Purpose The purpose of this paper is to respond to Coombs and Holladay’s (2012a) concern that textbooks have had a powerful and negative influence on public relations’ curricula because they have positioned public relations as a function of business, rather than as a field of knowledge and practice that plays an emancipatory role in society. Design/methodology/approach The paper is a diachronic, thematic analysis of public relations textbooks dating from 1981 to 2017. This methodology is valid because textbooks not only disseminate the knowledge base associated with a community of practice, but they are also influential legitimisers of curricula and bodies of knowledge. Findings The findings show that public relations textbooks are slowly evolving to include activist studies as a content area from both a strategic business perspective and a critical perspective. Research limitations/implications The sample size is small but sufficient to indicate the beginnings of a trend. While the influence of textbooks on curricula is waning as students look beyond prescribed texts to a wider array of readings, they remain the most influential educational medium worldwide (Fuchs and Bock, 2018). Practical implications The paper calls for a greater inclusion of activist studies in contemporary public relations curricula to prepare practitioners for changes to the communications environment, as well as an opportunity for public relations to reposition itself as an emancipatory field of knowledge and practice. Social implications Activism studies, as a curriculum field, provide a foundation for positioning public relations as an emancipatory practice. Originality/value The paper proposes that incorporating activism studies into public relations curricula is a way for public relations to reframe itself as a field of knowledge and practice that plays an emancipatory role in society.
Changes in the way we produce, consume and distribute personal commmunication are subtly mediating new perceptions about communication appropriateness and literacy. While not denying that ideational content is an important carrier of meaning, this paper argues that it is the changing material composition of screen based (as opposed to paper based) personal correspondence that is challenging traditional perceptions. It outlines two methodological perspectives that allow us to compare personal correspondence, such as a letter written on paper, with a text or a tweet. It then compares several different examples of personal correspondence from pre-digital and digital times in order to show how our perceptions of what constitutes effective, appropriate and literate personal correspondence are changing, and to show that the conventions around the personal textual communication of traditional letters were just a highly formalised genre -a set of snobberies shaped by the unique materialities of the literacy tools of the day.
No abstract
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.