What in the World is Public Relations?

Abstract

This chapter analyzes the antecedents, springboards and restraints that have shaped the development of public relations (PR) in more than 70 countries. Based on data from chapters in the preceding five books in the series, it proposes three common antecedents of PR activity — early corporate communication, governmental information and propaganda methods and cultural/religious influences. The springboards for PR’s growth have been professionalization and education, along with the opening of economies and political plurality. The restraints have been political and economic, such as one-party states, dictatorships and closed economies. PR’s historiography is also explored, and the chapter identifies periodization as the primary method. Future research should move on from the current discovery stage into more analytical and critical processes.

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 — 15 citations exist upstream.

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