Overview

"Focusing on two of the most fraught and intractable public debates of the present time: human-induced climate change and the human rights of refugees, asylum seekers, immigrants and the stateless, this book raises critical questions about the role and relationship of public relations in weakening democratic political systems. It shows a clear, but often indirect, link between PR and a neoliberal agenda that has been vastly underestimated and oversimplified as ""spin."" This comes at a great cost for society. Public Relations and Neoliberalism provides a panoramic view of public relations from the post-war period, when a powerful communication template propelled by the PR industry served the neoliberal agenda to create political diversion, division, and hegemony at the same time. But today, public relations is not just a tool of industry or government. Rather, it has become the default mode and style of being and relating in the world, that seeps into and affects all areas of life: professional, corporate, domestic, political, activist, and technological. And the metastasis of neoliberal meaning into so many realms has important ramifications for society and individuals. Looking at the confluences and contradictions within the logic of public relations both as a practice and in terms of how it has been theorized and understood, this book provides an important contribution to critical work in the communicative field."

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9780190678401

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Reviews

For decades, critical public relations scholarship has been tinkering around the edges of its 'thick entwinement' with neoliberalism. In this book, Demetrious delivers a gloves-off polemic that examines the pervasive role of public relations in the neoliberal world, driving forward confronting, often provocative discussions about language, power, hegemony, and inequality. She faces two seismic issues of our time-climate change and the human rights of refugees and asylum seekers-challenging those in public relations to take ownership for their part. This book has a crucial place in interdisciplinary learning-from communication to economics to politics-unpacking the role played by powerful industries which use communication to create dominant and life-changing versions of social and political reality. * Jane Johnston, Director of Communication Studies, University of Queensland * Demetrious shows the symbiotic relationship between public relations and the neoliberal project. Opposing civil society and a deliberative public sphere, PR firms and neoliberal institutions have created a discourse based in manipulative narratives that simplify and impoverish public debate. This effort serves to limit the social imaginary and our ability to shape collective action. Her analysis points the way toward moving beyond our current distorted public dialogue. * Robert Brulle, Brown University * Kristin Demetrious has written a brilliant, disturbing, and highly readable treatise on the role that public relations language plays in championing the neo-liberal free market capitalist agenda and how, in doing so, it has limited our collective imagination and ability to think and debate about alternative ways of being and organizing society. I urge anyone with an interest in communication, politics and, indeed, our fragile future, to read this book. * C. Kay Weaver, University of Colorado, Boulder * This book is a tour de force. Building on her previous work, Demetrious brings us a beautifully written study of the pernicious and pervasive contribution public relations has made to shaping the world riven by inequality and teetering on the brink of ecological disaster. Her approach is perhaps best described as a Foucauldian history of public communication as the key site of neoliberal discourse. She tracks her prey patiently, skillfully and with great insight across a range of political events, business and communicative practices. A must read for students of public relations and public communication. * Dr. Magda Pieczka, Reader, Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh * Kristin Demetrious explores her thesis through a broad scope analysis of neoliberalism; human-induced climate change; human rights of relocation to nation-states; and the very notion of public debate itself. This major text tackles public relations from discursive and humanitarian perspectives that challenge the status quo and stretches our imaginations as to where public relations studies may go in the future.. * Jacquie L'Etang, Honorary Professor, University of Stirling, Scotland and Co-editor of Public Relations Inquiry *

Demetrious shows the symbiotic relationship between public relations and the neoliberal project. Opposing civil society and a deliberative public sphere, PR firms and neoliberal institutions have created a discourse based in manipulative narratives that simplify and impoverish public debate. This effort serves to limit the social imaginary and our ability to shape collective action. Her analysis points the way toward moving beyond our current distorted public dialogue. * Robert Brulle, Brown University * Kristin Demetrious has written a brilliant, disturbing, and highly readable treatise on the role that public relations language plays in championing the neo-liberal free market capitalist agenda and how, in doing so, it has limited our collective imagination and ability to think and debate about alternative ways of being and organizing society. I urge anyone with an interest in communication, politics and, indeed, our fragile future, to read this book. * C. Kay Weaver, University of Colorado, Boulder * This book is a tour de force. Building on her previous work, Demetrious brings us a beautifully written study of the pernicious and pervasive contribution public relations has made to shaping the world riven by inequality and teetering on the brink of ecological disaster. Her approach is perhaps best described as a Foucauldian history of public communication as the key site of neoliberal discourse. She tracks her prey patiently, skillfully and with great insight across a range of political events, business and communicative practices. A must read for students of public relations and public communication. * Dr. Magda Pieczka, Reader, Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh * Kristin Demetrious explores her thesis through a broad scope analysis of neoliberalism; human-induced climate change; human rights of relocation to nation-states; and the very notion of public debate itself. This major text tackles public relations from discursive and humanitarian perspectives that challenge the status quo and stretches our imaginations as to where public relations studies may go in the future.. * Jacquie L'Etang, Honorary Professor, University of Stirling, Scotland and Co-editor of Public Relations Inquiry *

Author Information

Kristin Demetrious is an Associate Professor of Communication at Deakin University in Victoria, Australia. Kristin's research investigates power in public relations and its language practices through a number of social sites such as activism and gender using a socio-cultural lens to explore how it can create and control forms of identity and shape public debates that set policy directions.

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