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List of contents
1 Introduction
2 Classical public relations
3 Post-classical public relations: a new style of public relations work for the post-truth era
4 The mixed public relations repertoire for the age of disruption
5 The rhetoric of certainty and division
6 Facts don’t matter: truthiness and fake news
7 Performativity and public communication
8 The digital mixology of online engagement
9 Conclusion
About the author
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.
Summary
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 public relations processes have contributed to the current social condition of post-truth and what constitutes public relations work in this environment.
Additional text
"The power of public relations in shaping our understanding of the world, even in the most mundane matters, has been certainly overlooked by those who don’t work in the field – and perhaps even by those who do. Gareth Thompson’s Post-Truth Public Relations constitutes a reckoning of the field’s influence over time. He shows that public relations has set the standard of both personal and public expression in a changing media landscape, not least in today’s social media environment. Perhaps the key take-home message of this illuminating book is that public relations instructs us in what ‘human’ means as a style of being in the world." - Steve Fuller, Professor of Social Epistemology, University of Warwick, Author of 'Post Truth: Knowledge as a Power Game'.
"Gareth Thompson’s book on Post-Truth Public Relations explains what happens when fundamental divisions between rational and emotional, truth and fiction, public and private break down, and the environment around us becomes a mental pudding in all its varieties and tastes. In this world that "has had enough of experts", Thompson reveals how post-classical is supplementing and substituting classical PR. From its peak (in terms of people and resources), public relations is evolving into "a trade that has made money from epistemological fragility of post-truth". A must read for students and subjects of PR alike!" - Dr. Dejan Vercic, Professor of public relations and Head of the Department of Communication at the University of Ljubljana, and partner in Herman & partners d.o.o., Ljubljana, Slovenia.
