Symbolic Power and Public Relations Practice: Locating Individual Practitioners in Their Social Context

Abstract

This article applies Pierre Bourdieu's understandings of capital and symbolic power to the public relations environment, to establish a link between the practice of public relations and the social effects of the profession. A three-month case study in the corporate affairs team of a UK passenger transport operator revealed the manner in which the pursuit and maintenance of power is potentially present in all public relations activities. Bourdieu's framework connects individual practice with the social effects of public relations and gives practitioners and academics a new starting point for understanding the nature of power in public relations practice.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 81 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.