Metabolife's meaning: A call for the constitutive study of public relations

Stokes, Ashli Quesinberry

doi:10.1016/j.pubrev.2005.08.016

Cited by 10 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 18 publications

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“…3 Many public relations scholars rely on the legitimacy concept in a variety of other contexts (e.g., Boyd, 2000Boyd, , 2009Hearit, 1995;Meisenbach and McMillan, 2006;Seeger, 1986;Vaara et al, 2006). 4 Another corporation used remediation to challenge its attacker, simply posting a copy of an original taped interview online to show how its opponent had strategically edited footage for the story (Stokes, 2005)…”

Section: Notesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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PETA, rhetorical fracture, and the power of digital activism

Stokes

Atkins-Sayre

2018

Public Relations Inquiry

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Starting in 2013, SeaWorld faced a public relations disaster with the release of the documentary titled Blackfish that accused the company of mistreatment of its orcas. SeaWorld attempted to respond and rebuild its credibility, but activist group ‘People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals’ (PETA) doubled down on the corporation through its rhetorical shock tactics, deepening the organization’s woes. The PETA/SeaWorld controversy does more than provide another example of poor corporate public relations decision-making made in light of an activist group’s savvy use of digital technology. We argue that the case helps explain how digital technologies fundamentally change activism, whereby activists can use rhetorical fracturing, or quickly using digital media to puncture a target’s narrative, to create messages that challenge an opponent’s legitimacy to cultivate public opinion, thereby pressuring corporate policy change. Recent activism scholarship points out how digital media transforms organizational-activist relationships in profound ways, but this essay contributes to a gap in public relations scholarship by showing how strategic, message-level digital activism helps contribute to broad societal change. Indeed, given that SeaWorld’s stock was down nearly 40 percent in 2015 and ‘is about 50% below its all-time high’, its profits were down 84 percent in 2015, and attendance has fallen more than 7 percent at its parks, the case illustrates how digital activist campaigns help reshape societal understanding of a controversial issue such as using animals for entertainment.

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Section: Notesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“… 4. Another corporation used remediation to challenge its attacker, simply posting a copy of an original taped interview online to show how its opponent had strategically edited footage for the story (Stokes, 2005). …”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

PETA, rhetorical fracture, and the power of digital activism

Stokes

Atkins-Sayre

2018

Public Relations Inquiry

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“…This view aligns with Tiessen’s (2014) perception of transparency as control as well as with Birchall’s (2011b) overview of the history of transparency, in which she finds that transparency is a modernist concept that extends to contemporary society. Stokes (2005), similarly to Holtzhausen (2000), argues that PR is often examined through an instrumental approach, but that, in today’s society, ‘the discipline needs to employ a constitutive lens that reveals how public relations discourse shapes, reflects, and is constrained by the larger public sphere’ (p. 556). In that respect, transparency should be seen constitutively.…”

Section: Transparency Re-examinedmentioning

confidence: 99%

Pitfalls and promises of transparency in the digital age

Vujnović

Kruckeberg

2016

Public Relations Inquiry

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This article re-examines transparency as it is conceptualized in communication, particularly in public relations, and it introduces the concept of pseudo-transparency. Transparency in the public relations literature is rarely examined from a critical perspective. We conclude from our re-examination that transparency is a product of modernism and neoliberalism; as such, we argue that the concept is used by organizations, that is, governments, civil society organizations, and corporations, to reproduce and to maintain a status quo to be accepted without interrogation or critical inquiry. Based on this re-examination, we advocate that public relations practitioners must be at the forefront in resolving ethical issues that are related to transparency and to pseudo-transparency in contemporary global society.

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“…Past research connecting crisis communication to rhetorical theories and methods has focused primarily on the organizational rhetoric surrounding a crisis (Veil, ). While Springston, Avery, and Sallot () identified a burgeoning number of articles using rhetorical theory to analyze a crisis situation such as apologia discourse (Hearit & Brown, ; Marsh, ; Rowland & Jerome, ), epideictic discourse (Huxman, ), constitutive approach studies (Stokes, ), and narrative theory (Heath, ), they suggested that Johnson and Sellnow's () return to Aristotle's conceptual framework of available means—and types—of persuasion provided a clear picture of typical crisis communication. Johnson and Sellnow () argued that crisis response included forensic discourse to assess the crisis cause, deliberative discourse to outline the coping mechanisms for the current crisis and avoidance measures for future crises, and epideictic rhetoric to bolster the organization's image while deflecting blame throughout the crisis response.…”

Section: Renewal Discoursementioning

confidence: 99%

Some Lines Bring Us Together: Sport as Crisis Renewal in Bosnia-Herzegovina

Herovic

Veil

2015

Communication, Culture & Critique

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Bosnia-Herzegovina continues to be a contentious country with an ethnically based power-sharing political structure. The advancement of the Bosnian Men's National Soccer Team to the 2014 World Cup Qualifier reshaped the rhetoric of an ethnically divided Bosnia, for at least a short time, to a message advocating hope, healing, and unity. In this analysis, we examine the national and international media coverage of the team to identify messages that are indicative of crisis renewal discourse-aligned with the optimistic and prospective focus on rebuilding through a shared vision. We suggest that renewal discourse, when filtered through the unifying discourse of sport, offers an appropriate and effective rhetorical strategy for advancing a cohesive national identity.

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Metabolife's meaning: A call for the constitutive study of public relations

Cited by 10 publications

References 18 publications

PETA, rhetorical fracture, and the power of digital activism

PETA, rhetorical fracture, and the power of digital activism

Pitfalls and promises of transparency in the digital age

Some Lines Bring Us Together: Sport as Crisis Renewal in Bosnia-Herzegovina

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