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COMMUNICATING IN
PROFESSIONS AND ORGANIZATIONS
Public Relations
and the Digital
Professional Discourse and Change
Clea Bourne
Communicating in Professions and Organizations
Series Editor
Jonathan Crichton, University of South Australia,
Adelaide, SA, Australia
This ground-breaking series is edited by Jonathan Crichton, Associate
Professor in Applied Linguistics at the University of South Australia. It
provides a venue for research on issues of language and communica-
tion that matter to professionals, their clients and stakeholders. Books
in the series explore the relevance and real world impact of commu-
nication research in professional practice and forge reciprocal links
between researchers in applied linguistics/discourse analysis and prac-
titioners from numerous professions, including healthcare, education,
business and trade, law, media, science and technology.
Central to this agenda, the series responds to contemporary chal-
lenges to professional practice that are bringing issues of language and
communication to the fore. These include:
• The growing importance of communication as a form of professional

expertise that needs to be made visible and developed as a resource for
professionals
• Political, economic, technological and social changes that are trans-
forming communicative practices in professions and organisations
• Increasing mobility and diversity (geographical, technological,
cultural, linguistic) of organisations, professionals and clients
Books in the series combine up to date overviews of issues of language

and communication relevant to the particular professional domain with
original research that addresses these issues at relevant sites. The authors
also explore the practical implications of this research for the profes-
sions/organisations in question.
We are actively commissioning projects for this series and welcome
proposals from authors whose experience combines linguistic and profes-
sional expertise, from those who have long-standing knowledge of the
professional and organisational settings in which their books are located
and joint editing/authorship by language researchers and professional
practitioners.
The series is designed for both academic and professional readers, for
scholars and students in Applied Linguistics, Communication Studies
and related fields, and for members of the professions and organisations
whose practice is the focus of the series.
Clea Bourne
Public Relations
and the Digital
Professional Discourse and Change
Clea Bourne
Department of Media
and Communications
Goldsmiths College
University of London
London, UK
ISSN 2947-812X ISSN 2947-8138 (electronic)

Communicating in Professions and Organizations
ISBN 978-3-031-13955-0 ISBN 978-3-031-13956-7 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-13956-7
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Acknowledgements
This book has come together over several years, as books often do. My
thanks go to Palgrave Series Editor, Jonathan Crichton, who encouraged
me to write the book and whose guiding words helped shape the early
stages.
Many of the book’s arguments have evolved while leading the M.A.
Promotional Media at Goldsmiths, University of London over the
past decade. Thanks to my students, past and present. Developing a
discourse analytic technique for teaching an international cohort has
been a fulfilling process; together we’ve explored the fascinating things
professions say about themselves in public texts. Thanks also to various
industry guest speakers who have always been happy to centre their
discussions on what ‘the digital’ means for students as they enter the
promotional industries.
Goldsmiths’ Department of Media, Communications and Cultural
Studies is a truly special place to develop as a scholar. Long may it remain
so. Thanks to all my colleagues: there are so many wonderful people but
I’m particularly grateful for support in the last few years from Akanksha
Mehta, Anamik Saha, Des Freedman, Gholam Khiabany, Hung Nguyen,
v
vi Acknowledgements
Jacob Mukherjee, Liz Moor, Michael Klontzas, Mirca Madianou, Milly

Williamson, Natalie Fenton and Vana Goblot.
Some of my colleagues provided input or feedback on early ideas for
the book’s interrogation of the digital including Matt Fuller, Emerita
Professor Angela Phillips, and also Sarah Kember who now runs Gold-
smiths Press. A special shout-out to former Goldsmiths professor Sara
Ahmed and to Emerita Professor Angela McRobbie whose feminist work
has always been an inspiration. Chapter titles in this book were inspired
by the title of Sara’s book On Being Included and Angela’s book, Be
Creative.
Thanks also to the network of colleagues and friends around the world
with whom I’ve had great conversations about the stubborn problems
of the PR profession and the changing nature of promotional work.
They include Aaron Davis, Chris Galloway, Debashish Munshi, Jace
Cabanes, Jo Fawkes, Kate Fitch, Luk Swiatek and Melissa Aronczyk
amongst others. Even deeper thanks go to Liz Yeomans, Gisela Castro,
Lee Edwards and Michaela Jackson with whom I’ve partnered on various
projects while writing the book. You are immense.
• An earlier version of Chapter 2 appeared in Bourne, C. (2019) The

public relations profession as discursive boundary work, Public Rela-
tions Review, 45 (5) 101789. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pubrev.2019.
05.010.
• Ideas featured in Chapters 5 and 8 previously appeared in Bourne, C.
(2022) Our Platformised Future, In Zylinska, J. (ed.) The Future of
Media, Goldsmiths Press, pp. 99–109.
Finally, much of this book was written during the COVID-19

pandemic. During that time, family and friends became more important
than ever. What, for example, would I have done without my Caribbean
‘Shut Up and Write’ group? Thank you to Nicola, Diane, Ruth, Kiki and
Cathy for getting together via video conference nearly every week from
Jamaica, Canada, Spain and the UK to write, as well as to celebrate and
assess collective milestones. My husband Ron and my sisters Damaris
and Marcia have listened patiently through many of the book’s themes.
My son, Malcolm, has occasionally looked over my shoulder to decide
whether GCSEs might be harder than writing a book…
Contents
1 Introduction: Public Relations in the Digital Age 1

Platformising the Public Relations Profession 1
Disarticulating PR Skills 3
Stubbornness of Legacy Discourses 5
Public Relations as Professional Discourse 6
Different Cultures and Working Lives 7
Feminisation 9
PR in Societal Discourses 10
PR as Attractive, Creative Career 12
PR’s Critical Moment 13
“It Is the People Who Dance…” 17
PR’s Professional Discourses: Theory and Method 18
Author’s Warrant 19
How the Book Is Organised 21
References 22
2 Public Relations’ Professional Boundary-Work 27
Introduction 27
PR’s Discursive Boundaries 29
vii
viii Contents
PR Profession as Boundary-Work 32
Expansionary Discourses 33
Protectionist Discourses 34
Hybridising Discourses 37
Analysing PR’s Field-Level Discourses 38
Participants: Status, Authority, Asymmetries 39
Professional Genres: Conditions, Deployment,
Intertextualities 40
Working with Field-Level Textual Data 41
Genres Generated by Professions 41
Genres Generated About Professions 42
Genres Generated Adjacent to Professions 43
Discourse Limitations 44
Conclusion 45
References 45
3 Be Digital 51
PR’s Digital ‘Technophobia’ 51
Hybridising Roles and Digital Capital 55
Recruitment Ads as Discursive Texts 58
Expansionary Language of Content Production 60
Hybridising: Data-Driven Roles 63
Protecting Traditional PR Skills 66
Content Production—Platforms’ Knowledge Apparatus 70
Conclusion: Small World Relationships vs Big Data
Personas 71
References 74
4 Be Creative 81
Who Owns Creativity? 81
Client-Driven Creative Processes 85
Defining PR Creativity 85
Technocapitalism and Commodified Creativity 87
Platform Tools and Beta Creativity 89
Edelman Corporate Insights: Positioning ‘Earned
Creative’ as PR Specialism 91
Protecting PR as a Stand-Alone Discipline 93
Contents ix
Expanding into Advertising’s Creative Territory 96

Hybridising PR and Data 98
Conclusion: Blurring Creative Boundaries 100
References 102
5 Be Included 109
Introduction: Diversity Avalanche 109
Diversity and Racial Capitalism 113
Protecting Professional Habitus of Whiteness 115
Diversity: Driving Global Expansion 117
Creative Hybridisation Through Diversity 118
CIPR Webinar and Race in PR Report 119
Diversity Dividend: PR’s Unwanted Morality Tale 121
Black Bodies, White Spaces: When Black Professionals
Are ‘Disappeared’ 124
White Ignorance: Communicators Refuse to ‘Boundary
Span’ 126
Enforced Silences: Don’t Talk About Racism 127
Conclusion: Digital Platforms and Racial Capitalism 131
References 133
6 Be Social 137
PR in an Era of Hypervisibility 137
PR in Financial Markets 138
Monstrous Discourses: When PR Becomes the News 140
Monsters as Boundary Phenomena 141
Corporate Communicators and Journalists: Professional
Imperatives 143
Monstrous Discourses: Goldman Sachs’ PR 145
Goldman Sachs in the News 147
Journalism vs PR Discourses 148
Financial Journalists Protect Their Expert ‘Borders’
from Alt Media 149
Communication Chiefs Defend PR’s Professional
Borders 156
Goldman’s PR Chief Mounts Defence by Proxy 159
x Contents
Conclusion: Hypervisibility, Sociality and Professional

Monsters 162
References 164
7 Be Posthuman 169
Introduction 169
Digital Humans, Digital Employees 170
Understanding AI 173
AI in Everyday PR 175
Professionalism, AI and the Posthuman PR Practitioner 176
Cheerleading ‘Digital Employees’ 178
‘Digital Employees’ Expand into the Service Economy 179
Hybridised PR Under Martech Control? 182
PR-AI Client Relations: The Everyman that’s Always on 185
What if the Client Were an Algorithm? 187
Conclusion: Whither the PR Strategist? 189
References 190
8 Conclusion: Be Platformised 197
PR and the Digital: Field-Level Discourses 197
The PR Profession: Boundary-Work with Advertising,
Marketing, Journalism 198
Closing the Production-Consumption Gap: New
Platformised Professions 201
The PR Professional: Individual Boundary Struggles 202
Reconfiguring PR Knowledge in the Digital Age 205
Upstream: Big Data Ownership, Management
and Strategy 206
Midstream: Evolving Roles and Influence 207
Downstream: Battle for Content Production 208
Platforms: Disarticulating Professional Work 210
Contents xi
PR Futures 212
Client vs Platform Imperatives 212
PR Problems, Solutions and Agency 214
PR: Representing the Digital Commons? 215
References 217
Index 223
Abbreviations
AD Account Director
AE Account Executive
AI Artificial Intelligence
AM Account Manager
B2B Business to Business
B2C Business to Consumer
CIPR Chartered Institute of Public Relations
CMS Content Management System
CPA Cost Per Acquisition
CPC Cost Per Click
CPD Continuous Professional Development
CRM Customer Relationship Management
CTR Click Through Rate
CX Customer Experience
EQ Emotional Intelligence
IMC Integrated Marketing Communications
MAPI Messaging Application Programming Interface
NLP Natural Language Processing
P&L Profit & Loss
PESO Paid, Earned, Shared and Owned Media
xiii
xiv Abbreviations
PPC Pay-Per-Click
PR Public Relations
PRCA Public Relations and Communications Association
ROI Return on Investment
SEO Search Engine Optimisation
STEM Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics
UX/UI User Experience/User Interface
List of Figures
Fig. 1.1 Four types of platforms (Source Watts, 2020) 2

Fig. 2.1 Field-level Professional Discourse Analysis (Bourne,
2019) 29
Fig. 3.1 The PESO model as adapted by Spin Sucks (2020) 55
Fig. 6.1 A Vampire Squid meme created by DonkeyHotey/FlickR 143
Fig. 8.1 How platforms disarticulate professional skills 212
xv
List of Tables
Table 3.1 Top trending skills—UK media & communications

(Linkedin UK, May 2021) 56
Table 5.1 Five years of diversity initiatives, surveys and reports
in UK public relations 111
Table 8.1 UK Salary scales for PR roles vs select platformised roles 203
xvii
List of Extracts
Extract 3.1 Content Production 61

Extract 3.2 Data Skills 64
Extract 3.3 Traditional PR Skills 67
Extract 4.1 The PR Industry at the Crossroads 95
Extract 4.2 The PR Industry at the Crossroads 96
Extract 4.3 Crippling the Creative Agency 97
Extract 4.4 Crippling the Creative Agency 98
Extract 4.5 Why Edelman Studios 99
Extract 4.6 Why Edelman Studios 99
Extract 5.1 CIPR: From Experience to Action 122
Extract 5.9: July 2020. From Experience to Action. CIPR
Webinar 130
Extract 6.1 Financial Journalists Protect Their Borders 150
xix
xx List of Extracts
Extract 6.2 Wall Street PR Professionals Attack Goldman Sachs’

Comms 158
Extract 6.3 Goldman Sachs’ PR Chief Mounts Defence 160
Extract 7.1 What Are the Advantages of Digital Humans? 179
Extract 7.2 What is a Digital Human? 180
Extract 7.3 Bringing Brands to Life 181
Extract 7.4 Foreword to: What Are Digital Humans? 183
Extract 7.5 Available in Ways Humans Simply Cannot Be 186
Extract 7.6 UBS in: What Are Digital Humans? 188
Extract 7.7 Mentemia in: What Are Digital Humans? 188
1
Introduction: Public Relations
in the Digital Age
Platformising the Public Relations Profession

The public relations (PR) profession entered the twenty-first century
with a sense of optimism. The rapidly-expanding digital economy, with
burgeoning digital start-up companies, offered PR agencies and in-house
departments the promise of growth and profits. Meanwhile, the advent
of social media presented a seemingly utopian future in which PR practi-
tioners could bypass media and communicate directly with stakeholders
in real time. The digital age has transformed how the PR profession
talks about itself, its issues and concerns, as everyday PR work is now
increasingly shaped by digital platforms. Understanding contemporary
PR discourses, therefore, begins with understanding new landscapes of
PR practice based on platform capitalism. Most notable amongst these
developments is an increasingly socio-technical digital environment that
is changing and hybridising PR work, especially in the world’s largest PR
markets.
Digital platforms have emerged as a new means of production in the
wider global economy. The metaphorical term ‘platform’ describes an
infrastructure which enables two or more groups to interact, combining
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1
Switzerland AG 2022
C. Bourne, Public Relations and the Digital, Communicating in Professions
and Organizations, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-13956-7_1
2 C. Bourne
Fig. 1.1 Four types of platforms (Source Watts, 2020)
big data, cloud and mobile telephony together as an increasingly compet-

itive weapon (Gillespie, 2010; Srnicek, 2017). Digital platforms position
themselves as intermediaries bringing together different users, customers,
advertisers, service providers, producers, suppliers and even physical
objects (Carah, 2021; Srnicek, 2017). Platforms distribute everything
from products and services to news, information, entertainment and
promotional content. But what platforms really intermediate is data flows
by continuously and unrestrainedly measuring audiences, ranking prefer-
ences and applying predictive analytics to track, extract, curate, circulate
and control vast amounts of data (Beer, 2019; Miège, 2019; Srnicek,
2017).
Platforms now have billions of users around the world, achieving
this dominance by providing mostly free content to drive user traffic,
rendering platforms more valuable to corporate partners, publishers
and advertisers. The USA and China now dominate the world’s digital
platforms. Of the world’s top ten most valuable brands ranked by
Forbes magazine in 2020, the top five were platforms—Apple, Google,
Microsoft, Amazon and Facebook1 (Swant, 2020). Many of China’s most
valuable companies are platforms too, including search engine Baidu;
Tencent (owners of WeChat and QQ); the Alibaba group (owners of
Alibaba, Alipay and Taobao), and up-and-comer, ByteDance (owners of
TikTok) (Fig. 1.1).
1 The technology company, Facebook, rebranded as Meta in 2021. However, its platform retains
the Facebook brand for the time being, reflected in the reference to ‘Facebook’ in all chapters
of this book.
Increasingly, PR’s professional discourses have turned to the challenge

