Talk:Public relations

Critical public relations research

There is a lot of great research being done by critical cultural scholars. It would be great for that to be represented. Tiggeritian (talk) 01:45, 24 July 2023 (UTC)

@Tiggeritian: No one's likely to do that work without at least pointers to the principal sources you have in mind.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  13:29, 28 November 2024 (UTC)

"Publics" in "Definitions"

Several of the definitions of public relations, including both those from PRSA and the CIPR one (which I added to the article recently) use the word "publics" in the plural. This is an odd usage, and probably needs an explanation.

There is a discussion of this in "Key Concepts in Public Relations" (Franklin et al, 2009) but since I am an author of that I didn't want to add a citation of my own work.

I would suggest something such as:

According to Quentin Langley in Franklin et al the use of the word "publics" in the plural is "central to the understanding" of public relations. Langley writes "all organisations have a series of publics, or stakeholders, on whom their success depends". He then follows Hayward (1991) in dividing the publics into "customers (past, present, and future),staff (past, present, and future), investors (past, present, and future), politicians and regulators, neighbours, and business partners (suppliers, distributors, etc.)".

Langley also goes on to contest the marketing concept of seeing public relations as part of marketing, which he claims is too focused on just one of Hayward's six publics: customers.

• https://sk.sagepub.com/books/key-concepts-in-public-relations/n124.xml - Franklin et al (2009), Key Concepts in Public Relations. London: Sage.
• Hayward, R, (1991), All About Public Relations: how to build business success on good communications. London: McGraw Hill.

Qlangley (talk) 14:57, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

I have added a "Publics" subsection to the Definitions section broadly aligned with Qlangley's suggestion, with the addition of a citation of Hayward's book. The suggestion seems non-controversial but also helpful to readers who might query the use of the plural term. Paul W (talk) 19:05, 26 June 2024 (UTC)

Good plan, per MOS:JARGON, etc. When specialists in a field coin new terms, and especially when they use pre-existing ones in unusual and potentially confusing ways, to convey a special meaning, then our readers need to know what that meaning is.

Over the last couple of decades there has been a major rise in what I call "academic pluralization", especially in the social sciences, generally to implicate or signify "diverse stakeholder groups" and to sort of indicate that there are hairs to split without splitting them at that point in the material. I personally consider it an obnoxious form of virtue signaling (and would hypothesize that it's a symptom of treating intersectionality as if a thing unto itself instead of simply an effect of multiple distinct causes producing sometimes synergistic results within particular groups). The general implication seems to be something like: "Any concept can be interpreted multiple different ways, and we're electing to treat each and every such interpretation as a distinct thing unto itself worthy of independent and equal consideration and study". So, WP using such academic-plural constructions in its own voice is apt to raise WP:DUE issues, since many such interpretations are WP:FRINGE. It's sort of both-sides-ism mutated into all-sides-ism.

But we seem to be quite stuck with this practice, and our readers need to know what in-discipline writers mean when they use linguistic contortions like "publics", "masculinities", "Englishes", "pasts".  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  13:27, 28 November 2024 (UTC)

Merge from Media relations

That other "article" is simply a WP:POVFORK using a different term, and written in a promotional and how-to style. As a retired media and public relations professional, I would say these are the same field, entirely. "Media relations" is simply the aspects of PR that interface with journalists, newswires, and other aspects of the mainstream media, which is the vast majority of PR (as somewhat distinct from advertising/marketing). Other aspects of PR more broadly, like event hosting, etc., are all connected to media relations, because the media are generally the means by which the broader public is reached about those and other matters. Anyway, I'm not sure how much of that page is salvageable. It has few sources, several are iffy, almost all are old, and any salvageable material from the piece would need rewriting.

PS: The actual bulk of the other article, from "Media relations and public relations practitioners" on down, is entirely about PR in general and not specific in any way to the media-relations segment of PR.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  17:39, 17 July 2024 (UTC)

I think at this point we can consider that this merge is uncontroversial and that it can go ahead, seeing the absence of response here. Choucas Bleu (T·C) 22:13, 10 November 2024 (UTC)

Alright. Guess I should put it on my to-do list.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  13:53, 21 November 2024 (UTC)