PUBLIC RELATIONS
The Tragedy Of The Age Of Misinformation : A PR Perspective
By Irene Mbonge
Public Relations ( PR ) has long been searching for its essence . However , it is my proposition that the classical era and style of PR that lasted over 80 years between around 1930 and 2010 has finally ended .
The cultural component of PR and the way it is practiced is influenced by the environment in which it operates in , including national culture , the organizational culture of individual PR firms , the commercial culture of the industries in which clients operate and so on . Similarly , the communication management aspects of PR cannot be isolated from broader consideration of communication topics that relate to PR such as media , communication technology , the nature of the audience and the modes of communication used in PR work .
The drive to consider the way PR is coping in an era of digital disinformation is prompted by the prominence of the communicative component in modern society , accompanied by a corresponding prevalence of online modes of economic exchange . So instead of physical goods , we are witnessing more services in this space ; Netflix films , for example - are abstract outputs of a communicative form of capitalism . This dematerialization has underpinned the development of large global businesses based on information such as Facebook , Google , Twitter and many others .
Generally speaking , the PR industry adapted swiftly to digital communications and integrated these platforms into dayto-day work . So despite PR having some distinctive features , such as the points of difference with advertising , for example , my perspective is that PR work and the digital modes of communication used within it need not be bracketed off as a separate discipline , but considered within a broad realm of communicative expression when considering its place in the contemporary context of disinformation .
There has arguably never been more PR activity in society as evidenced by the number of people currently working in the field and the amounts spent on PR services . Yet this peak in volume does not seem to
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In the current context of dislocation in economics , politics , society and technology , PR is again adapting and finding a place for its communicative labor . PR people ’ s role as providers of information to the public domain only endures over time if it is built upon high levels of trust and reliability with the media that use that material . have produced better debates on contentious issues as a result of the contributions of PR people to the public sphere . Similarly , while the expansion of higher education in advanced economies has led to more educated citizens , there are few signs that this has led to more thoughtful social and political discourse . So considering how PR relates to the disinformation era means considering the scope of work PR practitioners do alongside how PR has contributed to the current post-truth era .
While PR remains a process and commercial practice that combines the creation and curation of communication , a post-classical variant or post-truth PR has arisen as a consequence of the need to compete in the new economics of attention . In line with this , post-truth PR is a variant of the classical PR of the past 80 years or so that responds to and sometimes takes advantage of the post-truth condition in society . At its corporatist peak from around 1990 to 2010 , PR was feted as a discipline that could serve the public good by enabling a twoway discussion that ensured all voices were heard in a fully functioning society .
In a crowded yet often apathetic modern social-political sphere , there is tough competition for attention . This condition has produced a performative mode of communication that prioritizes entertainment and performance over substantive policy explications . The past ten years have seen a class of media-savvy political entrepreneurs emerge , whose rise owes more to performative PR than solid policy proposals . While their arrival has often been disruptive , the emergence of these communicative entrepreneurs in politics is a logical evolution from the realization that a confected promotional presence on social media can become a substantive asset and platform for campaigning .
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