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Public Relations Inquiry 

Journal Description

Public Relations Inquiry is an international, peer-reviewed journal for conceptual, reflexive and critical discussion on public relations, supporting debates on new ways of thinking about public relations in social, cultural and political contexts, in order to improve understanding of its work and effects beyond the purely organisational realm. We interpret public relations in a broad sense, recognising the influence of public relations practices on the many forms of contemporary strategic, promotional communication initiated by organisations, institutions and individuals.

The practice of public relations arises at points of societal and organisational change and transformation, affecting many aspects of political, economic, social and cultural life. Reflecting this, we aim to mobilize research that speaks to a scholars in diverse fields and welcome submissions from any area that speak to the purpose of the journal, including (but not only) public relations, organizational communication, media and journalism studies, cultural studies, anthropology, political communication, sociology, organizational studies, development communication, migration studies, visual communication, management and marketing, digital media and data studies.

We actively seek contributions that can extend the range of perspectives used to understand public relations, its role in societal change and continuity, and its impact on cultural and political life. We particularly welcome multi-disciplinary debate about the communication practices that shape major human concerns, including:

  • globalisation, politics, and public relations in international communication
  • migration, refugees, displaced populations
  • terrorism, public diplomacy
  • public and corporate governance
  • diversity and cultural impacts of PR
  • the natural and built environments
  • Communication, space and place
  • The development and practices of major industries such as health, food, sport, tourism, technology
  • The cultural industries (theatre, film, music, and the arts
  • the history and politics of public relations as a discipline, promotional occupation and professional field

Public Relations Inquiry provides a unified space to facilitate reflection on such topics and others of global concern and local relevance. Submissions should be conceptually innovative and theoretically robust. They must be rigorous in their approach, detailed and precise in their argument. Theoretical and empirical papers are equally welcome. Interdisciplinary work is especially important to the journal, particularly if it extends the relevance of public relations theory and practice to new contexts and academic fields.

In line with our desire to encourage innovative and creative research in the field, a wide range of methodologies are acceptable to Public Relations Inquiry. Traditional qualitative methods, critical applications of quantitative methods, and marginalised empirical and analytical approaches, are all welcomed.

This journal is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).