of working with or through new digital platforms. Platformisation is
now intertwining previously separate areas of PR, advertising, marketing
and media in such a way that erases much-cherished professional bound-
aries. However, while the impact of digital platforms and platformisation
has been at the forefront of academic and industry debates, there has
to date been little attempt to understand the implications of digital
platformisation for PR’s professional project.
Initially, digital capability promised greater professional influence and
legitimacy for PR practitioners who enthusiastically embraced digital
technologies (Valentini, 2015) for new approaches to stakeholder rela-
tions, audience targeting, content generation and programme evaluation.
In addition, digital techniques presented more quantifiable measures,
offering a solution to the evaluation conundrum that has always plagued
PR (Bourne & Edwards, 2021).
As time went on, platformisation rapidly transformed work processes
creating a global sector of PR ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’. The PR ‘haves’
work in large organisations with budget to spend on in-house digital
infrastructures and communication technology stacks designed to host
a range of digital software and artificial intelligence (AI) tools. One UK
industry survey estimates that at least 240 AI tools are specifically used by
PR practitioners (Waddington, 2020). These tools are used to produce
press releases and media reports using natural language processing; AI
tools also perform sentiment analysis on media coverage and social media
posts, convert speech-to-text from events and presentations, build chat-
bots for online newsrooms and websites, create custom story angles for
journalists based on interests, manage online reputation by predicting
negative reviews, amongst many other everyday PR tasks (Kaput, 2021).
Disarticulating PR Skills
PR’s professional discourses further incorporate sociocultural themes
connected with the increasingly digital nature of PR work. More PR
practitioners conduct their work via social media leading to the issue
of hypervisibility, where professionals encounter the pressure of being
4 C. Bourne
‘always-on’ for client-organisations and being forced to counter personal

online attacks. There are also concerns with how the PR profession
manages—or indeed provokes—the growth of social media filter bubbles
and the spread of fake news on digital platforms. However, an ever-
present concern at all levels of PR work is the disarticulation of tradi-
tional professional skills and the threat to PR’s professional identity
(Goto, 2021; Muzio et al., 2019). Senior PR professionals who prefer
to emphasise their strategic advisory role must now turn their attention
to building digital capital within organisations, ensuring that their teams
speak the right digital language and hone appropriate digital skills. While
this suggests progress, some argue the obsession with PR and the digital is
converting PR professionals into “minions of new technology” at the risk
of the profession’s strategic relevance in the long-term (Kent & Saffer,
2014: 568). Lurking in the background is the additional threat that PR
work may soon be executed by AI and non-human actors.
Digital platforms have also given rise to new occupational specialisms
including search engine optimisation (SEO) marketing, social media
management, digital content production and digital asset management.
PR agencies and in-house departments have responded to these develop-
ments in different ways. Where PR finds itself competing directly with
new specialisms, some PR agencies and departments have adapted and
hybridised. It is not unusual to see PR agencies rebranding as content
marketing agencies or SEO marketing agencies, or simply adding these
new skills to an expanded digital communications proposition (Parker,
2021; Sutton, 2020). This in itself is not unusual: the history of PR is
a story of fluidity and adaptation. However, platform capitalism poses
another threat to PR’s professional boundaries. Speed is the primary
imperative of digital platformisation; platforms need masses of content to
attract masses of users who in turn produce masses of data. The majority
of content generated on and by platforms now comes from a host of new
contributors including influencers and everyday users. Platforms’ ‘speed’
imperative has effectively closed the temporal gap between the produc-
tion and consumption of messages and ideas. PR’s utopian ideal had
once portrayed this closing gap as an opportunity for more one-to-one
exchange of knowledge and ideas between organisations and their publics
(Valentini, 2015). However, PR practitioners now find their profes-

sional outputs in direct competition with everyday digital consumers.
By exploring the shifting discourses of public relations work the book
will ask: Where do the professional boundaries lie in the platformised
future of PR work? Who controls the shifting nature of these boundaries?
Throughout this book, I will show that much of traditional PR work is
being collectively commoditised and devalued by digital platforms.
Stubbornness of Legacy Discourses

While platformisation is a new phenomenon, several of PR’s professional
discourses are age-old. One long-standing discourse involves PR’s profes-
sional status and organisational influence vis-à-vis other professions.
From time to time, PR has had to protect its professional boundaries
from marketing, HR and management consultancy. As the platform
economy expands, PR is just one profession that must protect its bound-
aries from emerging occupations such as data science and data analytics.
Other professional discourses are older still. The sector’s diversity and
inclusion, for instance, remain in a parlous state. Data shows that the PR
profession in many countries has failed to make progress on racial, gender
and class inequities; ableist attitudes also persist as does discrimination
against physical appearance and body type. One professional survey of
UK public relations found that in 2019, 92% of respondents classi-
fied themselves as white, compared with 88% the previous year, during
which time, the gender pay gap between male and female practitioners
had also widened. A skew towards elite backgrounds was also evident
in the same survey where 28% of respondents had attended fee-paying
schools—four times higher than the national UK average, and a signif-
icant rise on the 16% figure reported in the same survey in 2015/16
(CIPR, 2019). Professional bodies cite the industry’s poor self-awareness
of the disadvantages many aspiring candidates face with recruitment into
the PR profession, and ongoing issues with progression and promotion
thereafter (Shah, 2017).
6 C. Bourne
Public Relations as Professional Discourse

Theorists have highlighted the importance of professional discourses in
influencing modern society, shaping the worlds of business, commerce,
leisure and statecraft (Gunnarsson, 2009). This book explores profes-
sional discourses about developments, cultures and practices that affect
PR and its professional project. The book adopts as its lens the sociology
of professions, which contends that professions do not evolve in linear
fashion, but develop when jurisdictions become vacant (Abbott, 1988).
This may happen because a professional jurisdiction is newly-created—
e.g. with the advent of new technologies—or because an earlier tenant
has lost its ‘grip’ on a particular jurisdiction or left it altogether. Abbott
(1988) argues that the history of jurisdictional disputes determines the
real history of any profession. Public relations is no exception. PR has
spent more than a century as a professional project marked by a struggle
with fields such as advertising, marketing, human resources—and, more
recently, risk management—for market control, social closure and elite
status (Larson, 2012). From Abbott’s perspective then, an effective explo-
ration of the PR profession must include studies of PR’s jurisdictions and
its jurisdictional disputes. This book will explore the PR profession in
precisely this way.
As a profession, public relations provides much scope for interest
and analysis. First, PR operates differently from ‘traditional’ profes-
sions such as medicine or law. It is an ‘entrepreneurial’ profession
(Muzio et al., 2008), encompassing long-standing practices that only
began to formalise under a professional umbrella in the early twentieth
century. Unlike traditional professions, de facto control over the PR
profession is weak—deliberately so, argue Muzio et al. (2008), because
entrepreneurial professions are highly responsive to the organisations
and cultures they serve. Not only are such professions active in the
construction of knowledge through their use of language and relation-
ship skills with client-organisations, they are also continually developing
new forms of knowledge together with different methods for its produc-
tion, organisation and delivery, adopting “radically different strategies
and organisational configurations” as needed (Muzio et al., 2008: 4). So
often do entrepreneurial professions like PR appear to change the rules
of the game, that, increasingly, they challenge and displace traditional

forms of professional knowledge and organisation (Muzio et al., 2008).
Thus, after more than a century as a professional project, PR remains
a profession in the making, with scores of conflicting professional defi-
nitions, unclear professional boundaries and a body of professional
knowledge—both technical and managerial—that shifts constantly in
response to client needs. Professional licensing and regulation remain rare
and PR is practised differently around the world, shaped by different
socio-political structures. In China and parts of the Middle East, for
example, most PR professionals work for government departments and
state-owned corporations. Yet these public sector-based professionals are
generally under-represented in best-selling PR textbooks, which are typi-
cally biased towards corporate and consumer work. Public relations even
goes by different names in different parts of the world. In Germany,
early twentieth-century PR was equated with ‘advertising for trust’
(Bentele & Wehmeier, 2003: 203). Today, PR in Germany is known as
“Offentlichkeitsarbeit”, or “public work” referring to the public sphere;
and explained as “working in public, with the public and for the public”
(Verčič et al., 2001). The term suggests a greater degree of transparency
and public service than is equated with definitions of PR in other regions.
Different Cultures and Working Lives
PR also has markedly different professional cultures, with contrasts

between working lives spent in PR agencies, or freelancing, versus
in-house communication departments. Agency-based PR professionals
must juggle the demands of various clients. Agency management requires
a ‘client-first’ attitude, in which PR professionals must commodify
empathy and other embodied skills, converting good relations into
agency profits (Yeomans, 2016, 2019). ‘Chemistry’ between agency
and client can even act as partial-substitute for detailed expert advice
(Pieczka, 2006). PR agencies find competing for new business a constant
challenge, governed increasingly by client procurement specialists who
prefer PR suppliers with large, risk-free balance sheets. Once new busi-
ness is signed, the legal structure of the client contract is often set
8 C. Bourne
up to manage the client-agency relationship, rather than to discharge

contractual duties (Pieczka, 2006). The drive to win new business in PR
consultancy connects professionals more to the agency-client dyad than
to PR’s professional associations (Evetts, 2011). Client-agency relation-
ships have become further commoditised in the quasi-market now forged
by payment-by-results, client satisfaction surveys and other quality
measures, as well as annual agency rankings conducted by third parties
(Evetts, 2011). Unsurprisingly, the average agency-client relationship
now lasts about three years (Byrne, 2016).
In-house practitioners can point to contrasts between PR roles in the
private sector versus the public sector, or the distinctive requirements
of PR roles in non-governmental organisations and charities. Indeed,
many of PR’s professional tensions are shaped by the role’s proximity
to the client or decision-maker, rather than by PR sector specialism
or business channel. Unlike agency practitioners, in-house PR profes-
sionals must have “a sense of total single-minded involvement” with their
organisation (Beard, 2001: 128). Incorporated in this, is the expectation
that in-house PR professionals guard the organisation’s environment,
an activity referred to by PR scholars as boundary-spanning (White &
Dozier, 1992). While boundary-spanning may have aspirational aims
of mutual two-way communication, decision-makers expect their PR
advisers to exert control over that communication (Demetrious, 2015).
There are further hierarchical contrasts between the professional
cultures of senior PR practitioners focused on board-level strategic
advice, versus junior or mid-level practitioners who might be focused
on technical roles in media relations or social media community
management. Additionally, PR specialisms such as events and hospi-
tality management can differ markedly from roles focused on writing
and editing in-house publications, speeches or technical documents, or
niche areas of PR work. Regardless of sector specialism, all areas of
PR are being transformed by digital technologies and platformisation.
This has led to convergence or overlap between PR and adjacent profes-
sions such as advertising and marketing. New technologies have also
propelled demand for new PR skill sets, e.g. ‘big data’ and social media
research and analytics; digital advertising and content marketing skills
(USC Annenberg, 2017).
Feminisation
PR’s professional project is further hampered by a process of feminisa-

tion (Cline, 1986). In many countries, PR work has become more visibly
populated by women than by men. For women working in PR, femini-
sation has meant lower status, lower pay and a tendency for women to
get ‘stuck’ in technical roles which, for men, are transitory. Feminisa-
tion has also had implications for men choosing PR as a career, as PR’s
professional project has bifurcated into segments that continue to carry
higher status and better pay (e.g. corporate and financial communica-
tions, political communications, litigation PR) and segments that offer
lower compensation with greater precarity (e.g. charity PR, consumer
PR, fashion PR). Many PR professionals are expected to embody a
gendered self at work, through mannerisms, dress and extracurricular
interests—whether it be the thoughtful PR strategist who exudes grav-
itas, to the dogged, tenacious publicity ‘flack’, or the ‘bubbly’, energetic
PR girl. While gender issues in the PR profession are recognised, the
profession itself overlooks some of the “powerful cultural forces and
interrelationships that position men and women” in relation to PR work
(Daymon & Demetrious, 2014: 4). Additionally, the industry’s ongoing
lack of racial and ethnic diversity in certain countries has been linked
with a host of other exclusionary tactics enabled because the PR profes-
sion has such unclear parameters, fluid occupational identity and weak
legitimacy (Edwards, 2014).
PR further struggles to be taken seriously as a management discipline,
despite concerted efforts by its professional bodies to ground manageri-
alism in the field. This struggle is represented in repeated reassertions
of professional definitions of PR. One of the more recent definitions
offered by the International Public Relations Association in 2019 asserts
that “Public relations is a decision-making management practice tasked
with building relationships and interests between organisations and their
publics based on the delivery of information through trusted and ethical
communication methods” (IPRA, 2019). Everyday PR practice rarely
bears out this definition. Some would argue that PR has done poorly
on the managerial front by refusing to define real performance metrics
and failing to secure profit and loss (P&L) responsibility. Such gaps in
10 C. Bourne
managerial expertise have potentially left PR practitioners adrift since

clients cannot regard PR as a natural “strategic partner for growth”
when its professionals have limited understanding of how their client-
organisations actually make money (Sutton, 2020). According to PR
consultant, Gini Dietrich:
…people will say ‘Well, there’s value behind brand awareness and market
share” and all those kinds of things. And I agree. [But it’s] very hard to
measure those things. And an executive, especially today, does not care.
They want to know how the work that you are doing directly translates to
sales, or whatever the business outcome is. They want to know that. And
if you can’t demonstrate that, then they don’t…they have no need for
you. And they may regret that later because you know, brand awareness
and market share may drop, but there’s not a direct correlation. (Sutton,
2020)
PR in Societal Discourses
Second , PR’s professional discourses are an important area of research

because of PR’s role in organising some of the most influential societal
and global discourses of our time. PR discourses are often successful in
seeking consensus for products, services, brands and ideas. PR influ-
ences various consumer practices—from drinking bottled water and
participating in ‘coffee culture’ to using the latest mobile technologies.
Aided by PR, investors have ‘bought’ into concepts such as the BRICs,
thus changing the shape of financial markets as well as international
political relations (Bourne, 2015). PR campaigns by international devel-
opment agencies have encouraged the acceptance of global programmes
including immunisation against diseases such as polio (Curtin & Gaither,
2007). Not-for-profit organisations depend heavily on PR to raise aware-
ness of issues such as food security and climate change. Grassroots
activists have used PR to spread movements and projects such as the
‘Robin Hood Tax’, ‘Everyday Sexism’, ‘Black Lives Matter’, #MeToo
and ‘Stand with Standing Rock’ (Bourne & Edwards, 2021). Likewise,
governments and supranationals, such as the World Bank, have used PR
techniques to globalise the tenets of neoliberalism, a political ideology
associated with free trade and minimal government intervention in busi-

ness practices. PR also plays an integral role in promoting nations as
financial brands, promoting central bankers as economic storytellers,
and promoting currencies and debt issues as tradeable and creditworthy
(Bourne, 2017).
Third , while PR discourses may promote consensus, these discourses
are often sites of resistance to PR activity. Not a day goes by that does not
feature PR in the news. Brands such as Amazon, Facebook (now Meta),
Peloton exercise equipment, P&O Ferries, Uber transport, Volkswagen
automotive, Wirecard financial services and Whirlpool home appliances
have been blamed for their ‘PR fiascos’ following bigoted campaigns,
mishandling of product and service issues, breaches of data privacy, or
breaches of employment and human rights. PR is no less important
in the public sector, where it plays a key role in building consent for
(often unpopular) policies enacted by state and local government. One
of the biggest PR scandals in recent years directly involved PR profes-
sionals working on behalf of an opaque blend of public and private sector
interests. Once the scandal was revealed, Bell Pottinger, formerly one of
the UK’s largest PR firms, was expelled from its trade association, the
PRCA, for spearheading a malicious social media political campaign in
South Africa. The disinformation campaign was designed to shift public
debate away from state capture by President Jacob Zuma and his closest
financial backers by stirring up public animosity towards white-owned
or controlled businesses.
It is important to highlight sustained conflict and resistance in PR
discourses, particularly since PR textbooks frequently present aspira-
tional views of the PR profession, positioning PR practitioners as ethical
guardians, as the organisational ‘conscience’, even ‘trust strategists’, able
to speak truth to power while fomenting dialogue between organisations
and their publics (Bourne, 2017). However, when it comes to discur-
sive representations of PR by those outside the profession, it is difficult
to ignore PR’s distinct image problem. The media regularly refers to PR
practitioners as ‘flacks’ or ‘spin doctors’. Writers and film-makers often
portray PR as ‘the dark arts’, rife with shadowy, invisible practices. So
little is known about the hidden uses of PR to sustain the seats of power,
that conspiracy theories abound; as does the steady stream of polemical
12 C. Bourne
books and articles, encouraging readers and audiences to get angry about
the impact of PR activity, while bringing us no closer to understanding
the PR profession in its contemporary forms.
These realities pose an ongoing challenge for the profession. Few PR
practitioners recognise polemical depictions of their jobs as powerful,
shadowy ‘puppet masters’. Their own work experiences often run
contrary to such depictions, particularly for female workers, racialised
minorities and those in low or middle ranking positions, whose occu-
pational reality is more likely to entail low pay, poor progression, and
subservience to clients or senior decision-makers. Indeed, today’s PR
practitioners are more likely to encounter a series of professional para-
doxes. While PR has become more specialist and managerial over the
decades, its practitioners still face no mandatory national examinations,
no professional licensing and no compulsory continuous professional
development (CPD). It is true that, in many countries, there are
professional associations offering qualifications and CPD schemes, but
professional associations tend to represent a minority of those calling
themselves PR practitioners. PR may have become a recognised organi-
sational function, yet individual practitioners rarely wield power within
their organisations. And while vastly more people around the world now
choose PR as a career, the profession itself is far from diverse—and rarely
representative of the wider population. Meanwhile, within the profes-
sion, there is continued unease over the blurring of PR’s disciplinary
boundaries, as digital technologies threaten convergence between PR,
advertising and marketing, particularly for entry-level roles (Cropp &
Pincus, 2000; Gesualdi, 2019).
PR as Attractive, Creative Career
Despite these realities, the field of PR continues to expand, which brings

