Annals of Promotional Culture

Abstract

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Chasing the Mainstream: Corporate Social Advocacy and Online Content Governance

“…"The notion of a nonpromotional political sphere, even as an ideal type, is no longer useful (if indeed it ever was); it leads to normative arguments about transparent communication as a necessary precondition for democracy and participation in civic life without specifying what is meant by transparency and why this is a positive." (Aronczyk, 2015(Aronczyk, , p.2021 This dissertation fits within a long-running debate in communication studies that pits political economy research and its arguments of power asymmetries, corporate manipulation, and coercion against cultural studies arguments in favour of the capacity of individuals to critically engage with public communication, despite power imbalances. The political economy of communication perspective can, in arguing for the power of market actors, be accused of treating individuals as dupes of powerful interests, particularly when the individuals are engaging with branded products and processes.…”

“…Positioning commercial public relations activity as part of public deliberation poses challenges for many theorists of the public sphere, as commercial power and profit motivations have historically been considered fatal to true public deliberation with its emphasis on the equality of parties to political discussion. However, scholars have challenged the usefulness of public sphere theory, suggesting that idealizing "nonpromotional" communication facilitates normative arguments about transparency without identifying what transparency means in public discussion or why it is positive (Aronczyk, 2015). Furthermore, the emphasis on the ideal public sphere does not acknowledge the degree to which public communication takes place in professionalized and industrialized contexts (Wood & Aronczyk, 2020).…”

“…These defensive activities were followed in the 1990's by a "cultural turn" (Schulz, Hatch, & Larsen, 2000) that focused on public displays of good citizenship and clandestine attempts to discredit activists. By the early 2010's companies began using "ordinary individuals as promotional intermediaries" in their attempts to "foster trust in a more decentralized way" (Aronczyk, 2015(Aronczyk, , p.2014. In these scenarios, the activities of intermediaries fulfill a dual purpose.…”

“…In short, they emphasize the urgency of researching corporate social advocacy, as surveys seem to suggest increasing expectations that market actors be responsible and responsive to societal issues and there are only very incomplete understandings of the effects those companies are having on formal and informal regulation. Academic work on promotional cultures has begun to fill these gaps by examining the socio-political role played by public relations (Edwards, 2018) and the role of corporate communication in acting as "brokers" (p.5) between citizens and society (Cronin, 2018), as well as the deeper investigations of the role of corporate public relations and policy advocacy in oil and gas (Aronczyk, 2015;Wood, 2018). As the literature review above suggests, corporate social advocacy tends to engage a wide range of scholarship, from management and consumer intention to critical political economy.…”

Threats, truths and strategies: The overlooked relationship between protests, nation branding and public diplomacy

“…They also tried to influence foreign publics—including news organisations—to advance specific political and sometimes economic agendas. Hence, and despite their radically different aims, protesters' behaviour was not too dissimilar from nation promotion practitioners or what Aronczyk (2015) terms the ‘transnational promotional class’. Perhaps that is because many demonstrators in Brazil, Romania and Chile belonged to an urban, university‐educated and middle‐class segment of society (Canales, 2022; Dumitrica, 2021; Jiménez‐Martínez, 2020).…”