Journal Feed

  • The origins of public relations in Greece: Tracing the missing link and excavating landmark cases
    by Prodromos Yannas
    Public Relations Inquiry, Ahead of Print. The purpose of this paper is to provide an historical narrative tracing precedents of Greek Public Relations (PR) practice as far back as the organizing of mega events in mid-nineteenth century culminating in the first modern Olympic Games in Athens in 1896. The analysis documents that PR activities are interwoven with Greek governments’ initiatives aimed at tourism promotion. The paper is based on archival material and secondary sources. Access was granted to the special collections of the National Library of Greece and the Hellenic Literary and Historical Archive of the National Bank of Greece […]
  • Book Review: Consumer Activism Promotional Culture and Resistance
    by Vassilis Charitsis
    Public Relations Inquiry, Ahead of Print.
  • Delving into disengagement as a distinct construct: A proposed research agenda for public relations scholars
    by Laura L Lemon
    Public Relations Inquiry, Ahead of Print. Public relations scholars have greatly impacted the understanding of employee engagement in terms of definitions, theory development, antecedents, outcomes, and progressing scholarship to explore changes in the modern workplace. Yet, understanding the nuances around being disengaged is absent from most of the public relations literature. In addition, although much is known about the connection between employee engagement and internal communication, little has been identified about how internal communication contributes to or ameliorates the experience of being disengaged. Therefore, public relations researchers have the chance to move scholarship on disengagement forward by examining it as […]
  • Responsibility, sustainability, or environmental justice? Strategic communication and evolving expectations for stewardship and citizenship
    by Luke Capizzo
    Public Relations Inquiry, Ahead of Print. This conceptual paper analyzes the definitions and the explicit and implicit relationships among Environmental, Social, and Corporate Governance (ESG), Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), and environmental justice. We explore their roles in public relations theory and practice. Furthermore, we suggest a path for articulating justice and equity more explicitly for future ESG communication. This synthesis leads to defining six equity strategies for ESG communication: Clarity, conflict, reflectiveness, community empowerment, and collaborative, justice-oriented outcomes.
  • Don’t say “the D word”: Exploring death taboo and biopower in pregnancy loss awareness advocacy
    by Sarah A. Aghazadeh
    Public Relations Inquiry, Ahead of Print. Public relations (PR) has explored a host of taboo and stigma riddled health topics to understand the role of communication and advocacy to improve wellbeing. However, PR scholarship has not sufficiently investigated taboo as a mechanism of social control within sociocultural theory or the role of the discipline in shaping meanings about death and bereavement. As a step in this endeavor, this study explored pregnancy loss through a sociocultural perspective of PR. It employs Foucault’s biopower to tease out how pregnancy loss awareness advocates/activists perceive taboo as regulation and their methods to push back […]
  • Undergraduate public relations education in the United Kingdom: Quo Vadis?
    by Michal Chmiel
    Public Relations Inquiry, Ahead of Print. In the current context of the undergraduate PR academic education in the United Kingdom degrees being shut down or merged with other communication disciplines, the present essay represents a timely reflection on the results and internal incoherence of PR education provision in the United Kingdom. Starting from the key idea that public relations is a mature occupation and academic social discipline, we developed a thorough analysis of PR fields, where we analysed the intra- and inter-dynamics between these various types of fields, aiming at identifying the main issues that impact the teaching of PR […]
  • Challenge or resist dominant discourses: Authenticity as a strategic component of activist public relations
    by Naíde Müller
    Public Relations Inquiry, Ahead of Print. Although there is evidence that perceived authenticity has a positive impact on corporate reputation, the implications of authenticity in activist communication for social change have not been addressed. Within a sociocultural theoretical approach this paper provides an ethnographic account of how and why human rights activists enact authenticity and aims to better understand the implications of authenticity in activist communication oriented towards social change. An ethnographic study was carried out during 6 months, with two human rights activist organizations. In addition to participant observation, documents produced by the organizations were also analyzed and twenty-five semi-structured […]
  • Book Review: A Strategic Nature: Public Relations and the Politics of American Environmentalism
    by Karen Miller Russell
    Public Relations Inquiry, Volume 13, Issue 1, Page 123-125, January 2024.
  • All creatures great and small: Faith, spirituality, environmental-animal rights activism and public relations as covenantal stewardship
    by Donn J Tilson
    Public Relations Inquiry, Ahead of Print. This study extends the historical record of faith/spirituality-inspired social activism, an under-explored area of advocacy, by examining such campaigning for environmental and animal rights and the worldview and model of public relations that guide such efforts. A combination of qualitative methods was used to obtain data on public relations as conceptualized and practiced including a textual analysis of historical material and institutional media. Throughout history faith/spirituality has inspired Indigenous peoples, governments, and individuals to advocate for environmental and animal rights, playing a central role in the formation and practice of a worldview, caritas, embracing […]