me to a further motivation for exploring PR’s professional discourses.
PR continues to grow in popularity as a career. Young people who leave
school to join the field have the option of entering PR through appren-
ticeships or administrative routes, but many now choose to study PR at
the growing number of universities offering related degree programmes.
These young people are often drawn to PR based on what they have
come to know of the profession through its discursive representations.
PR’s growing popularity as a career choice means that we cannot ignore
the PR industry, even as we become savvier to some of its practices (Fitch,
2015). Indeed, the sheer scale of PR activity makes the industry difficult
to overlook. If one includes social media management and digital content
marketing, the global PR industry could reach US$149.44 billion by
2026 according to one industry forecast.2 Even this figure is unlikely
to capture the true size of global PR, since it will not account for all
work executed by freelancers, small PR consultancies and in-house PR
practitioners who perform PR tasks as part of another role. In addition
to unprecedented growth, the pace of change within the PR sector has
never been faster.
PR’s Critical Moment

The changes now happening within PR and its environment represent
a critical moment in PR’s professional discourses. The pace of digital
change is rapid and recently exacerbated by additional telecommuting
practices throughout the COVID-19 global pandemic. Digital transfor-
mation has also introduced new inequalities into PR working practices,
while reinforcing old inequalities for various groups across the wider
promotional industries. One US survey found that seventy per cent
of all PR professionals believe their profession will change consider-
ably or drastically over the next five years (USC Annenberg, 2018).
A European survey of PR and communications found that while the
vast majority of European practitioners highlight the need to digitise
stakeholder communications (87.7%) and build digital infrastructure
to enable communications work (83.9%), only a minority (43.8%) of
communication departments and agencies were considered mature in
their provision of digital tools and support (Zerfass et al., 2021). Chris
Candlin (2000: 10) describes these critical moments in professional
2 2022 TBRC Business Research.

14 C. Bourne
discourses as the greatest moments of challenge “where the commu-

nicative competence of the participants is at a premium”. This is borne
out by the extent and frequency with which PR’s professional associ-
ations now find it necessary to communicate with stakeholders both
within and outside the PR profession. In the age of digital platformi-
sation, “locating how, where and why jurisdictional claims are made” is
essential to capturing how PR and related fields evolve in new digital
environments (Lewis, 2012: 842).
Several critical moments in PR discourses have intertwined, drawing
greater attention to the way PR is embodied and practised. These inter-
twined critical moments are in turn shaped by social, economic and
technological change. Social change has been driven by demographics;
the PR profession is now dominated by millennials (26–41 years old
at the time of writing) and post-millennials or ‘Gen Z’ (aged 10 to
25 years old). In Western countries, the millennial generation not only
exceeds the ‘baby boomers3 ’ in size; together with post-millennials, this
younger generation is more racially diverse than preceding generations.
Millennials were born into a world that is more globalised, one where
more jobs are generated by the ‘knowledge economy’, and where certain
professional roles have become precarious. Unlike their predecessors,
millennials and post-millennials are encouraged to develop ‘portfolio
careers’ with little prospect of a job-for-life.
We also now know that young people in OECD/EU economies and
developing economies of Asia, Africa and Central and South America
carry a heavy burden from the local and global inequalities resulting
from the 2008 global financial crisis, and ensuing recession and austerity
(Kelly & Pike, 2016). Globalisation, increased competition and tight-
ening economies have introduced new pressures for young people
entering the job market. PR has been no exception. Some hiring prac-
tices seem initially encouraging—workplace diversity, for example, has
become a managerial discourse. However, other hiring practices appear
designed to foment professional anxiety amongst young career-seekers.
Contemporary HR practices encourage young people ‘to bring their
whole personality to work and develop new interests and abilities with
3 The Baby boomers generation began approaching retirement in 2000.

every step’ (Ernst & Young, 2010: 2). This is a disturbing message in
junior PR roles where younger workers feel driven to be ‘always on’
and available to monitor campaign activity and client/manager requests
outside of traditional work hours. ‘Always-on’ work-connectivity is now
regarded as an increasing cause of stress for millennials (Villadsen, 2016).
Meanwhile, professional ‘burn out’—always a concern in the PR profes-
sion—has now been listed as a significant mental health concern for the
industry (Hall & Waddington, 2017). The COVID-19 pandemic also
solidified intergenerational divisiveness with age-based vaccine proto-
cols, together with restrictions that wielded a disproportionate impact on
young lives. In the USA, the surgeon general reports that the COVID-
19 pandemic aggravated a pre-existing youth mental health crisis (US
Department of Health, 2021).
Amidst these broader factors is the sweeping technological change
taking place across all communication channels used by PR professionals.
Throughout much of the twentieth century, the PR industry traditionally
‘pushed’ its messages into print or the ether. However, twenty-first-
century social media with its “assemblage of discursive spaces” now poses
new challenges (Motion et al., 2016: 12). Not only do PR practitioners
require new technical skills to manage digital media spaces, they also
require different management approaches to tend digital stakeholder
relationships. These pressures are exacerbated by struggles between PR,
Advertising and Marketing for professional dominance over digital media
channels. The burden of understanding digital technologies and associ-
ated skills has fallen on young professionals because they are regarded
as ‘digital natives’. Post-millennials (Gen Z) entering the PR profession
can, for example, find themselves in SEO roles requiring both a comfort-
level with algorithms and pattern-recognition, as well as traditional PR
campaign skills. Not for the first time, concerns have been raised that the
demand for traditional PR skills could decline, leading to the demise of
the term ‘public relations’ altogether (USC Annenberg, 2017).
Such striking technological changes represent a critical moment in
PR’s professional discourses—not just because they are reshaping PR
skills and expertise, but because these same technological changes are
reshaping the skills and expertise of adjacent fields, including journalism,
advertising, marketing, accounting and management consultancy; the
16 C. Bourne
latter illustrated by recent forays into advertising by global manage-

ment consultants—Accenture, Deloitte, IBM and PwC (Joseph, 2021).
PR currently battles for jurisdiction over in-house digital media centres,
creative content production, stakeholder data management and stake-
holder engagement measurement. This book will unveil PR activity
amidst digital platformisation by exploring different professional cultures
and genres, capturing elements of inter-related critical moments now
reshaping the expressions of power/knowledge relations within the PR
profession (Alvesson & Kärreman, 2011). Each of the book’s five data
chapters will map a critical moment of discourses shaping the evolu-
tion of PR’s professional project—mapping these critical moments onto
crucial sites where PR is practised.
The COVID-19 global pandemic is also its own critical moment in
PR’s professional discourses. The pandemic had a detrimental impact on
the health and welfare of billions by devastating economies and wors-
ening inequalities around the world. According to the World Bank,
some 100 million additional people were pushed into extreme poverty in
2020, school closures put up to 1.6 billion students out of school, health
services were disrupted, and there was a rise in gender-based violence, to
name but a few repercussions (World Bank, 2021). On the professional
front, COVID-19 created major impacts for all kinds of organisations
and workers. This not only influenced how PR professionals design
and deliver communication programmes for client-organisations, it also
transformed working life in PR, with an increase in telecommuting and
faster incorporation of digital tools. PR professionals were also affected
by the COVID-19-related phenomenon known as ‘The Great Resigna-
tion’. Here, many professionals—mostly women—moved jobs, changed
industries or left the workforce due to caring responsibilities, ill health or
early retirement. There is no indication of how many PR workers may
have died from COVID-19 itself or been affected by post-COVID-19
complications.
“It Is the People Who Dance…”

PR professionals are themselves discourse workers who produce texts for
a living. This is why most rhetorical and discursive studies of the PR
profession have explored the sorts of texts produced by PR workers as
part of everyday practice—such as annual reports, speeches, in-house
magazines, press releases and campaign material (see, e.g., Elwood, 1995;
Evangelisti Allore & Garzone, 2011; Mickey, 2010). This book takes a
different approach, focusing instead on mega-discourses about the PR
profession and about being a PR professional. In so doing, the book
will centre the people whose professional lives are affected by profes-
sional discourses. For, as Candlin (2000) argues, people are central to
the ecology of professional discourses—“it is the people who dance”
(2000: 8). Each PR professional possesses his or her socially-constructed
role and place in the professional ecology. This remains true even when
that socially-constructed role is felt most keenly through an absence of
belonging to the professional ecology, as is the case for many young
people aspiring to enter the field of PR. The young professionals who
are at the fulcrum of rapid professional change in PR are the ones who
must now learn a new ‘dance’—a new professional choreography, and
learn it rapidly and perfectly, as part of digital platformisation and its
mediated ecologies.
The following chapters represent professional cultures from PR in the
corporate world to PR in global agencies, from consumer PR to financial
PR; and from PR at the most junior levels of the organisation to PR
roles with a seat at the corporate board. The PR discourses featured in
this book are revealed through a variety of different professional genres,
encompassing recruitment ads catering to PR and adjacent professions,
corporate thought leadership, an industry webinar, journalists’ columns
and digital content marketing brochure produced by the tech industry.
18 C. Bourne
PR’s Professional Discourses: Theory

and Method
My theoretical starting point for exploring PR’s professional identities,
subjectivities and discursive boundaries is the sociology of professions,
which positions PR as an ongoing professional project struggling over
jurisdictions in order to survive (Larson, 2012). This jurisdictional
struggle not only continues into the digital age, it is changing more
rapidly than ever. Contemporary PR requires new specialist knowl-
edge and skills in order to reap social and economic rewards (Larson,
2012). My sociological lens will therefore be interwoven with perspec-
tives from the emerging field of critical public relations, itself highly
interdisciplinary—incorporating poststructural theory, feminist theory,
critical race theory, sociology of the body, as well as anthropological,
cultural and psychoanalytical scholarship.
This book differs from most books on professional discourse anal-
ysis, as it is not a micro-level study of everyday linguistic interaction.
My discourse analytical approach is, instead, informed by a poststruc-
tural perspective, which suggests that there can be no ‘complete’ or
‘correct’ perspective on professional discourses (Burrell, 1988; Phillips,
1995). By finding more diverse ways to analyse the PR profession, we can
increase the complexity of what we find there (Phillips, 1995). A post-
structural approach further enables me to deconstruct the PR profession’s
power/knowledge networks, paying attention to historically-developed
systems of professional thinking and ‘regimes of truth’ (Foucault, 1981).
At the same time, the book does share commonalities with micro-
level professional discourse analysis, and its focus on conversations and
communication between professionals in their organisational settings
(e.g. Bhatia, 2016; Gunnarson, 2012; Kong, 2014). Like micro-level
analysts, I understand professional discourse to be both situated and
dynamic, with constantly changing professional language designed as
a means of distinction (Gunnarsson, 2009: 17). However, the selected
texts represent professional activity at the macro-level, that is, field and
industry-level interaction. The book examines how the PR profession
discursively constructs its boundaries, and how differences in field posi-

tions influence the PR profession’s use of discursive strategies to defend
contested boundaries (Bucher et al., 2016).
This is an era in which ‘content is king’, giving me access to a rich
repository of publicly-available material. All of the discursive data used
in the book is third-party material representing opinions and conversa-
tions by or about the PR profession and adjacent fields. Some of the
selected texts have been produced by groups or individuals purporting
to represent the ‘voice’ of the PR profession. Other texts are produced
by adjacent professions such as journalism, the recruitment industry or
the high-tech industry. Each of the five data chapters explores different
genres, each genre represents different communicative purposes. Recruit-
ment ads, for example (see Chapter 3) provide invaluable insight into
PR skills currently in demand by employers, yet these ads should also
be understood as a reflection of certain human resources management
discourses and practices. Industry webinars (see Chapter 5) are more
visual, interactive discursive texts; often produced to ‘promote’ PR, to
inform PR professionals and their clients about industry developments,
to offer solutions to industry problems, or promote PR skills in the
face of encroachment from proximate fields. By contrast, the content
marketing brochure analysed in Chapter 7 is designed to promote a
particular organisation and its AI technology, yet reading between the
lines of this e-brochure yields considerable insight into the future of PR.
Author’s Warrant
Interpreting the conduct of professionals through their discursive genres
is always complex, and the fluidity of PR practice poses particular chal-
lenges. As discourse analyst, my author’s ‘warrant’ (Sarangi, 2007) lies
in both the proximity and distance I bring to my analytical material.
As a former PR practitioner of more than 20 years, I can relate to
many of the ‘people who dance’ in the following pages. I began working
in PR ‘accidentally’, straight out of university. I went on to pursue
a career that eventually spanned different sectors of the economy, as
well as two very different parts of the world—Jamaica and the UK.
20 C. Bourne
Some of that career overlapped with roles in related fields of sales,

advertising and marketing, where I experienced some of the blurred disci-
plinary boundaries and encroachment described throughout the book.
Equally different was the experience of working in communication roles
in a Jamaica, a Black-majority country, where, after some 60 years of
independence from Britain, most professions are dominated by Black
Jamaicans. This contrasted dramatically with my experience of working
in the UK, where Black PR practitioners were still few in number when I
arrived in London in 2000. Admittedly, this is slowly changing thanks to
more people of colour choosing to study and work in PR and receiving
encouragement to do so.
After a transitionary period, I moved into UK academia full time in
2011, gaining a new perspective of PR as a lecturer and personal tutor
to scores of young people who eagerly anticipate a career in the field. As
an academic, I have also taught PR, advertising and marketing separately
and together, collating critical perspectives from the various disciplines
which explore PR, advertising and marketing as distinct professional
projects. This approach gives me daily insight into PR’s disciplinary
struggles with its nearest professional counterparts and exposure to
accompanying cross-industry debates.
This book is dedicated to PR practitioners past and present, as well as
those considering a career in PR. Some will spend their professional life-
time working in the field. For others, PR work will be transitory, part of
broader organisational responsibilities or perhaps simply a stepping stone
to other career opportunities. Regardless of duration, all are valid reasons
for occupying the field. The experience that transitory PR workers have
during their time in PR can have untold influence on the profession,
since these transitory workers could be tomorrow’s PR clients, budget
holders, recruiters or other stakeholders. Above all, this book is dedicated
to those who aim to see PR foment greater equalities for those working
within PR, as well as for wider society.
How the Book Is Organised

