Public Relations Democracy: Public Relations, Politics and the Mass Media in Britain

Citation

Oliver, S.M. (2002), "Public Relations Democracy: Public Relations, Politics and the Mass Media in Britain", Corporate Communications: An International Journal, Vol. 7 No. 3, pp. 192-193. https://doi.org/10.1108/ccij.2002.7.3.192.2

In this book, we see yet again the significance of the role of public relations on the political processes in post‐modern Britain. The public relations industry has expanded more than 11‐fold over the last two decades, this book tells us, and asks the question, “Who stands to benefit most in the new era of public relations democracy?”. Journalists and decision makers in the corporate sector, the City, pressure groups and the trades union movement depend considerably on the quality and substance of public relations research and supply of information. The author, Aeron Davis, is a sociologist who is looking at corporate communication and corporate PR from the outside in and at the mass communication level. He conducted 133 interviews with 97 individuals, both on and off the record. They come from trade unions, other unions, corporate PR consultants and in‐house specialists, journalists and others such as government departments and research organisations. The outcome has been that Davis believes that the role of public relations and the media in the policy making process has become more complicated and offers a critical analysis through these interviews and case studies. It is a fairly inter‐disciplinary text but, despite the title, it was not written specifically with public relations practitioners in mind and is thus not a guide to the subject, nor does it “really engage with the principal concerns of many in the profession” (p. x). He thinks that “the results are probably best described as a political sociology of the media … of significant interest to political sociologists”.

Again, as this went to press, the British government announced its plans to privatise the Post Office once again, having failed to do so in 1994 partly as a consequence of the successful public relations campaign run by the Union of Communication Workers in the previous two years. What becomes clear in reading all the case studies is the methodological limitations of public relations research and evaluation techniques such as content analysis and audience research. There is “as Miller (1997) and Deacon et al. (1999) have argued, an additional need for researchers to identify both the processes by which information comes to journalists and what the final outcomes of campaigns are” (p. 170). As Margaret Scammell, a lecturer in media and communication at the London School of Economics, says in her review of the book, “in these spin dominated times, Aeron Davis has produced a compelling, rigorous account of the impact of public relations on the production of news … and its power to influence political and financial journalists”.

This is far too important a topic within the discipline of corporate communication to be left to sociologists, or even alone. It is crucial that the profession and industry itself gets to grips with what Davis calls the “mediatisation” of politics and starts to address its role as an operator within “modern conflict between organisations, interest groups and individuals” (p. 171) and critically analyses the image it has of itself of “a sort of democracy”. Given that public affairs is a key component on any advanced public relations course, this book is a gem for tutors and students alike. Although fairly dense in places, there are 18 tables, 18 appendices and a list of 13 figures, making it excellent value.