Read more
In
A Strategic Nature, Melissa Aronczyk and Maria I. Espinoza show how public relations has dominated public understanding of the natural environment for over one hundred years. More than spin or misinformation, they argue, PR is a social and political force that shapes how we understand and address the environmental crises we now face.
List of contents
- List of Figures and Tables
- List of Abbreviations
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: Public Relations and Its Problems
- 1. Seeing Like a Publicist: How the Environment became an Issue
- 2. Bringing the Outside In: Managing Industry's "External Environment"
- 3. Environment, Energy, Economy: The Campaign for Balance
- 4. PR for the Public Interest: The Rule of Reason and the Hazards of Environmental Consensus
- 5. Sustainable Communication(TM): Green PR and the Export of Corporate Environmentalism
- 6. The Climate of Publicity: Climate Advocates and the Compromise of PR
- 7. "Shared Value": Promoting Climate Change for Data Worlds
- Conclusion: We're Supposed to Be Engaging
- Notes
- References
- Appendix 1. Interviews and Observation Sites
- Appendix 2. E. Bruce Harrison Company, List of Clients, 1973-1997
- Index
About the author
Melissa Aronczyk is an associate professor at Rutgers University in the School of Communication & Information. She is the author of Branding the Nation: The Global Business of National Identity (Oxford 2013).
Maria I. Espinoza is a PhD candidate in the Sociology department at Rutgers University.
Summary
In A Strategic Nature, Melissa Aronczyk and Maria I. Espinoza show how public relations has dominated public understanding of the natural environment for over one hundred years. More than spin or misinformation, they argue, PR is a social and political force that shapes how we understand and address the environmental crises we now face.
Additional text
Not every public relations scholar or practitioner will agree with the authors' depiction of public relations' often pernicious role in democratic and deliberative society. But this rich, wholly worthwhile, generative journey into a strategic history of "nature" and the constitutive role of communication in society's relationship to the environment serves as a crucial and essential text. It will help public relations and communication scholars, advanced undergraduate and graduate students, and professionally minded practitioners ask the right questions about the ethics and foundations of how we teach, research, and practice public relations and strategic communication.