This introductory chapter has provided an overview of the research inter-
ests posed by PR’s professional discourses. Chapter 2 sets out a method
for exploring field-level professional discourses, focusing on profes-
sional boundary-work via protectionist, expansionary and hybridising
discourses. Each of the five data chapters thereafter explores a crit-
ical moment in PR’s professional discourses. In ‘Be Digital’, Chapter 3
begins an exploration of the increasingly digital and data-driven nature
of work executed by PR professionals and their nearest neighbours in
digital marketing and social media management. Chapter 3 looks at
PR’s Darwinian struggles with advertising and marketing for dominance
over client-organisations. Chapter 4 ‘Be Creative’ looks at another facet
of digital platformisation, exploring PR’s efforts to establish its creative
credentials against advertising, amidst client demands for greater speed,
efficiency and productivity. Chapter 4 examines PR’s attempts to regain
jurisdiction over creativity as expertise against its closest occupational
rivals. Both Chapters 3 and 4 unpack PR’s professional discourses as they
intersect with adjacent professions. By contrast, Chapter 5 ‘Be Included’
takes on an important and long-standing discourse in the PR profession
of the Global North, namely unsuccessful, even half-hearted, industry
efforts to diversify PR’s overwhelmingly white, middle-class character-
istics. ‘Be Included’ incorporates explorations of identity, race, gender,
professional embodiment and expertise. Chapter 6 ‘Be Social’ steps back
into the recent past, in the years following the 2008 global financial crisis.
Situated in financial markets, Chapter 6 explores ‘monstrous’ discourses
of hypervisibility unleashed by the social media era when PR profes-
sionals run the risk of being thrust into news headlines, breaking an
unspoken law of corporate communications: ‘never become the news’.
From the recent past, Chapter 7 then looks to the future: the final data
chapter, ‘Be Posthuman’, explores the possibility of a posthuman PR
as human-to-machine communication becomes increasingly normalised
through AI and automation. Chapter 8 concludes the book, locating PR’s
professional discourses within broader scholarship on digital disruption
of professional work, situating the PR profession in emerging digital and
big data specialisms; the concluding chapter considers PR’s long-term
22 C. Bourne
future amidst the growing prospect of commoditisation and automation

of PR skills by digital platforms.
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2
Public Relations’ Professional
Boundary-Work
Introduction
This chapter sets out a discourse analytic framework for deconstructing
boundary-work between professions. The methodological framework can
be applied in exploring different contestations in professional discourses,
for instance: a single profession protecting its existing boundaries,
expanding its boundaries further, or fragmenting into new, hybridised
professions—thus creating new professional boundaries altogether. The
discourse analytic framework and accompanying discussion offered here,
answers the call to dismantle silo-thinking about PR activity (see
Falkheimer & Heide, 2015; also Heath et al., 2019), through a method-
ology which can examine PR’s intersections with other fields.
A short stroll over to marketing literature underscores the value of
dismantling silo-thinking in PR. Svensson’s (2006) work on marketing’s
professional project reveals shared concerns over marketing’s lack of
professional trust and credibility; public suspicion and repugnance for
marketing techniques; similar calls for formal jurisdiction and profes-
sional credentials; and mutual apprehension over encroachment from
management consultancy and other fields. There is further value in
Switzerland AG 2022
28 C. Bourne
dismantling silos where PR as an occupational and intellectual domain

continues to guard its authority and terrain from ‘others’, such as activist
groups who also engage in PR practice (Demetrious, 2013).
Crucially, dismantling silos with adjacent disciplines provides deeper
understanding of PR and its legitimacy in late modernity (Bourne,
2015a; Demetrious, 2013). The pace of change in contemporary PR
is far-reaching and fast, driving the series of critical moments outlined
in Chapter 1. These critical moments include intergenerational change:
post-millennials or ‘Gen Z’ now entering the PR profession arrive with a
different understanding of what PR is, and how it is practised. A second
critical moment is driven by massive technological change: digital plat-
forms are pushing back professional boundaries as digital tools become
more capable—often disarticulating or even replacing human skill with
artificial intelligence and automation (Susskind & Susskind, 2015).
Another critical moment is driven by the COVID-19 pandemic, which
changed working conditions and left a significant impact on economic,
social and political relations.
The methodological approach draws on Bourne’s (2019) field-level
discourse analytic framework (see Fig. 2.1). This method is designed
to deconstruct discursive boundary-work carried out by professionals
within an expert field, or between adjacent fields of expertise, in order
to reveal how claims to professional knowledge and expertise are success-
fully deployed, defended and maintained. In this approach, “boundary-
work” refers to discursive efforts to demarcate professional activity and
expert knowledge so as to assert distinctive status and centrality within
that field (see also Bourne, 2020). Since boundaries are not fixed,
this discursive work is always in motion, revealing tensions between
actors claiming or maintaining status (Bourne, 2019). Boundaries define
an expert group’s access to material and non-material resources such
as power, status and remuneration (Abbott, 1988). The framework
introduced here draws on theoretical and methodological approaches
to professional discourse, influenced by scholarship on professional
boundary-work (e.g. Bucher et al., 2016; Gieryn, 1983; Lewis, 2012;
Thomas & Hewitt, 2011), while building on existing methodological
approaches in the field of professional discourse analysis (see Bhatia,
2010; Gunnarsson, 2009; Wong, 2014).
Status, Authority,
Asymmetries
Conditions,
Deployment,
Intertextualities
Participants
Professional
Genres
Boundary Work
Expansion Protection Hybridisation
Fig. 2.1 Field-level Professional Discourse Analysis (Bourne, 2019)
PR’s Discursive Boundaries

My theoretical starting point for exploring PR’s discursive boundaries is
the sociology of professions (Abbott, 1988; Larson, 2012), which posi-
tions PR as an ongoing professional project struggling over jurisdictions
in order to survive (Edwards, 2014; Edwards & Pieczka, 2013; Reed,
2018). Abbott (1988) contends that professions do not evolve in linear
fashion, but develop when jurisdictions become vacant. This may happen
because a professional jurisdiction is newly-created, for example, when
new technologies emerge; or because an earlier tenant has lost its ‘grip’
on a particular jurisdiction or left it altogether. Abbott (1988) argues
that the history of jurisdictional disputes determines the real history of
any profession. PR is no exception. From Abbott’s perspective then, an
effective exploration of the PR profession must include studies of PR’s
jurisdictions, and above all, its jurisdictional disputes with adjacent fields.
Struggles around PR’s boundaries are on the rise, often played out
through industry texts. Whether traditional or modern, all occupations
30 C. Bourne
engaged in a professional project must establish their legitimacy on an

ongoing basis (Abbott, 1988). However, as a new or ‘entrepreneurial’
profession (Muzio et al., 2008), PR differs from traditional professions
such as medicine or law. While the PR field encompasses long-standing
practices, PR’s collective expertise only began to formalise under a profes-
sional umbrella in the early twentieth century. Although entrepreneurial
professions have borrowed several features from traditional professions,
this is largely a symbolic exercise, since PR and other entrepreneurial
professions operate differently. As with other ‘new’ professions, PR’s
professional associations are embryonic, with no mandatory member-
ship, social credentials or special education required (Muzio et al., 2008).
Thus, entrepreneurial professions have few professional credentials or
independent sources of knowledge, and remain largely open, governed
by market mechanisms (Muzio et al., 2008).
Definitions of discourse are slippery across the different method-
ological approaches. However, most discourse analysts can agree that a
discourse is “an interrelated set of texts, and the practices of their produc-
tion, dissemination, and reception, that brings an object into being”
(Phillips & Hardy, 2002: 3). Discourse analysis, itself, is an entire field of
research that belongs to no specific discipline. It is an empirical method,
insofar as we gain knowledge via direct observation. It can be both ‘quan-
titative’ or ‘qualitative’ (Daymon & Holloway, 2010), so it is best not
to locate it in this way. The literature is vast and very confusing, as
not all discourse analysts are transparent about their methods. Indeed,
some of the most widely-cited discourse scholars are the least likely to
provide conceptual frameworks for understanding their techniques since
discourse analysis is a ‘craft like’ process, often difficult to specify in
writing (Potter, 1998). However, discourse analysis remains a significant
way to find meaning in a text’s structure, and to delve into participants’
perspectives or subjectivities.
PR researchers have been using discourse analytical methods for years.
Most of these studies seek to understand PR practice as a form of
discourse work, with attendant impacts on society. These studies have
variously employed critical discourse analysis (Bhatia, 2006; Caruana &
Crane, 2008; Chaka, 2014; Ciszek & Logan, 2018); cultural discourse
analysis (Hiu Ying Choy, 2018); framing analysis (Bardhan, 2013); and
Foucauldian discourse analysis (Bourne, 2017; Motion & Leitch, 2007).

Such approaches allow researchers to understand discursive entangle-
ments at regional, national and international levels. Several PR studies
have applied discourse analysis specifically to explore PR’s professional
discourses (Bremner, 2012; Demetrious, 2013; Evangelisti Allori &
Garzone, 2011; Williams & Apperley, 2009). These studies differ from
examinations of PR’s interventions in societal discourses, since profes-
sional discourse spans the language and texts produced by professionals
for their own occupational interests.
Professional discourse can be both situated and dynamic, with
constantly changing professional language designed as a means of distinc-
tion (Gunnarson, 2009: 17). Learning how to communicate like other
professionals plays an integral part in getting into a profession, espe-
cially for professions that rely heavily on communication (Wong, 2014).
Broadly speaking, professional discourse can take place within a single
profession; or between two separate professions; as well as between
professionals and third-party groups such as clients, customers and
prospects, suppliers, governments and regulators (Bucher et al., 2016;
Wong, 2014). For instance, Bhatia’s (2010) work on interdiscursivity in
annual report production explores discursive boundary-work between
PR, accountancy, legal and economic professions. To these analytical
categories, Wong (2014) adds regulatory genres, such as professional
codes of practice. However, existing published work on professional
discourse analysis is fairly narrow in scope, since most studies concen-
trate on micro-level discourses, that is to say, communication between
individual professionals within their organisational settings (e.g. Bhatia,
2010; Gunnarson, 2009). By contrast, macro-level methods highlight
the limitations of PR’s own organisation-centric professional discourses,
by repositioning PR discourses within field-level contexts such as glob-
alisation, cultural imperialism and social inequality (Bardhan, 2013).
These interventions are vital, argues Demetrious (2013), since PR is
more subversive than adjacent professions such as advertising, where PR’s
intent is political, and where processes go largely undetected by target
publics.
32 C. Bourne
PR Profession as Boundary-Work
The role and status of PR and adjacent professions must be under-
stood in relation to other occupational groups whenever traditional
boundaries between professions are tested and constructed, and hybrid
forms of professionalism emerge (Thomas & Hewitt, 2011). Boundaries
define a profession’s access to material and non-material resources such
as power, status and remuneration (Abbott, 1988). Potential threats to a
profession’s jurisdiction mean that stakes are high, leading professions to
struggle over boundaries in order to maintain, change or broaden their
practice domains and delimit insiders versus outsiders, while deciding
what counts as ethical practice (Bucher et al., 2016; Lewis, 2012).
In considering PR’s boundary claims, I engage with two influential
studies on boundary-work. The first, by Bucher et al., (2016: 498),
contends that focusing on professions’ discursive boundary-work is “both
theoretically interesting and practically important”, because professions
negotiate and position themselves against other fields by creating and
distributing various official documents and other texts. Boundary-work
consists of strategies used to establish, obscure or dissolve distinctions
between groups of actors (Bucher et al., 2016; Gieryn, 1983). Professions
continually negotiate boundaries in their desire to expand or protect
their autonomy (Bucher et al., 2016; Gieryn, 1983). However, while
Bucher et al. argue that professions also seek to monopolise autonomy;
for entrepreneurial professions, monopolies are less of a feature. For this
reason, I incorporate the work of Muzio et al. (2011) to suggest that
newer professions such as PR are, instead, more likely to hybridise and
fragment into sub-disciplines.
The second influential source on discursive boundary-work is
Demetrious’ (2013) exploration of PR as activism. Demetrious’s
approach is in turn shaped by Foucault’s (1972: 26) contention that “an
investigation of an individual discourse, such as medicine and law, only
reveals a narrow and specific understanding”. A Foucauldian approach,
therefore, urges discourse analysts to interrogate the unity of professional
discourses, break them up and determine whether “they can be legiti-
mately reformed; or whether other groupings should be made” (Foucault,
1972: 26). Demetrious (2013) draws on Foucault to question the PR
profession’s discursive unity by subjecting PR’s central tenets to scrutiny

vis-à-vis the discourses of grassroots activists and their campaigns.
Expansionary Discourses
The first area of field-level boundary-work is expansionary discourses, these

expand authority or expertise into domains claimed by other professions
or occupations. Boundary-work in expansionary discourses heightens the
contrast between rival professions in ways that flatter the aggressor’s side
(Gieryn, 1983). Expansionary discourses are, therefore, evident in talk,
text or images where a profession opts to go on the offensive. Expan-
sionary professional discourse features assertive language, and regular
pronouncements about moves to occupy or capture new areas of exper-
tise. A current example of expansionary discourse is taking place at the
boundaries of PR, advertising, marketing and journalism over content
marketing; a specialism designed to increase stakeholder engagement via
social media. The growth of content marketing has led PR and marketing
to encroach on journalism by advising client-organisations to establish
their own digital media centres, enabling companies with ‘good stories
to tell’ to do their own storytelling (Gesualdi, 2019; Lieb, 2017). The
resulting ‘brand journalism’ has been described as ‘the first love child
from the coupling of marketing and PR’ (Lieb, 2017: 1). PR has further
encroached on advertising to promote content marketing via ‘earned’
media, an approach designed to succeed where paid media’s banner ads,
pop-ups and native advertising have failed.
Content marketing involves more than journalistic skill in recognising
news ‘hooks’; it also encompasses visual storytelling via infographics,
factual and emotive videos, photo essays and slideshows. Despite PR’s
long track record in visual work, twentieth-century PR was best defined
by written tools of the trade, e.g. press releases, feature stories, speeches,
in-house magazines and company reports. The bias towards PR ‘word-
smithing’ began to shift in the early 2000s, as platforms such as Myspace,
Delicious, Flickr and Facebook created new opportunities for visual
engagement, incorporating PR’s existing storytelling skills. Social media
also offered new opportunities for age-old PR skills in creating ‘viral’
34 C. Bourne
publicity stunts. The shift towards visual skills is now evident in PR prac-
tice. In 2017, the top PR campaigns voted for by PR Week UK readers
were all stunts involving visual experiences (PR Week, 2017). This has
tested PR’s boundaries with both advertising and digital marketing,
which had positioned themselves as the professional specialists in visual
storytelling.
PR’s foray into content marketing is marginally less contentious than
industry efforts to re-cast PR’s role in creative campaign production. The
advertising profession has always engendered a “cult of creativity”, vener-
ating the creative director’s status and influence in advertising agencies
(McStay, 2010; Nixon, 2003). Advertising’s cult of creativity is symbol-
ised through the power of one event, the annual Cannes Lions Festival of
Creativity, which anoints advertising’s creative ‘kings’. But advertising’s
role has come under threat in the twenty-first century (see discussion in
Chapter 4). Globalisation, recession, and above all, digital technologies
and platformisation have given new prominence to creativity as exper-
tise. Today’s clients valorise creativity more than ever. Creativity offers
‘newness’, the ability to break new boundaries and establish new genres
(Nixon, 2003). Creativity fuels the design of ever-new products, ever-
more sophisticated campaigns and everlasting ‘buzz’ across digital and
traditional platforms. The PR profession boldly trespassed on adver-
tising’s creative boundaries in response to changing client demands.
Global PR firms, in particular, have used various industry soapboxes—
speeches, trade magazine interviews and social media—to threaten to ‘eat
advertising’s lunch’ (Rogers, 2014). In recent years, this specific expan-
sionary discourse has been tracked via the annual ‘Creativity in PR’
survey published by PRovoke Media (formerly Holmes Report ), a PR trade
publication (Sudhaman, 2017).
Protectionist Discourses
The second significant area of boundary-work for the PR profession is

protectionist discourses. Protectionist boundary-work is particularly inter-
esting, since it encompasses vertical and horizontal boundaries. Vertically,
protectionist discourses can take place between PR and other manage-

