophisticated and unethical early roots to planned, strategic, and ethical campaigns of the current day. We argue that such attempts at periodization have obscured our understanding of public relations and its history. Indeed, public relations historians have long called for such a departure, noting the constraints it has imposed on understanding the development of public relations in the United States and around the world (e.g., Brown, 2003; Gower, 2007, 2008 Hoy, Raaz, & Wehmeier, 2007 L'Etang, 2004, 2008; Lamme, 2003 McBride, 1989; Miller, 2000 Pearson, 1990; Piasecki, 2000 Toledano, 2005). We therefore analyzed scholarship about public relations (whether it is called publicity, press agentry, propaganda, or public relations) prior to 1900 to understand the growth of the field in a variety of contexts and time periods. This is not an attempt to catalog additional antecedents to 20th century practices. Instead, this study seeks to break away from the misleading dependence on linear interpretations of the field's past and construct a broad, long-term view of the development and institutionalization of persuasive organizational communication strategies and techniques. In the process, we seek to correct misunderstandings about public relations history which have (mis)informed public relations theory for more than 20 years and to describe and understand the historical relationship between public relations, the mass media, and the historical contexts in which public relations emerged. By doing so, we seek to depart from what L'Etang (2008, p. 321) called the patterning, or colligation, of history, which can artificially inflate or diminish the historical role of people and events, and "reappraise the criteria used to establish the meaning of value in the field" (Creedon, 1989, p. 29). The effect of these efforts, then, will be to remove the spin - the conscious positioning of public relations history that has heretofore dominated scholarly understanding of the field's development. SIGNIFICANCE TO MASS COMMUNICATION Public relations history has been of great interest to disciplines lying outside the mass communication field, such as social history (Ewen, 1996; Pimlott, 1951), business history (Gras, 1945; Marchand, 1998, Raucher, 1968, Tedlow, 1979), political science (Maltese, 1992), cultural history (Leach, 1993), English (Davis, 2007), and history (Billington, 1978; Goldman, 1948, 1978; Nevins, 1963). Mass communication scholars also have contributed studies of significance to American public relations history, largely concerning the press and government (e.g., Cone, 2007; Lumsden, 2000; Oukrop, 1976; Streitmatter, 1990), religion (e.g., Ferre, 1993; Nord, 1984), and the advocacy press (e.g., Burt, 1998, 1999; Steiner, 1983; Folkerts, 1985). The latter, in particular, has been found to serve as a tool for community-building (Steiner, 1983; Folkerts, 1985), for enhancing a movement's legitimacy (Folkerts, 1985), for articulating a movement's message, for propagating a movement's mission, for "recruiting, mobilizing, and sustaining support and membership" (Burt, 2000, p. 73), and for serving as "community bulletin boards" (Burt, 1999, p. 39). Finally, three authors grounded in journalism have, to date, written the most extensively on three 20th century public relations pioneers: Hiebert (1966) on Ivy Lee, Tye (1998) on Edward L. Bernays, and Henry (1997, 1998, 1999) on Doris Fleischman. Within the public relations field, however, scholars have pursued new theoretical ground by looking outside the field to apply multi-tiered analyses and frameworks (e.g., Brown, 2006; L'Etang, 2004; Miller, 2000; and Pearson, 1990). Others have considered public relations history in the context of ethics (McBride, 1989) and ethical propaganda (St. …

Removing the Spin: Toward a New Theory of Public Relations History

Social responsibility of business

Management writer Tom Peters noted that what gets measured is what gets done in organizations. Therefore, measurement and evaluation models and approaches provide insights into strategy. Furthermor...

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Expanding Evaluation to Progress Strategic Communication: Beyond Message Tracking to Open Listening

Purpose – A number of scholars including Benno Signitzer and Jacquie L'Etang have proposed public diplomacy as an alternative model to describe and/or inform the practices of public relations. However, international relations and political science scholars claim major differences between public diplomacy and PR, and few studies have sought to reconcile these claims and counter‐claims. The purpose of this paper is to report a comparative analysis of key concepts and principles of public diplomacy.Design/methodology/approach – This article reports a comparative analysis of key concepts and principles of public diplomacy and the “new diplomacy” as described by Shaun Riordan and public relations (PR) as defined in Excellence theory and other contemporary models of PR to identify commonalties as well as divergences, and discusses how these can inform PR theory and practice.Findings – This analysis shows similarities between these fields of practice, as well as six unique concepts and principles of public diplo...

Corporate and organisational diplomacy: an alternative paradigm to PR

Purpose – This paper seeks to clarify the various aspects of legitimacy in public relations in order to establish a better understanding of the limits of professionalization. Legitimacy has always been a central concept in public relations. In order to ensure a license to operate, the conduct of organizations needs to be perceived as legitimate by their stakeholders and the public in general. Public relations has since its conception as a modern profession been confronted with several issues concerning the profession's own legitimacy. The overall cause for these legitimacy problems is often ascribed to the immaturity of the profession and professionalization is generally regarded as an appropriate cure.Design/methodology/approach – Through theorization of the connection between legitimacy, power and professionalization the paper points to two important challenges to the professionalization of public relations: the conflicts of legitimizing the potentially disputed role of public relations as an intermedia...

The double‐edged sword of legitimacy in public relations

Two-way street : the emergence of the public relations counsel

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Two-way street : the emergence of the public relations counsel