Kevin L. Stoker - Paradox in Public Relations: A Contrarian Critique of Theory and Practice

Paradox in Public Relations: A Contrarian Critique of Theory and Practice is a thought-provoking exploration of public relations, aiming to promote changes in meaning and perception by creating new meta-realities for public relations.

The term Public Relations was embraced by early practitioners primarily because it sounded more professional than the often-pejorative alternatives. This book argues for a reframing of some of the popular realities associated with modern-day public relations and uses psychological and organizational change theory to critique paradoxes in public relations theory and practice. By examining public relations through the lens of paradox, we can begin to identify the logical fallacies that have inhibited progress and innovation in public relations practice and theory. The book explores the paradoxical nature of key concepts, including public interest, relationship management, accountability, stewardship, loyalty, community, and ethics. It also recommends new conceptualizations for understanding the field.

This book will be of interest to media, communication, public relations, and advertising faculty and graduate students, particularly those interested in public relations theory and ethics. Scholars from other disciplines can also use this exploration of paradox in PR as a learning tool for identifying logical fallacies and inconsistencies.

Kevin L. Stoker is Professor and Director of the Hank Greenspun School of Journalism and Media Studies at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. After eight years in professional journalism, he earned a Ph.D. from the University of Alabama and has since held faculty positions at the University of North Carolina-Greensboro, Georgia Southern University, Brigham Young University, and Texas Tech University.

Routledge New Directions in PR & Communication Research

Edited by Kevin Moloney

Current academic thinking about public relations (PR) and related communication is a lively, expanding marketplace of ideas and many scholars believe that its time for its radical approach to be deepened. Routledge New Directions in PR & Communication Research is the forum of choice for this new thinking. Its key strength is its remit, publishing critical and challenging responses to continuities and fractures in contemporary PR thinking and practice, tracking its spread into new geographies and political economies. It questions its contested role in market-orientated, capitalist, liberal democracies around the world, and examines its invasion of all media spaces, old, new, and as yet unenvisaged.

The New Directions series has already published and commissioned diverse original work on topics such as:

PRs influence on Israeli and Palestinian nation-building

PRs origins in the history of ideas

a Jungian approach to PR ethics and professionalism

global perspectives on PR professional practice

PR as an everyday language for everyone

PR as emotional labor

PR as communication in conflicted societies, and

PRs relationships to cooperation, justice, and paradox.

We actively invite new contributions and offer academics a welcoming place for the publication of their analyses of a universal, persuasive mindset that lives comfortably in old and new media around the world.

Public Relations, Branding and Authenticity

Brand Communications in the Digital Age

Sian Rees

Paradox in Public Relations

A Contrarian Critique of Theory and Practice

Kevin L. Stoker

For more information about this series, please visit www.routledge.com/Routledge-New-Directions-in-Public-RelationsCommunication-Research/book-series/RNDPRCR