rial departments within an organisation. One common protectionist
discourse concerns PR’s ability to defend against encroachment of its
departmental boundaries (Gesualdi, 2019; Lauzen, 1992). Encroach-
ment also occurs when PR practitioners abandon the name ‘public
relations’ from departments and job titles. Intra-organisational encroach-
ment refers to the process by which professionals from adjacent fields
of marketing, investor relations (IR), law, human resources (HR), risk
management, or engineering assume the organisation’s senior PR role,
forcing existing PR professionals into technical functions servicing other
departments. When this happens, PR’s authority in the organisation is
likely to decline, as PR practitioners are less likely to serve in a managerial
capacity and may find career opportunities and development compro-
mised (Lee, 2013). Vertical encroachment was once a long-standing
research theme in PR scholarship which needs revisiting in the digital
age (Gesualdi, 2019). A focus on boundary-work broadens our under-
standing of encroachment as a discourse with material effects, rather
than a benign re-branding of PR work. Internal boundaries within PR
also exist at the level of professional associations, where protectionist
boundary-work regularly takes place between so-called ethical, profes-
sionalised PR practitioners and whichever PR workers are deemed to
lie outside textbook definitions of PR. As Chapter 5 shows, a person’s
inherent characteristics such as race, class or physical appearance can
also place them outside normative definitions of ‘the PR professional’
tacitly used to protect the profession. This form of boundary-work is
rarely reflected in PR textbooks.
Horizontally, protectionist boundary-work may take place between
professions with different societal status. Here, Sanders and Harrison
(2008) observe that higher-status professionals may adopt silence as a
form of discursive boundary-work, insofar as silence appears to express
‘a taken-for-granted assumption of their own technical superiority’
(Sanders & Harrison, 2008: 297). Alternatively, high-status professions
may be forced to defend boundaries against incursion by emphasising
the exclusiveness of their abstract knowledge, and by constructing the
role of aspiring interlopers as ‘technicians’ or ‘non-experts’ (Abbott,
36 C. Bourne
1988; Bucher et al., 2016). PR’s horizontal boundary-work with adja-

cent advertising and marketing professions is ongoing, and the subject of
exploration in Chapters 3 and 4. Hutton (2010) explores long-standing
boundary-work between these promotional disciplines, apportioning
more aggressive behaviour to marketing, which “under a variety of
monikers” has reinvented itself over the years to subsume much of
PR (Hutton, 2010: 509). While digital platformisation has brought all
three fields closer together, many of the differences Hutton identified
in 2010 still obtain, including marketing’s focus on product devel-
opment, physical distribution, location analysis, pricing, retailing and
customer relationship management, together with an expanded interest
in direct-to-customer channels via ecommerce. Hutton critiques the
PR profession’s failure to stake a “solid claim to territory that it logi-
cally should dominate” including relationship management and social
networking.
Equally, PR’s horizontal boundary-work with journalism is an impor-
tant location for discourse analysis (see Chapter 6). A boundary-work
perspective opens up journalism’s protectionist discourses against PR.
Journalism has always been a permeable occupation, with frequent
knowledge-transfer from PR, as well as job mobility into PR (Abbott,
1988). This transferability has intensified in the twenty-first century,
deepening journalism’s protectionist discourses. As professionals, jour-
nalists are often mythologised as ‘fearless crusaders’ in search of truth, a
quest that rests on impartiality as a professional logic, lending journalism
its air of authenticity and trustworthiness (Aldridge, 1998). However,
journalism’s perceived impartiality has been sorely tested in social media
arenas. On social media platforms, a ‘journalist’ can be anyone, oper-
ating from anywhere, while online journalism gains greater currency
and shareability when it expresses partisanship, appealing to social media
communities and ‘filter bubbles’. Unlike traditional newsrooms, social
media has no incentive to mask PR professionals’ biased contribution
to news-making and may instead amplify and distort an organisation’s
measured PR response to reputational attacks. More recently, the rise
of so-called fake news in emotionally-charged media environments has
intensified boundary disputes between PR and journalism. While jour-
nalists expose direct links between PR and ‘fake news’ production, the
PR industry subverts these claims by advancing PR’s professional skills

as truth-telling antidote to fake news (Czarnecki, 2017).
Hybridising Discourses
The third and final area of boundary-work examined in this book

is fragmentation or hybridising discourses. These discourses are more
closely-associated with entrepreneurial professions such as PR, than with
traditional professions such as engineering, medicine or law. Where
traditional professions may practise monopolistic market closure, restric-
tive practices and self-regulation in their boundary-work, entrepreneurial
professions see monopolistic behaviour as neither desirable nor achiev-
able. Instead, new knowledge-intensive occupations are expected to
succeed through innovation, entrepreneurship and active engagement
with markets (Muzio et al., 2011). According to Hoffjann (2021), the
material aspects of hybridising and de-differentiation in PR have been
the subject of intensive discussion in German-language communica-
tion research (Hoffjann, 2021). Drawing on Luhmann’s (1995) systems
theory, Hoffjann (2021) contends that PR’s work systems do not mix
in hybridisation but rather PR will adopt the structure of another
system such as journalism, advertising or entertainment, as seen in the
hybridised systems of brand journalism.
Much of PR’s professional fragmentation has happened within organ-
isations, where PR practitioners’ work is shaped by the totalising
discourses of managerialism, including the management logic, tools
and language of corporate professions such as accounting, HR and
project management (Heusinkveld et al., 2018). Examples of such
hybridised boundary-work include attempts to carve out PR sub-fields
such as corporate and strategic communication. Similarly, PR continually
tussles with HR and management consultants for ownership over crisis
communication work. Crisis communication, in turn, overlaps with
fields such as risk management, disaster communication and business
continuity (Coombs, 2012). Laskin (2014) describes boundary-work
within publicly-listed companies between PR and Investor Relations
(IR) professionals, who tussle over financial versus communication skills.
38 C. Bourne
Laskin observes that in previous decades, IR tasks were assigned to publi-

cists who approached the promotion of company shares as press agents
engaged in ‘one-way communication’ (Laskin, 2014). Revised definitions
of IR move this sub-discipline closer to the “effective two-way commu-
nication” ideal favoured by PR’s professional bodies (Laskin, 2014: 7).
Finally, Chapter 7 offers a different perspective on hybridised systems.
The chapter considers the new totalising discourse of AI and automation
as it expands into all areas of human labour. Chapter 7 suggests that as AI
expands into all professions these automating technologies will do more
than hybridise new professional specialisms, AI could hybridise PR into
a symbiotic human–machine pursuit.
Analysing PR’s Field-Level Discourses

I now combine the preceding theoretical discussion on boundary-work
with certain methodological considerations for exploring boundary-work
in professional discourses. The combined theoretical and methodolog-
ical discussion is represented in the discourse analytic framework in
Fig. 2.1. The framework illustrates a method for exploring professional
texts as sites of boundary-work, where different professions contest their
boundaries with PR, or different groups within PR contest professional
identities, hierarchies or new specialisms. In developing the framework,
my starting point was the five possible modes of enquiry available
to discourse analysts—theoretical, descriptive, interpretive, comparative
and critical modes of enquiry (Carbaugh, 2007). The aim of decon-
structing professional boundary-work sits in the poststructural tradition,
which lends itself to interpretive approaches (Wetherell, 2001) where
researchers respond to questions about a phenomenon’s significance (e.g.
boundary expansion, protection, hybridisation) and active meanings in
communication practices (e.g. new or existing professional expertise).
That said, the discourse analyst’s investigative process is also cyclical,
making it possible to move through the interpretive mode, taking in
deeper reflections about other modes of enquiry (Carbaugh, 2007).
Discourse analysis is not a new methodology in PR scholarship.
To date, much of this research has examined PR activity itself as a
form of discourse work, shaping and influencing societal and polit-

ical events (e.g. Bhatia, 2006; Bourne, 2017; Motion & Leitch, 2007).
More recently, studies have explored professional discourses surrounding
PR’s authority, capabilities and expertise (e.g. Caruana & Crane,
2008; Edwards & Pieczka, 2013; Evangelisti Allori & Garzone, 2011;
Williams & Apperley, 2009). These studies all contribute to our under-
standing of PR’s professional evolution, offering insights about the field
that are less obvious at first glance. However, even more can be learned
about PR, its identity and practices, from observing PR’s boundary-work
with related professions, including journalism, advertising, marketing,
HR and management consultancy. For this reason, my next stop is the
area of scholarship known as professional discourse analysis (e.g. Bhatia,
2010; Gunnarsson, 2009; Wong, 2014). While I have incorporated some
of the analytical techniques from this field, most professional discourse
studies focus on micro-level discourses between individuals within organ-
isations, whereas the framework offered in this chapter (see Fig. 2.1) is
designed to deconstruct PR’s professional discourses at the macro- or
field-level.
Participants: Status, Authority, Asymmetries
The simplest way for discourse analysts to approach the framework is

to start at the top of the diagram, identifying the various participants
in the professional discourse(s), with a view to deconstructing partici-
pants’ status, authority and asymmetries. Discursive participants should
include speakers (often multiple speakers) as well as audiences. Here,
the researcher needs to deconstruct the social structure of the various
speakers in relation to each other, as well as in relation to the intended
audience or audiences for the selected text (Gunnarsson, 2009). In
some circumstances, both speaker(s) and audience can be regarded as
part of a discourse community, that is, participants with shared work
activity, goals and beliefs, and ways of communicating with each other
(Paltridge, 2012). Paid-up members of one of PR’s professional associ-
ations could be considered a discourse community, while readers of PR
40 C. Bourne
Week, a trade publication, might be a more loosely-connected ‘discourse

network’ (Paltridge, 2012).
Professional Genres: Conditions, Deployment,

Intertextualities
The next step of the framework is to consider the professional genre.

Genres are how people ‘get things done’ through their use of spoken,
written and visual discourse. Many professional texts are produced
through collective processes, involving meetings, discussions, comments
and editing. These processes are just as important as actual writing,
filming, printing or production (Gunnarson, 2009). Every genre occurs
in a particular setting, is organised in a particular way and has a distinc-
tive communicative function (Paltridge, 2012). The way a profession
uses language in a distinct genre also depends on whether the text is
written, spoken or image-based, as well as the social and cultural context
in which the genre occurs. Researchers need to consider the genre and
professional purpose represented by the text whether a speech, industry
survey, thought leadership, corporate video, webinar, press release or
social media post. Texts can also encompass different professional genres
(Paltridge, 2012). For example, some industry reports combine quanti-
tative surveys with qualitative commentary from the report’s sponsor.
Researchers should also consider the external conditions which gave
birth to the text. One of the strengths of field-level approaches to
discourse is its search for context. Understanding why a professional
text was deployed at a certain time comes through understanding the
text’s external conditions. However, contextual work is painstaking. For
example, one might ask the question: ‘How has the PR industry been
faring financially at the time this text was deployed?’ The answer may
vary depending on the contextual source and its date of publication.
External context will go beyond the economic and financial, taking in
technological, legal, political, societal or cultural factors (Gunnarsson,
2009). It is also worth bearing in mind that professional genres can
change over time. For example, the interoffice memo—a once popular
professional genre—was superseded by email and intranet messaging.
Equally, the industry trade magazine is now more likely to be an online

format, disseminated via email alert or shared on social media. Finally,
researchers should be aware of intertextuality, where a prior text may
have shaped the current text under analysis (Bhatia, 2010). Equally,
the selected professional text may have led to a host of other texts,
depending on the intensity of professional boundary-work underway,
and the response from intended (and unintended) audiences.
Working with Field-Level Textual Data

There are many options available for collecting discourse analytical data
about the PR profession and about adjacent professions involved in
boundary-work with PR. Meanwhile, everyday practitioner life involves
deploying texts that simultaneously defend client-organisations, as well
as the legitimacy of PR practices. Researchers are encouraged to begin
by collecting available textual data, in order to determine which textual
sources present the best evidence of expansionary, protectionist or
hybridising professional boundary-work. The digital age has brought
unprecedented access to official and/or promotional content, however,
all organisations require time, money and digital infrastructure to publish
and host digital documents. In regions or sectors where professional texts
(analogue or digital) are sparsely available in the public domain, then
researchers should consider how best to collect data that captures PR
boundary-work in action.
Genres Generated by Professions
Professional discursive data can often be found in texts deployed by

groups or individuals purporting to represent the ‘voice’ of the PR
profession. Data might include texts deployed by trade and professional
associations, by global PR consultancies and by PR trade magazines
and websites (Paltridge, 2012). The largest professional marketplaces are
generally home to global organisations and PR firms, as well as well-
resourced professional bodies. Larger organisations and networks are able
42 C. Bourne
to generate regular content promoting the PR profession’s perspective via

thought leadership including proprietary research, white papers, industry
speeches and articles, all published to ‘showcase’ PR’s expertise (e.g.
Edelman’s thought leadership in Chapter 4). These genres sometimes
feature jurisdictional battles between PR and other professions, or act as
a portent of future professional boundary-work. Discursive data will also
include visual material including charts, infographics, memes, photos
and videos, as well as three-dimensional spaces and structures. Data
collected directly from professionals via interviews, focus groups, online
exchanges, ethnography or participant observation can also be analysed
using discourse analysis (e.g. Fagersten, 2015; Williams & Apperley,
2009).
Social media can produce a rich repository of discursive data since
these platforms forge online communities where professionals can discuss
mutual interests and problems. Social media gains notable currency
through instant information-generation and sharing around things that
matter (Cardoso, 2011). The rise of social media has been accompa-
nied by a rise in visual texts, which can offer rich, layered insight into
professional discourses. Videos (and audio podcasts) are an increasingly
popular professional genre, with many PR agencies and professional
associations now hosting their own channels on YouTube or similar plat-
forms. For example, the Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR)
webinar featured in Chapter 5 presents an official perspective from the
UK’s oldest professional PR association and its Diversity and Inclusion
Network. The webinar also presents personal viewpoints expressed by
the chair and panellists, including various anecdotes and asides which
produce casual, expressive and even dramatic moments that are invisible
in official documents.
Genres Generated About Professions
Discursive texts about professional activity can also be generated from

outside the selected profession in a sustained way. One common source
of third-party data is media coverage, especially trade publications
focused on the PR profession, such as PR Week and PRovoke Media, both
promoted as the authoritative voice of the PR industry. Trade articles

help to construct the PR profession and related fields, through “the repre-
sentation of particular occupational jurisdictions, identities, practices
and habitus” (Edwards & Pieczka, 2013: 5). Trade coverage of occupa-
tional events, practitioners and practices circulates extensively amongst
PR professionals, supplying intelligence on competitors’ activities as well
as information on how to perform better in the marketplace. Trade
magazines can also provide a setting for broader analysis of professional
boundary-work in global contexts (e.g. Bardhan, 2013).
PR’s professional discourses also emerge occasionally in regional and
national media, but where trade media might carry positive stories,
national coverage of PR activity is more likely to entail negative head-
lines. For instance, the 2017 collapse of Bell Pottinger, one of the UK’s
largest PR firms, was a major international news story. Likewise, the
discursive texts featured in Chapter 6 include financial news and opinion
pieces published about Goldman Sachs’ PR function and head of PR.
Social media is also useful for researching views of PR from ‘the other
side’. Journalists occasionally discuss PR work on social media. Twitter,
in particular, frequently hosts sarcastic exchanges between journalists
lamenting ‘inept’ PR contacts.
Third-party texts are also generated by companies and sectors hoping
to serve the PR profession—this includes management consultants,
accountancy firms, software vendors and other suppliers. The discursive
texts produced by these third parties can shed invaluable light on PR’s
professional boundary-work, since the products and services promoted
by these suppliers often signify expansion and change within the profes-
sion and at its boundaries. Third parties also include specialist recruiters;
Chapter 3 features a discourse analysis of recruitment advertisements
featured on recruiter websites.
Genres Generated Adjacent to Professions
Third parties also generate competitive discourses that are adjacent

to the PR profession. Social media conversation threads have, for
44 C. Bourne
example, unpicked rivalry between PR and employee relations as in-