  • Public relations, activism, and the culture of assertion: The case of Blackrock’s Larry Fink and the letter to the CEOs
    by Joshua Foust
    Public Relations Inquiry, Ahead of Print. This study argues that public relations scholarship on activism needs to better contextualize the ascendancy of non-dialogic, raw assertions in today’s public sphere. Analyzing 10 years of corporate communication by Blackrock CEO Larry Fink, we show how his corporate activist rhetoric suggests a growing disregard for dialogic communication, which is typically articulated within American public relations scholarship as a vital component in, for example, Grunig’s Excellence Theory and Heath’s rhetorical perspectives. This analysis of Fink’s communication further suggests the need for American public relations scholarship to move beyond a false binary between external and internal […]
  • Beyond economic dependency: Nation branding in Latin America subdued to stereotypes and neoliberal globalization
    by Pablo Miño
    Public Relations Inquiry, Ahead of Print. Latin American nation branding has been conceived as an economic development strategy by governments within the region, justified by the commercial and political dependency of their countries on the Global North. This study takes that perspective one step forward, proposing that the economic and political dependency of Latin American countries is embedded in the representations and stereotypes that exist about the region within different forms of global news and entertainment media. Through in-depth interviews with 25 nation branding professionals with extensive experience working on behalf of Latin American governments, this study suggests that existing […]
  • Editorial: Opening doors in public relations research
    by Kristin Demetrious
    Public Relations Inquiry, Volume 13, Issue 1, Page 3-7, January 2024.
  • Humanoid artificial intelligence, media conferences and natural responses to journalists’ questions: The end of (human-to-human) public relations?
    by Lukasz Swiatek
    Public Relations Inquiry, Volume 13, Issue 1, Page 113-121, January 2024. In a world-first human-robot media conference (held in Geneva, Switzerland, in July 2023), highly life-like humanoid robots gave answers of unprecedented sophistication to journalists’ questions. The media conference highlighted the extent to which artificial intelligence (AI) is changing the dynamics of public relations with extraordinary speed and, in particular, now posing a very real threat to the jobs of (human) practitioners. It is also likely to lead to the devaluing of professional communication undertaken by human beings. This polemical essay not only contends that scholars and practitioners have moved […]
  • When communist propaganda meets western public relations: Examining Vietnam’s government pandemic communication
    by Thu Luong Le
    Public Relations Inquiry, Volume 13, Issue 1, Page 33-67, January 2024. This article explores the communication strategies used by Vietnam’s communist government during the earlier phases of the COVID-19 pandemic. What makes this case worth studying is the examination of Vietnam’s hybridised use of Western public relations strategies with communist propaganda and the fluctuating, emphasis on one or the other depending on the outbreak’s implications. While Vietnam was praised as a pandemic hero in 2020, thanks in part to some academic and news media representations of the Vietnam government as an effective communicator, this perception changed when the Delta variant […]
  • Understanding Australian multiculturalism in public relations practice through a social justice lens
    by Som Sengmany
    Public Relations Inquiry, Volume 13, Issue 1, Page 9-32, January 2024. While the Australian PR discipline and industry has acknowledged the demographic realities of multiculturalism, it has yet to critically interrogate multiculturalism as an ideological concept, contested discourse and politicised practice. This paper addresses this gap by investigating how public relations (PR) practitioners and culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) stakeholders in the Victorian government and multicultural sectors understand multiculturalism. It situates PR practice, and PR practitioners, within broader theoretical perspectives on Australian multiculturalism. In doing so, this paper contributes to knowledge in two ways: firstly, by identifying the significant deficits […]
  • Folk devils and moral vigilantes – The occupational branding of public affairs consultants and the management of stigma
    by Elin Helgesson
    Public Relations Inquiry, Volume 13, Issue 1, Page 69-91, January 2024. Public affairs is a rising field of practise; at the same time, it is reputationally complicated. In view of the widespread concern about the impact of its practise on democracy, this study explores how practitioners construct an occupational identity and present their occupation as meaningful to a wider audience. Using the concepts of occupational branding and stigma management communication, the study unpacks how practitioners manage and understand the stigma associated with their occupation and how the meaning of public affairs work is negotiated, described and framed. Drawing on interviews […]
  • Public relations recruitment as boundary-making: The client, the ‘fit’ and the disposability of diversity
    by Lee Edwards
    Public Relations Inquiry, Volume 13, Issue 1, Page 93-112, January 2024. In this article we explore the ways in which specialist recruitment practices for the PR industry influence the pursuit of diversity in the profession. Drawing on interviews from an exploratory study of specialist PR recruitment in the UK, we combine Abbott’s theory of boundary-making between professional fields with existing research on the exclusionary dynamics of recruitment in professions, to explain how PR recruitment consolidates the focus on client and candidate ‘fit,’ and is likely to work in favour of preserving the dominance of middle-class, white and gendered identities in […]