Public Relations and Its Problems

Abstract

The key argument in this book is that American environmentalism emerged alongside the tools, techniques, and expertise of American public relations (PR) and that neither environmentalism nor PR would look the way it does today without the other. We consider PR as a technology of legitimacy. This refers not only to securing legitimacy for one viewpoint over another. It is also about how PR has created a set of social and political conditions in which certain ways of thinking become available to us while others are foreclosed on. PR is a process that provides conceptual repertoires, repertoires that have influenced how we define public information and communication around environmental change

Responsibility, sustainability, or environmental justice? Strategic communication and evolving expectations for stewardship and citizenship

“…An important aspect of CSR is sustainability communication , which has been defined as a transnational discourse around improving ecological, economic, and social circumstances for people and ecosystems (Golob et al, 2023; Ziemann, 2011). It often reflects the potentially positive contributions of organizations in addressing related challenges, but may also serve as a tool of disingenuous engagement into such discourses (Aronczyk and Espinoza, 2019, 2021). A meta-analysis of sustainability communication research found that it reflected several manifestations: (1) information transmission about sustainability, (2) critical and deliberative contributions around environmental issues, (3) greenwashing, (4) green advertising, and (5) reporting and disclosure (Golob et al, 2023).…”

“…Environmental communication practices and scholarship provide useful guidance for public relations. Aronczyk and Espinoza’s (2021) contribution, A strategic nature , traces the influence of public relations practices that “construct and manage public understandings of the environment” (p. 2) in malleable ways—and in ways useful to corporations over both human communities and the natural world. The evolution of terminology comprising agonistic discourse on such issues—from nature to the environment to sustainability —reflects the ongoing, coordinated advocacy and demands of strategic actors in extractive industries (e.g., Edwards, 2021; Motion, 2019).…”

“…The evolution of terminology comprising agonistic discourse on such issues—from nature to the environment to sustainability —reflects the ongoing, coordinated advocacy and demands of strategic actors in extractive industries (e.g., Edwards, 2021; Motion, 2019). The shift to sustainability reflects an “artful vagueness” (Aronczyk and Espinoza, 2021: 129) that provides corporate actors with rhetorical space to justify actions in their interests rather than in the broader interests of communities, societies, and wild places. The rhetoric of public relations and issues management around the environment tends to fragment publics rather than connect them, and minimize human harm and injustice rather than shine light on it (Roper, 2012; Roper and Toledano, 2005).…”

“…For corporations, the vagueness surrounding these terms may represent strategic ambiguity with regard to principles and practice (Leitch and Davenport, 2002). For example, corporations have historically used environmental CSR programs as part of self-interested issues management efforts (Aronczyk and Espinoza, 2021; Ihlen, 2008). There have been significant recent efforts to improve and enhance the application of community and justice-oriented principles for communicators.…”

Branding the nation in the era of climate crisis: Eco‐nationalism and the promotion of green national sovereignty

“…In A Strategic Nature, Maria Espinoza and I describe the intertwined relationship among strategic communication, environmental awareness and the making of national publics in the United States (Aronczyk & Espinoza, 2022: chapter 1). This relationship grew out of early twentieth‐century contests between ideas of conservation and preservation of natural resources.…”