house specialisms (Xifra & Grau, 2010). Adjacent texts can be useful
for contrasting themes that are given voice elsewhere but are silent in PR
discourses. For example, over the decades, discourses generated by the
marketing profession have prefaced discussions about measurement, eval-
uation and return on investment that are later mirrored in PR discourses.
Adjacent texts can even be useful in forecasting the direction that a PR
discourse might take. Chapter 7 examines an e-brochure produced by a
high-tech company specialising in AI avatars. The e-brochure focuses on
AI applications for customer service, client relations, IR and HR. While
the discourse analysis in this chapter does a bit of ‘tea leaf reading’, the
extrapolations are not so far-fetched since AI technologies have signif-
icantly disrupted journalism over the past decade, and are currently
disarticulating legal services and accountancy.
Discourse Limitations
Discourse analysis poses its own limitations as a research technique. It
can be complex to learn, not helped by a confusing body of literature
with limited discussion of how discourse analysts actually conduct their
analysis (Harper et al., 2008). Many researchers acquire discourse analyt-
ical skills through self-education in institutional settings where no formal
discourse analytical teaching exists (Antaki et al., 2003). This makes the
quality of studies highly variable. In addition to the limitations posed
by the subjectivity of discourse analysis as a research technique, it is also
difficult to offer a high degree of empirical or theoretical generalisability.
Further challenges include the search for pertinent texts for profes-
sional discourse analysis. Some professions are more opaque than others,
while professions in small or less developed nations may not have
resources to produce industry videos, thought leadership, survey research
or reports. Other typical shortcomings identified by Antaki et al. (2003)
include under analysis of textual findings, either through summary,
taking sides, over-quotation or isolated quotation, or through simply
‘spotting’ textual features.
Beyond the specific limitations of discourse analysis as method, are

the broader issues of researching professional boundary-work in the
digital age. Some scholars argue that a process of de-professionalisation
is taking place in knowledge-based occupations, marking the end of
the ‘golden age’ of professions (Muzio et al., 2011). Pessimists might
argue that boundary-work is questionable if there are no real professional
boundaries to protect anymore. PR, for example, is already so frag-
mented along many fault-lines, that assigning ‘boundaries’ in an effort
to capture boundary-work may eventually become too complex. Finally,
it should be pointed out that not all professional struggles are discursive.
For instance, sociologists of professions acknowledge that industry and
workplace structures are also relevant and important factors in shaping
professional projects (Muzio et al., 2011).
Conclusion
Furthering PR scholarship must include studies of PR’s jurisdictions and
its jurisdictional disputes (Abbott, 1988). This chapter has expanded
on a discourse analytic framework for deconstructing boundary-work
between PR and adjacent professions. As Gunnarsson (2009: 17) asserts,
professionals “have not finished building their tower of Babel; construc-
tion is always in progress. They are constantly changing their language
and discourse as they try to make themselves both well-known and
unique”. The flexibility and utility of field-level professional discourse
analysis answers the call to dismantle silo-thinking about the PR profes-
sion and its pursuits, through a methodology designed to examine PR’s
intersections with other fields, as will now be examined in the next five
data chapters.
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3
Be Digital
PR’s Digital ‘Technophobia’

This chapter situates the PR profession amidst the many promo-
tional fields vying for success in an increasingly digital work land-
scape. PR’s professional boundaries now blur with occupational roles
such as data insight and planning, search engine optimisation (SEO)
marketing, digital content marketing, influencer marketing and social
media management. While PR’s occupational boundaries have never
been clearly distinguishable, digital platformisation puts PR’s digital and
data-driven expertise into sharp relief against advertising, marketing and
sales experts who have bolstered their professional legitimacy via new
skills and connections and invested heavily in technology stacks and
panoptic data techniques. The sales profession went through its tech-
nological automation in the early 1990s. By 2014, no proper sales team
operated without customer relationship management (CRM) tracking,
while the associated CRM software-as-a-service industry is now worth
billions (Saxe, 2016). Although digital transformation came later to
the field of marketing, automation reportedly shot up there by 59%

Switzerland AG 2022
52 C. Bourne
between 2013 and 2015 (Saxe, 2016). So-called martech tools1 help
marketers to manage customer journeys (from warm leads to final sales)
via digital conversion ‘funnels’, amongst many other marketing tasks.
Today, marketing’s increasingly logistical approach, supported by some
9,932 martech tools (Brinker & Riemersma, 2022), has been described
as the ‘martech industrial complex’ (Sutherland, 2019).
Research on professions has found that new technologies can trigger
new occupational reconfiguration and give rise to new professional iden-
tity through a field’s emerging practices and boundary negotiations with
other professions (Goto, 2021). Numerous professional metamorphoses
may be the only way to survive prolonged digital disruption (Utesheva
et al., 2016). For professions that are early adopters of new technologies,
“a new visionary identity template can be discussed and claimed quickly,
even before the technology is established as part of the professionals’ daily
work” (Goto, 2021: 18). However, the PR profession has been a rela-
tively late adopter of digital platform technologies (USC, 2019). Only
in the mid to late 2010s did more savvy PR practitioners start to look
at software that could put PR on a par with sales and marketing peers
(Saxe, 2016). As more PR tasks required computational interaction, a
growing range of ‘commtech’ tools emerged, promising greater capacity
to understand and engage PR stakeholders by microtargeting people as
unique individuals. Through ‘advocacy at scale’, these commtech tools
supposedly go beyond messaging and storytelling by helping to shape
organisational and stakeholder behaviours, just as digital marketing does
(Page, 2019). Yet, there remains a considerable gulf between what digital
technologies can do and how PR professionals actually use them (Kent &
Saffer, 2014).
However, when it comes to actual adoption of digital tools, much
of the PR profession retains its preference for one-way, sender-receiver
digital activity such as media monitoring, issues tracking and mining
social media data for stakeholder insights and sentiment analysis
(Collister, 2016; Kent & Saffer, 2014; USC Annenberg, 2019). PR is
also far behind advertising and marketing in untapping the potential
1 Martech stands for marketing technology, a term used to describe a range of software and
tools.
3 Be Digital 53
of digital technologies such as virtual reality, augmented reality, voice

assistants, mobile communication and apps. For instance, data shows
that the martech landscape grew 24% between 2020 and 2022, with
the biggest growth in marketing management tools (67%), content and
experience (34%) and commerce & sales (24%). Meanwhile, the demand
for specialist PR tools was sluggish over the same period, ultimately
shrinking the scope of certain PR opportunities in favour of advertising
and marketing (Brinker & Riemersma, 2022 2022; Riemersma, 2022;
USC Annenberg, 2019; von Platen, 2016). Furthermore, PR profes-
sionals remain several steps removed from the scientific expertise required
to design algorithms, track and collect big data, analyse and proffer data
insights and control data-driven strategies.
A closer look suggests that cost is a primary deterrent to digital
upskilling in the PR profession (Collister, 2016; Vincx, 2019). Digital
specialisation is typically achieved through investment in software and
systems. For example, several multinationals now have well-outfitted
multi-screen command centres once used for cyber security, now repur-
posed for corporate reputation management. Digital tools trace social
media interactions, detect trends, and act as early warning systems,
alerting for reputational issues and risks as they develop (Abdulkarim,
2018). Even if all organisations could afford to invest in large-scale digital
tracking, the PR profession does not design the technologies needed to
improve its digital approaches, rather PR skills are shaped by digital tools
as they emerge (Granitz & Pitt, 2011; Payne et al., 2011). For the most
part, PR repurposes off-the-shelf martech tools that do not always live
up to their hype. Predictive analytics tools, for instance, failed to live
up to their promise of clairvoyance, causing some PR decision-makers to
rethink data analytics investment (Shah, 2019; Weiner, 2021). While the
volume of data available to PR professionals has significantly increased,
the desire to make big data truly predictive or actionable remains tricky.
According to Weiner (2021: 179), the right technology needs to generate
“small PR data streams that flow smoothly into big data lakes to make
for easier and more comprehensive integrated marketing and communi-
cations decisions”. Currently, ‘big PR data’ generated by predictive tools
is less useful for predicting future user behaviour than it is for generating
insights into how to nudge real-time digital user engagement through
54 C. Bourne
emotions and stories based on users’ past behaviours and preferences

(Shah, 2019).
The PR profession encounters a further deterrent to digital upskilling
because of the time and resources required to train employees and/or
outsource tasks to appropriate digital agencies. Marketing departments
might be able to call on such resources, the same is seldom true for
PR. Instead, evidence suggests that the main source of training for both
in-house and agency PR practitioners is via expert blogs (Carpenter &
Lertpratchya, 2016; Vincx, 2019). The longer PR struggles to master
digital technologies, the more the profession cedes territory to other
experts in the platform economy including web psychologists, and digital
marketing and advertising agencies (von Platen, 2016). The digital chal-
lenge facing PR is even more pressing now that big data connects
everything within organisations, becoming the language of business and
of the boardroom (Weiner, 2021). As many organisations beef up digital
expertise, they are choosing to appoint ‘in-house’ digital experts and
create new departments that may further sideline traditional PR as
expertise (Bannerflow, 2021; von Platen, 2016; Weiner, 2021).
Further insight into PR’s technophobia comes from Donovan (2014)
who situates the profession’s digital complacency in analogue practices
of the pre-Internet era when media production and distribution costs
created significant barriers to entry. The accompanying enclosure of
news media outlets greatly simplified the lives of PR professionals in
pre-Internet times, since editors set the rules and journalists were gate-
keepers. Finally, PR’s technophobia is also potentially linked with an
ongoing misapprehension of what PR does all day. For example, the
2020 CIPR State of the Profession report had little to say about the need
for digital skills. Indeed, PR practitioners surveyed at that time were less
concerned about digital platformisation than they had been the previous
year. Instead, the 2020 survey revealed ongoing practitioner concerns
about PR’s status as strategic management, with practitioners empha-
sising their strongest attributes as strategic research, thinking, planning
and evaluation. Nevertheless, when asked what they actually did all day,
survey respondents in 2020 and again in 2022 largely cited copywriting
and editing (CIPR 2020, 2022). Yet, these two skillsets are amongst the
first areas of PR expertise targeted for AI automation, mirroring changes
3 Be Digital 55
already underway for several years in the adjacent field of journalism

(Guzman & Lewis, 2020).
Hybridising Roles and Digital Capital

The PR profession faces a critical moment in its acquisition of digital
capital. Clients and company directors have been conditioned to pigeon-
hole PR into earned media activity such as media relations, investor rela-
tions and (some) influencer relations (See Fig. 3.1). In fact, digital plat-
formisation has pressed many PR professionals to expand their compe-
tencies into owned media, shared media and paid media, including
native advertising, paid support and sponsorships (Sweetser et al., 2016;
USC Annenberg, 2019; Vincx, 2019).
Yet, few PR professionals or their clients have prioritised PR’s
marshalling of big data and analytics skills (USC Annenberg, 2019).
Meanwhile, platformisation is rapidly hybridising job titles across PR,
advertising and marketing. Evolving roles include brand stewards, digital
marketing executives, email marketing specialists, content managers and
strategists, social media managers and strategists, influencer managers
Fig. 3.1 The PESO model as adapted by Spin Sucks (2020)

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and UX copywriters (Major ; Sutton, 2020). The top trending skills on

Linkedin UK in May 2021 included account management, knowledge of
Java Script, writing, stakeholder management and project management
(See Table 3.1). Recruiters also point to a surge in demand for knowl-
edge of digital tools for CRM, SEO and pay-per-click (PPC) marketing,
as well as familiarity with project management software.
Many PR budgets have therefore been repurposed and invested
into advertising and marketing activity. Within these sectors, digital
marketing is one of the fastest growing specialisms, encompassing
website construction, SEO, social media management, mobile appli-
cations, digital analytics and customer conversion. One sub-specialism
of digital marketing that now commands its own throng of experts is
digital content marketing. Here, audience strategists build user atten-
tion through audience development and segmentation (Royle & Laing,
2014). Content marketers then devise and place individual pieces of
content—articles, blogs, music, videos, product press releases, tweets,
landing pages—linking these together to form an audience conversion
funnel designed to lead the audience to a purchase or other action
(Wall & Spinuzzi, 2018). Finally audience strategists close the loop
by integrating user behaviour into forecasts of future behaviour (Baer,
2017; Royle & Laing, 2014). This platformised division of labour applies
Table 3.1 Top trending skills—UK media & communications (Linkedin UK, May
2021)
Most important skills for the top trending jobs for the Media &
Communications industry in all regions, United Kingdom for 3 months
ending May 2021
1. Account Management 11. Digital Marketing
2. JavaScript 12. Email Marketing
3. Writing 13. Social Media
4. Stakeholder Management 14. Copywriting
5. Project Delivery 15. Copy Editing
6. Marketing Strategy 16. Social Media Marketing
7. Business-to-Business (B2B) 17. Video Editing
8. Logo Design 18. Adobe Premiere Pro
9. Editing 19. Google Analytics
10. Creative Writing 20. Web Content Writing
Source Linkedin Economic Graphs
3 Be Digital 57
classic factory-style Tayloristic principles, where a formerly coherent and

comprehensive service is split into component processes, with digital
workers themselves treated as replaceable components (Klimkeit &
Reihlen, 2022).
While PR also claims responsibility for content production, digital
marketing’s data-driven strategies are seen as central to marketing’s
present and future (Gesualdi, 2019; Nadler & McGuigan, 2018).
Whichever communications profession succeeds in controlling the flow
of big data through organisations is likely to control much of stake-
holder communication in the future. Currently, the marketing profession
remains the frontrunner. With its expanding panoptic view, marketing
has asserted power over a large segment of organisational communication
by positioning digital technologies inside consumers’ lifeworlds, allowing
digital tools to measure consumers’ physical and emotional states as
they go about their daily lives (Fourcade & Healy, 2017; Nadler &
McGuigan, 2018; Ruckenstein & Granroth, 2019).
PR’s professional boundaries have also been affected by the COVID-
19 pandemic; during this period, digital marketing was given further fuel
to expand. Ecommerce reportedly grew 48% during the first 18 months
of the pandemic leading many companies to accelerate digitalisation of
customer and supply-chain interactions by three to five years (Major
Players, 2021a, 2021b). The resulting shift in communication spend
raises understandable concerns that PR will be left with a far smaller
piece of the pie, consisting of mostly technical rather than strategic
activity (Sutton, 2020). Not for the first time, the PR profession has
asked itself whether it simply faces the next phase of its evolution,
or whether the profession risks becoming redundant or absorbed into
marketing once and for all. The signs of digital encroachment and its
consequences for PR’s boundary-work form the basis of this chapter’s
discourse analysis.
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Recruitment Ads as Discursive Texts

