Gareth Thompson - Post-Truth Public Relations: Communication in an Era of Digital Disinformation

Gareth Thompson

This book explores the purpose, practice and effects of public relations (PR) at a time that has been variously described as an era of populism, post-truth and fake news. It considers how PR processes have contributed to the current social condition of post-truth and what constitutes PR work in this environment.

Post-Truth Public Relations: Communication in an Era of Digital Disinformation proposes that while we can now look back upon the last 80100 years as a period of classical PR, that style is being supplemented by the emergence of a post-classical form of PR that has emerged in response to the post-truth era. This new style of PR consists of a mixed repertoire of communicative work that matches the new geometry of digital media and delivers a mix of online engagement and persuasion in order to meet the needs of increasingly partisan audiences. Using contemporary case studies and original interviews with PR practitioners in several countries, including China and the Philippines, the book investigates how PR workers have reconciled their role as communicative intermediaries with the post-truth era of digital disinformation.

This thought-provoking book will be of great interest to researchers and advanced students interested in the changing nature of PR and its practice.

Gareth Thompson is a Senior Lecturer at London College of Communication, University of the Arts London. He has worked in public relations in the corporate, finance and technology sectors for over 20 years, as well as teaching the subject in London and at the French business school, ESCEM, in Poitiers.

First published 2020
by Routledge
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2020 Gareth Thompson

The right of Gareth Thompson to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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ISBN: 978-1-138-36860-6 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-429-42912-5 (ebk)

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by Aptara, India

For my parents

Firstly, thanks to many colleagues and students at London College of Communication (LCC), University of the Arts London, and elsewhere, for discussions on some of the themes that appear here. In particular, I would like to thank my LCC colleague Michal Chmiel for many fruitful conversations and for allowing me to include his work on social psychology, collective narcissism and post-truth in .

I first explored the idea of post-classical public relations in an article in Public Relations Review in 2017 on Islamic State's recruitment communications. The paper was presented at the 23rd BledCom International Public Relations Research Symposium in July 2016, so I thank the BledCom programme committee of Ana Tkalac Veri, Dejan Veri and Krishnamurthy Sriramesh, along with Maja Jani and others at University of Ljubljana in Slovenia for their welcome each year and the intellectual stimulation and feedback from colleagues that follows. At the 68th Annual International Communication Association (ICA) Conference in 2018 in Prague, Czech Republic, I presented a summary of the transition from classical to post-classical public relations at a preconference session. I am grateful to Lee Edwards of London School of Economics and Chiara Valentini of Aarhus University, Denmark for organising the day on Theories in Public Relations: Reflections and Future Directions on 24 May at Charles University, Prague and to all attenders for their commentary and contributions.

I am grateful to the staff of Cumberland Lodge for their kind invitation to a timely conference on The Politics of (Post) Truth in October 2018 when I started writing. I thank the organising committee of the colloquium, along with all participants at the event, and, in particular, Steve Fuller of the University of Warwick for a useful follow-up conversation and for sharing a copy of his book, Post Truth: Knowledge as A Power Game which is referenced here.

I am indebted to the following LCC MA Public Relations postgraduates for bringing an international outlook to the project through interviews conducted in their home countries and gratefully acknowledge their research contributions:

Miguel Cortez for his interviews with public relations people and journalists, plus analysis of government public relations materials and other research work conducted in The Philippines in 2017 into the populist performance of President Rodrigo Duterte, which appear in .

Xiran Xu for his research and interviews with a Wuamao (government-paid social media content poster) and others in China in 2018, that feature in the case study on the contemporary public relations and propaganda of the Chinese Government in .

Yaqi Zhang for her research into the promotion of ideology, nationalism and military capability in the 2018 Chinese film, Operation Red Sea for .

Some charts, tables and other material have appeared in journal articles and I am grateful to the reviewers of the following papers for their suggestions for improvement and to publishers for permission to include them:

Thompson, G. (2016) An analysis of the interaction of public relations practitioners with Wikipedia and other user generated content. Journal of Communications Management, 20 (1), 420.

Thompson, G. (2017) Extremes of engagement: the post-classical public relations of the Islamic State. Public Relations Review, 43 (5), 915924.

Series editor Kevin Moloney of Bournemouth University was gently persistent in encouraging me to develop the ideas that appear here in book form and, along with Jacqueline Curtoys at Routledge, stewarded me through the early stages with great efficiency. Thanks to you both and also to Routledge's Matthew Ranscombe, Tarun Soni and Shashank Gupta who oversaw the text through to the printed pages that follow.

Richard Bailey, with whom I shared an office during my first PR job in 1987 and followed into teaching the subject at universities some years later, commented on a draft at short notice as the book neared completion. Thank you for a sage set of observations on this project and others over 30 years as a colleague and friend. Adrian Sledmere also kindly took time to read over a draft and I am grateful for his sharp eye for typos and other blemishes in the text.