My choice of discursive texts in this chapter is a series of recruitment ads
published in the UK market during the summer of 2021. As a profes-
sional genre, recruitment advertising has flourished over the past two
decades, particularly now that most recruitment ads appear online. As
with all discursive data, how recruitment ads are collected and analysed
affects their interpretation and any inferences made (Kim & Angnakoon,
2016). Since the intent here was to compare and contrast PR roles with
adjacent areas of digital marketing and social media management, this
influenced which recruitment firms and specialisms were included in
the data sample. The UK has a very large market for PR, advertising
and marketing recruitment, and many specialist recruitment firms. The
three recruitment firms selected for the data set represent typologies of
specialist recruiters in the UK communications sector. The first, JFL
Recruitment, is a specialist PR recruiter. Based in White City, West
London, JFL has a track record of more than 50 years, spanning PR,
public affairs, internal and external communications, digital and content
(JFL Recruit, 2021). The second firm, Major Players, was previously a
specialist PR recruiter that has now expanded to cover all promotional
disciplines. Based in Covent Garden, Major Players (2021a) describes
itself as “the UK’s leading digital marketing & creative talent agency”.
The third recruiter is Blu Digital; based in the City of London financial
district, JFL specialises in “digital, ecommerce and marketing sectors”
(Blu Digital, 2021).
Of the three specialist recruiters, my expectation was that JFL’s recruit-
ment ads would skew towards traditional PR roles and that Blu Digital’s
would skew towards digital marketing, while Major Players would span
the boundaries of both. Fifty recruitment ads were selected in all; 18
ads from Blu Digital, 18 from Major Players and 14 ads from JFL.
(Since JFL focuses only on the PR sector, the company carries a smaller
number of recruitment ads on its website). Once the sample was defined,
all ads within the sample were scanned to determine categories. Several
readings were required since job titles in the promotional industries can
be ambiguous or span different specialisms. One is just as likely, for
example, to find ‘account executive’ under a PR role, a digital marketing
3 Be Digital 59
role or social media role. The 50 ads were first analysed under, then
cross-referenced by, three selected categories: public relations roles, digital
marketing roles and social media and digital communications roles.
Costea et al. (2012) recommend that recruitment ads be understood as
a reflection of HR discourses and practices, selling an idealised workplace
and utopian vision of future employees as talented, creative, dynamic
and full of potential. To this end, some of the language of recruitment
advertising is partly employer branding and impression management,
designed to make employer organisations seem speedy, efficient and
customer-oriented (Breeze, 2013). Discursive content in these ads can
be bombastic and excessive in their use of icons, superlatives and hyper-
bole (Costea et al., 2012; Engstrom et al., 2017). At the same time,
one challenge that emerged when analysing content on the three selected
recruitment websites was the formulaic nature of the ads and use of rigid
templates. Each firm had a different template: one recruiter published
roles as short blurbs with bullet points briefly describing roles; a second
published longer ads with detailed role descriptions but mostly as bullet
points; the third recruiter published ads that blended narrative with
bullet points. While ads were often anonymised to obscure the client-
organisation, occasionally the same organisation placed ads for different
roles, but using very similar wording.
Existing research on recruitment ads in the creative and promotional
industries suggests that fewer than half mention educational qualifica-
tions, instead emphasising a broad, sometimes incongruous list of skills,
proficiencies and experience (Gill, 2011). For instance, requiring candi-
dates to be “self-directed as well as community-oriented, creative as well
as analytic, calculated as well as passionate, and highly specialised as
well as able to juggle multiple roles” (Duffy & Schwartz, 2018: 2978,
emphasis in the original). Such observations were borne out by this
chapter’s data set. None of the 50 selected ads mentioned educational
qualifications, while skills were wide-ranging—covering everything from
writing, creativity, administrative skills, project management, client rela-
tions and diplomacy, media relations, as well as a range of technological
skills. Permanent roles came in for lengthier descriptors than freelance
roles (which were often distressingly short on detail). Social media roles
generally had shorter descriptors than either digital marketing or PR
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roles. Shorter recruitment ads in this study had less room for the hyper-
bole found in other studies; and featured less technical language and
detailed role specifications. Ads in this study also used shorthand for
accepted industry terms. For instance, many roles referred to ‘contacts’
and ‘contact’ management—a term that might refer to customers in the
case of a digital marketing role, but to ‘press’, ‘journalists’ or ‘media’ in a
PR role.
Expansionary Language of Content

Production
On reviewing the 50 recruitments ads together, one of the more promi-
nent threads throughout was the continual use of the term ‘content
production’ as a descriptor for promotional work across the fields of
advertising, marketing and PR. To this end, content production and
its associated skills and outputs were the most apparent expansionary
discourse across the data set, which aggressively repurposed all promo-
tional outputs as ‘content’. Contextual reading illustrates well how
‘content’ has become the expansionary discourse in PR, digital marketing
and social media management. As a consequence of digital platformisa-
tion, the generic term ‘content’ further intertwines already overlapping
areas of promotional work in such a way that erases much-cherished
professional boundaries between PR, advertising and marketing. The
term ‘content’ also dissolves boundaries of paid and earned media, where
digital content can now represent a blend of advertising or sponsor-
ship with news, announcements, opinion editorial or everyday diarising.
What the platform ‘sees’ however is not professional content from adver-
tising, marketing or PR professionals; instead what the platform ‘sees’
is data flows (Beer, 2019; MacKenzie & Munster, 2019; Miège, 2019;
Srnicek, 2017) (Fig. 3.1).
The catch-all term ‘content production’ dissolves boundaries between
advertising, marketing, PR and their traditional media channels by blur-
ring different forms of professional output. Traditionally, advertising
subsidised journalism and editorial processes by supplying paid content
(advertising and sponsorship), while PR subsidised these same processes
3 Be Digital 61
through earned content (corporate announcements, features, pitched

story ideas, images and video). The rise of digital platforms (including
social media companies) expanded promotional activity to four overlap-
ping media channels—paid, earned, shared and owned media. These
four media channels form the PESO model, developed in 2010 as a
metrics matrix by Don Bartholomew, then vice president of digital
research at Fleishman Hillard (Yaxley, 2020). The model was eventu-
ally redesigned and expanded by Gini Dietrich in her 2014 book Spin
Sucks (See Fig. 3.1 for the updated 2020 version). While the PESO
model is now widely used by the promotional industries, the distinc-
tions between the four media channels may be largely indistinguishable
to consumers, but ‘content’—whether paid, earned, shared or owned—
helps to shape the language of promotional industries recruitment.
Ultimately, the purpose of content production is to drive engagement,
although the recruitment ads in the data set suggest that engagement still
means different things across the three promotional disciplines. Extracts
3.1 illustrate some of the references to content production in the data
set.
Extract 3.1—Content Production as Expansionary Discourse

in Promotional Industries Recruitment
Ad #3 …you will develop digital
Digital Communications Manager communications channels and
content in response to the
businesses’ needs. […] To be
considered for this role you will
have experience managing CMS,
have a good knowledge of UX,
content and social media
Ad #13 You will manage content on the
Marketing Executive—Professional website, produce partnership
Services reports and have SEO backlink
building experience. This person
will also own digital PR and
branding
Ad #14 …you will have a good
SEO Manager (London) understanding of SEO and
building content and links. You
will also understand on-page and
off-page SEO…you will also have
experience of site tools
(continued)
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(continued)
Ad #21 Experience managing marketing,
Project Manager creative, content production or
technology projects
Ad #27 Management of all social media
Marketing Communications Manager channels. Digital marketing
campaigns. Creating content
Ad #31 You’ll be the linchpin of
Planner—Social, Content & Influencer campaigns & content, sitting at
Marketing the intersection of insights, ideas
and media
Ad#38 Draft press releases on key
Senior Assoc Comms, Real Estate announcements, events, report
launches. Handle day-to-day
media enquiries….place
interviews with key
spokespeople…Research and
write articles for…flagship
magazine. Contribute stories…for
the institute’s annual report […]
Create/deploy content across
Europe’s social platforms. Update
Hootsuite with content for
National Councils to repost on
social media
Ad#39 Pitch news, features, interviews
AD—B2B, Creative, Media & Tech etc. to relevant media. Review
Industries press lists. Build/ maintain
relationships with key journalists.
[…] Review + edit content
drafted by AEs & AMs. Develop
ideas for client content based on
industry themes
Recruitment ads in the data set regularly categorised skillsets using

the four media channels featured in the PESO model. Digital marketing
roles and social media roles frequently demanded skills across paid and
earned media, and sometimes all four media channels: paid, earned,
shared and owned. Several digital marketing roles focused on paid
media, listing skills such as PPC (pay-per-click marketing), search
marketing, paid social and email marketing. In certain specialisms—
digital marketing, digital communications and social media manage-
ment—recruitment ads portrayed content as ‘enticing’ or ‘compelling’
3 Be Digital 63
output to be used as ‘bait’ pointed towards a sale or other revenue objec-

tive. In these ads, content was generally referred to as a product to be
‘created’, ‘developed’, ‘generated’ or ‘produced’ and later ‘optimised’. For
social media management and PR recruitment ads, content production
pointed towards the organisation’s desire for visibility, and occasion-
ally involved building social media communities. Certainly, it was in
the social media and digital communications category that content was
truly king. All sixteen ads for social media/digital communications roles
repeatedly demanded content production skills, including copywriting.
The PR roles in the data set typically focused on earned media and had
significant overlap with the ‘social media and digital communications’
category. Overall, the three sets of recruitment ads suggest that content
is a slippery term, allowing the distinction between digital marketing,
digital communications, social media management and PR to elide.
Hybridising: Data-Driven Roles

Several of the recruitment ads in the data set span the intersection of
digital marketing and PR. Ad #37, for example, called for a marketing
executive whose duties incorporated recognisable press office tasks,
including managing press cuttings and welcome packs, working with
PR agencies, and planning hospitality and events for influencers and
key stakeholders. However, unlike PR recruitment ads, this marketing
executive role also required data skills. Data management is now central
to media and communications work, hence more recruitment ads place
a premium on skills in data strategy, curation and analytics. In the
platform economy, the salient question for promotional recruitment
becomes—to paraphrase Dave Beer (2019: 1)—which promotional role
“has the power to speak” with big data? While most established data
expertise exists outside the promotional professions in roles such as data
science and analytics, within the promotional fields, certain roles are
hybridising to incorporate what Beer calls ‘the data gaze’ as a form of
professional expertise. Extracts 3.2 feature excerpts from those recruit-
ment ads requiring applicants to work with big data, algorithms and
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high-tech software in order to track and analyse big data for promotional
‘insights’.
Extract 3.2—Data skills and the Promotional Industries’ ‘Data

Gaze’
Ad #6 Maintaining the company’s website
Digital Marketing Executive and third-party listing websites
and Support A/B test program to
increase website
conversions…analysing data,
managing ad hoc
projects…Experience in using a
CMS platform
Ad #7 …experienced in Google Analytics,
Digital Marketing Executive and…experience working with a
CRM system. Campaign analysis
and reporting experience will also
be required and you will know
how to interpret impressions, CTR,
CPC, CPA2 and conversions. A
good understanding of PPC and
SEO is required
Ad #25 Overall strategic and operational
Head of Ecommerce ownership of the E-com channel
including the P&L3 . […] Define
the customer journey to achieve a
seamless ecommerce experience
from the point of acquisition,
including subscription. Build out
our data function to provide
insight to grow audience base…
Ownership of merchandising, UX,
UI4 and managing agencies where
necessary. […] Shopify Plus5
experience would be an
advantage…
(continued)
2 These are all digital pricing models: CTR = click through rate; CPC = cost per click; CPA
= cost per acquisition.
3 P&L = Profit and Loss statement, summarising channel revenue and expenses.
4 UX and UI stand for User Experience and User Interface, respectively.
5 Shopify Plus is a popular ecommerce platform.
3 Be Digital 65
(continued)
Ad #31 …unparalleled knowledge of our
Planner—Social, Content & Influencer clients’ audiences’ buying
Marketing behaviours and media
habits…ability to audit existing
customer journeys and identify
opportunities for clients to
capitalis[e]. Making data
directional: a strong
understanding of research and
analytics, habitually marrying data
and customer insight to harness
results
Ad #33 Mine for and leverage social
Global Social Media Lead listening insights and other
research inputs to optimise the
brand social strategy…influence
future social content and
messaging strategies. […] build
hyper relevant, social-first content
[…] Have a deep understanding of
the current social media
landscape, namely how to use
insight and gear
algorithms…Experience using data
and metrics to measure impact
and determine improvements
Ad #37 Experience in contact management
Marketing Communications and CRM systems. Expertise in
Executive—Retail/Luxury/ Property Excel, Power Point, Word and
IN-design. Strong written skills.
Good data analytical skills. Basic
experience in diary management.
Experience in event management
Ad #48 Knowledge of social media
Content & Social Media Manager, channels, inc. managing feeds and
Hospitality analytics. A passion for food and
drink and love exploring new
London bars and restaurants
Of the 50 recruitment ads in the data set, ecommerce roles required

the most advanced data skills (e.g. Ad #25 in Extracts 3.2). Ecommerce
roles also included a wider range of technical specifications such as the
ability to use Shopify Plus, an ecommerce platform, and knowledge to
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interpret the data yielded. The recruitment data set analysed in this
chapter suggests that ecommerce is the promotional role commanding
the most power ‘to speak with the data’. Apart from ecommerce, a second
tier of roles appeared to require data skills focused on CRM systems (e.g.
Ads #7 and 37 in Extracts 3.2). A third tier of promotional roles required
data skills focused on SEO, and on social media tracking and insights
(e.g. Ads #26 and #33). By contrast, the PR roles in the data set included
only minimal requirements for knowledge of big data, or of digital soft-
ware and platforms (even though elsewhere, evidence suggests a growing
number of PR practitioners regularly use data-management tools (Valin,
2018; Waddington, 2016; Weiner, 2021).
Protecting Traditional PR Skills

This final data section examines skillsets featured in the PR recruitment
ads within the data set (see Extracts 3.3). As with digital marketing
and social media management roles, the PR ads often highlighted a
sector specialism such as commercial property, luxury retail, financial
services, utilities, public sector or public affairs. Beyond sector specialism,
these role profiles stuck closely to traditional PR skill sets, highlighting
requirements for writing skills, media relations and client relationship
management. Indeed, many of the PR role profiles in the data set
(e.g. #Ads 19 and 46 in Extracts 3.3) could have been written 20 or
30 years ago. Few PR ads emphasised digital skills at all, some ads simply
mentioned ‘digital strategies’ in passing (e.g. Ad#50). Where digital capa-
bilities were specified, PR ads called for traditional skills but with a digital
‘refresh’; for instance, ‘digital editing’ in iMovie, Canva and WordPress
instead of merely ‘editing’ (e.g. Ad #45). Big data skills and terminology
rarely appeared in the PR recruitment ads. For instance, a PR ad might
simply require applicants to be able to ‘research and write articles’ or
‘contribute stories’ (e.g. Ad #38 in Extracts 3.1). By contrast, a social
media recruitment ad might require candidates to work with ‘analytics’
and “build hyper-relevant, social-first content” (see Ad #33 in Extracts
3 Be Digital 67
3.2). As with digital marketing and social media management roles in

the data set, PR roles often mentioned influencer relations as a desired
specialism. Despite this, PR recruitment ads were less likely to stipulate
digital skills with software tools for influencer tracking and management.
Extract 3.3—PR Recruitment and Traditional skills

Ad #19 …deliver PR, social and influencer
Senior Account Director relations. Key Responsibilities:
Creative PR Campaigns. Strategy.
Client handling. New Business.
Media Relations. Team &
Mentoring. Measurement &
Evaluation. […] You need to be
hot on spelling, grammar and
proof-reading, as well as have a
creative flair for producing
engaging copy…From
communicating ideas to your team
to presenting stories to
journalists…organise information
in a succinct and interesting way
to capture their attention
Ad#39 Ensure client messaging is regularly
AD—B2B—Creative, Media & Tech reviewed…Pitch news, features,
Industries interviews etc. to relevant
media…Review target press lists.
Build and maintain relationships
with key journalist [sic] from key
publications. Draft client
comments, thought leadership,
pitch emails etc. […] Develop ideas
for client content based on
industry themes. Ensure clients are
happy…Deal with challenging
client requests…Provide input and
support on client calls as
required…
(continued)
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(continued)
Ad#45 …support the Head of
Communications Officer—Public Sector Communications to deliver the
communications strategy as well as
take the lead on all things
digital…support the planning and
delivery of a number of events
and internal
communications…Well-developed
communication skills, both verbal
and written, the ability to
communicate complex messages in
a creative and engaging way.
Excellent professional IT skills
across the Microsoft Office suite
and digital platforms… Digital
editing capabilities, including
iMovie, Canva, WordPress and
SharePoint…
Ad#46 Ideally a strong agency background
Senior Account Manager/Account and proven experience of working
Director—Financial Services with agency clients. An excellent
contact network. A proven ability
to deliver on new business
experience. Excellent leadership
skills with experience managing
teams and delivering through
others. Confidence generating and
delivering campaigns across
multiple channels and audiences
Ad#47 …key point of contact for clients,
Account Executive/Senior Account proactively identifying
Executive—Creative, Media & opportunities and issues and being
Technology an admin wizard, keeping client
status reports up to date, sharing
minutes and actions from
meetings and researching feature
and story opportunities. You will
build journalist relationships, pitch
stories and find creative angles to
promote our clients…excellent
written and spoken
English…flexible and enthusiastic
approach to multi-tasking, taking
the initiative and ensuring
deadlines are met
(continued)
3 Be Digital 69
(continued)
Ad#50 Responsibilities: Executing media
Account Manager, Consumer PR and digital strategies across all
clients. Developing, maintaining
client relations. Compiling monthly
reports. Liaising and developing
contacts with the press. Managing
and placing client coverage
It should be noted that the absence of specific data-driven skills in

most of the PR recruitment ads in the data set is not conclusive evidence
of the daily regime of PR work. In many organisations, PR practitioners
acquire new digital skills after the recruitment stage. Notwithstanding
such caveats, the junior and mid-level PR roles in the data set demon-
strated a distinct bias towards administrative skills and wordsmithing of
articles, news releases and case studies (e.g. Ad #39), suggesting that
many PR practitioners continue to operate in a digital-adjunct rather
than a digital-first environment when contrasted with digital marketing
or social media specialists. There was little difference with recruitment
ads for senior PR roles. While writing skills disappeared as a require-
ment further up the career ladder, senior (mostly agency) PR roles instead
called for new business contacts and client impression management (e.g.
Ad #46 in Extracts 3.3). Across the board, PR recruitment ads under-
scored the profession’s sustained emphasis on relationship-building skills
with the media, with influencers or with clients. The data suggests that
PR’s professional project prioritises efforts to protect the profession’s
traditional skills versus expanding into digital and big data territory.
Hence, the analysis of recruitment ads in this chapter supports claims of
PR’s ongoing ‘technophobia’ in the digital age. What the recruitment ads
did not reveal was the expected levels of formal data training or qualifi-
cations needed for jobs requiring data expertise. Nor did the 50 selected
ads stipulate the expanding workload required for promotional profes-
sionals needing to get to grips with an endless array of software tools for
content production, strategy and tracking.
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Content Production—Platforms’ Knowledge

Apparatus
The inexorable rise of digital content production characterises the disci-
plinary power currently wielded by digital platforms such as Amazon,
Google, Facebook and TikTok. I use the term ‘disciplinary power’ in
the Foucauldian (1977, 1981) sense wherein the platform economy
accomplishes command-and-control through a network of devices or
knowledge apparatuses that produce and regulate customs, habits and
productive practices (Hardt & Negri, 2000). Digital content production
is a key knowledge apparatus of digital platforms, which serves to main-
tain the strategic relationship between platform producers, consumers
and intermediaries (O’Farrell, 2005). Research has previously indicated
the growing role of content production as a pre-requisite for promotional
professions (Alexander, 2016;), a trend supported by this chapter’s data
set.
The rise of content production presents a quandary for PR’s profes-
sional project. Where once different forms of promotional work could
be distinguished by their use of media channels (e.g. paid advertising
versus earned PR) or by the nature of media output (e.g. press release
versus banner advertisement), these demarcations dissolve under the
totalising language of ‘content’. Even though the data set represents a
snapshot in time, the expansionary discourse of ‘content production’
evident across the 50 recruitment ads points to a continuum of change in
the promotional industries, as they move ever further towards integration
and convergence between “news AND advertising AND public relations
AND strategic communications” (Marron, 2014: 347) [Emphasis in the
original].
The way digital platforms ‘see’ the world as dataflows will continue
to shape the future of work in PR and other promotional industries,
bifurcating different occupations into their respective activities upstream
or downstream of data flows (Dimitrov, 2018). Most of the upstream
roles belong to data experts. These include data scientists who design
and test experiments using statistics, calculus and linear algebra; data
analysts, who implement strategy around data; audience strategists,
tasked with protecting and growing the value of collective audiences;
3 Be Digital 71
and digital knowledge managers, who control data integrity for organ-
isations, brands, products, people, locations and services (Baer, 2017;
Liffreing, 2018). These data-driven specialisms currently work alongside
or overlap with promotional roles, although it is possible that one side
may eventually absorb the other.
Downstream, meanwhile, is a much larger cluster of workers—jour-
nalists and other media producers, advertising, marketing, PR and
other promotional practitioners—all of whom are involved in retailing
digital content (Dimitrov, 2018). Downstream, their activity is collec-
tively described as ‘content creation’. This catch-all phrase incorporates
expert activity by professionals who spent many years perfecting their
skills in news and feature writing, investigative coverage, film and video
production, magazine publishing, speechwriting, copywriting, blogging,
vlogging, photography, graphic design and animation. Yet, the term
‘content creation’ also applies to outputs from amateur creators and
everyday users too. The digital content generated by professionals and
amateurs alike ultimately serves digital platforms by attracting digital
traffic, capturing user data, and generating advertising revenues (Bilton,
2019). However, the retailing of digital content downstream of dataflows
is a mass activity that discounts the value of PR and promotional work.
The declining status of PR work taking place ‘downstream’ of data flows
is a matter of some concern (Bourne, 2022), as explored further in
Chapters 4 and 8. Of equal concern is ‘content shock’, a problem high-
lighted by the Canadian Public Relations Society (CPRS), wherein the
global explosion in data-driven content limits stakeholders’ capacity to
consume, never mind engage, with PR messaging (Schaefer, 2014; Tisch,
2019).
Conclusion: Small World Relationships vs Big

Data Personas
While some professional associations recognise data management and
data analysis as the greatest gap in modern PR’s professional skillset
(Tisch, 2019), collectively the profession seems ill-inclined to expand
72 C. Bourne
PR skills upstream. For some professional associations, the most sustain-

able future for PR lies in relationship management rather than content
production because relationships yield unprecedented value for client-
organisations (Tisch, 2019; Velasco, 2019). From this perspective, the
appropriate role for content production is to fuel conversations that in
turn allow relationships to be managed (Velasco, 2019). Equally, this
perspective regards big data and digital skills as simply a means to an
end in modern relationship management, where the real benefit of new
software tools lies in improving the organisation’s ability to listen to its
publics, not the ability to circulate and amplify content (Tisch, 2019).
The PR industry’s stance on relationship management is thought-
provoking, since the picture painted of modern relationship management
is mixed. Relationship management devotees give digital skills a promi-
nent role in modern stakeholder relations, because software tools can
allow PR practitioners to ‘see’ valuable relationships and map intelligent
measurement without replacing the practitioner’s strategic counsel (Saxe,
2016; White, 2016). However, software designers—and digital plat-
form owners—define ‘relationships’ rather differently from traditional
PR textbooks. As digital platforms dominate contemporary marketing,
advertising and PR, an organisation’s relationship with stakeholders
increasingly refers to online brand communities, fan communities and
filter bubbles. These platformised relationships (or pseudo-relationships)
are algorithmically-driven and defined by connectivity and shareability
(Pariser, 2011; Zwick & Bradshaw, 2016).
Big data flows also allow advertisers and marketers to invest more
in profiling digital personas. These imaginary persons are employed to
represent segments of real people in a population, helping marketers to
better target audiences (Jansen et al., 2020). From their inception in the
1980s and refinement in the early 1990s, personas were generally ‘flat
media’, presented on paper or in an electronic document, encompassing a
personal profile, containing an assortment of attributes. These flat media
personas were not interactive decision-making tools (Jansen et al., 2020).
The advent of digital platforms allowed for the possibility of data-driven
personas that are created algorithmically. Unlike a flat file, data-driven
personas are interactive with a marketer’s technology stack. Facebook,
Google and other platforms provide digital personas as part of their
3 Be Digital 73
service to marketers, identifying highly-connected users who are part

of influential networks, deciding which demographics, lifestyle, friend-
ship and personality markers make certain people valuable and others
not (Turow & Draper, 2014).
In an era of personalisation and addressability, digital touchpoints
become a cheaper, more effective proxy for organisations to deliver what
stakeholders want. PR therefore risks losing any authority as experts on
organisational relationship management, while also falling behind on
expertise in data management. That said, the PR roles in this chapter’s
data set suggest a different view of relationships that do not rely on
algorithms or digital sites. The featured PR recruitment ads bolster a
professional narrative in which PR practitioners are “bound to others”
through small-world activity; in which face-to-face, real-world rela-
tions matter more than what happens online (Reed & Thomas, 2019:
227). The PR profession’s continued focus on relationship-building skills
therefore counters the language of big data skills and platformisation,
as the PR profession redoubles efforts to align PR with relationship
management as strategic counsel.
Another interesting aspect of the 50 recruitment ads in this chapter’s
data set was the lack of evidence of PR’s encroachment into other areas
of promotional work. Indeed, the similarity between many PR recruit-
ment ads in the 2021 data set with those of two decades ago raises the
possibility that the PR profession may be shrinking—or that the hyper-
accelerated growth of digital marketing and social media management
has left little space upon which PR could potentially encroach. Unlike
the adjacent fields of digital marketing and social media management,
the PR recruitment ads did not generally call for expansive or conver-
gent skills, that is, expertise across multiple fields or skillsets (Avnoon,
2021; Bartosova, 2011; Fiore-Gartland & Tanweer, 2016). By contrast,
convergent skills were more evident in digital marketing recruitment. For
instance, Ad #28 advertised for a head of marketing to be “…forward
thinking and commercially savvy…creative/analytical in equal measure”.
Conversely, PR recruitment ads only occasionally mentioned return on
investment, while even senior PR roles in the data set did not mention
budget or P&L responsibility, as was the case with digital marketing ads.
74 C. Bourne
Professional associations have long maintained that PR’s unique

offering is strategic counsel, however, ‘strategy’ was not easy to detect
amongst the skills featured in the selected PR recruitment ads. Indeed,
the skills most frequently advertised were the sorts of daily tactics that
face the greatest threat from digital platformisation. PR writing skills
can, for example, be outsourced to freelance content specialists, or even
to artificial intelligence tools (as discussed in Chapter 7). Media rela-
tions skills are also problematic in a world of shrinking newsrooms, as
multinationals and larger brands move publishing capabilities in-house,
with staff trained to create data-driven stories, which cater to platform
algorithms. While the PR profession is aware of these threats, successful
threat assessment also needs to account for new definitions of value in the
platform economy, where platformised logic equates value with speed,
agility, real-time knowing and future-proofing (Beer, 2019). At the same
time, PR’s clients and bosses are increasingly fixated on value calculated
as return on investment: that return now incorporates an organisation’s
investment in platformised campaigns, where communications must be
‘hyper-relevant’ in order to assuage platform algorithms (Zwick & Brad-
shaw, 2016). While this chapter ends with the implication that PR is on
the digital backfoot, take heart: Chapter 4 presents a very different side to
the profession, as PR wages digital war on the global creative battlefield.
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4
Be Creative
Who Owns Creativity?

The digital age has drawn yet another professional battlefront for promo-
tional professions—the battle over creativity, the secret sauce in many
great campaigns. PR, advertising and marketing now struggle for domi-
nance as the specialism best able to generate continuous ‘buzz’ for brands
and client-organisations. Yet traditionally, creativity was advertising’s
domain. The advertising profession could do ‘creativity’ more spectacu-
larly because it had bigger client budgets to draw on for controlling space
in TV, newspapers, magazines and out-of-home. Advertising agencies
thrived on their creative identity, and deliberately engendered a cult of
creativity about their work, a mythology of artistry-plus-genius (McStay,
2010; Nixon, 2003). Within advertising agencies, this mythology was
symbolised by the power of the creative director. Externally, advertising’s
creative mythmaking was powerfully distilled into one event, the Cannes
Lions Festival of Creativity, where each year the advertising industry
continues to anoint its creative ‘kings’. The PR profession has invoked
creativity to a lesser extent. Creativity is the linchpin of many successful
PR campaigns, and many are attracted to the PR profession because
Switzerland AG 2022
82 C. Bourne
they want to pursue a creative career. Nevertheless, PR is not formally

recognised as a creative industry; policymakers do not recognise in PR’s
outputs or expert solutions the creation and exploitation of intellectual
property that could be protected by copyright (Pieczka, 2006).
Interestingly, advertising’s supposed dominance over creativity may
originally have encroached on PR territory in some markets. London’s
early emergence as a centre for industrial design in the 1950s was itself
associated with the rise of UK public relations in the twentieth century
(L’Etang, 2004). However, ensuing decades saw the PR profession focus
more on asserting the field’s managerial and strategic credentials rather
than its creative edge. As Nyilasy et al. (2012) point out, PR can always
justify strategy as a professional pursuit, but “there is no theory and there-
fore no professional legitimation for creative” (2012: 157). As a result,
creativity in PR work is often sidelined in favour of bureaucratic tasks,
and PR practitioners can find their creative energies marginalised. Occa-
sional creative sparks in PR work might come from organising events,
or through self-expression in what practitioners wear to work (Williams,
2018). But in more bureaucratic working environments, PR teams can
struggle to devise creative processes and may even have to enlist outside
help (Willis, 2018).
While creativity is not practised consistently throughout the PR
profession, it has regained importance as a professional marker for
PR because digital platforms demand speedy, hyper-relevant profes-
sional content (See discussion in Chapter 3). This chapter will explore
boundary-work by Edelman, the world’s largest independent PR firm,
and its efforts to expand the PR profession’s reputation as creative
content-producers-in-chief. Edelman Inc.1 has spent more than a decade
building and promoting its creative credentials. One of the firm’s early
acts of encroachment was to poach creative directors and creative special-
ists from pure-play advertising agencies. In 2013, Edelman unveiled its
Creative Newsroom, integrating social media community management,
creative production, analytics and content strategy to provide clients with
real-time data and audience insights, data-driven campaign design and
1 The PR firm goes by the name ‘Edelman’ as a stand-alone word. For clarity, the company
is occasionally referred to as Edelman Inc. in this chapter to differentiate it from Richard
Edelman, its chief executive.
4 Be Creative 83
media amplification (Hutchins & Tindall, 2016). The year 2014 marked
a change in Edelman’s strategic direction with a series of creative coups:
Edelman bought into United Entertainment Group, the sports and
lifestyle marketing agency, and acquired creative ‘hot shop’ Deportivo
in Europe (Sudhaman, 2014). That summer Edelman also won its first
PR Grand Prix for a Chipotle YouTube campaign; becoming the first PR
firm to win since the category was introduced in 2009. In an interview
with PR Week shortly after the victory, chief executive Richard Edelman
outlined his firm’s battleplan to encroach on advertising and marketing’s
territory by broadening the definition of PR via ‘the reclamation of
marketing itself ’ (Rogers, 2014). By 2019, Edelman had appointed Judy
John as its first Global Chief Creative Officer. Two years later, Edelman
was named Independent Agency of the Year in Cannes Lions’ entertain-
ment track. The agency received 16 shortlists as a stand-alone entrant,
and 17 wins and 15 shortlists as the partner/PR agency across various
creative categories (Marszalek, 2021). PR’s battle with advertising was
on.
Edelman was not first-PR-mover on the creative battlefield with adver-
tising. Weber Shandwick and Ketchum had also invested heavily in their
creative offering, while Golin had previously announced its global reor-
ganisation to include teams of catalysts and creators. All the global PR
firms began entering creative competitions that were previously adver-
tising’s domain (Rogers, 2014). This flanking manoeuvre by global PR
firms began after the PR industry detected a chink in advertising’s
creative armour. Globalisation, recession and digital platformisation had
all caused major upheavals in Adland2 ’s business model. A crucial driver
was Amazon, Google and Facebook’s decision to monetise their plat-
forms through advertising. These three platforms now represent the
largest advertising real estate in the world. Digital advertising or adtech
continues to grow rapidly so that a ‘job in advertising’ today is more
likely to mean a role buying and selling digital advertising space via
specialist trading platforms, a role working with advertising data, or a
role managing digital advertising assets.
2 Adland is a term long used to describe the business world of advertising and advertisers.
84 C. Bourne
Adland’s rapid digital retooling and change split the industry into
different visions of advertising’s future. Martin Sorrell, founder and long-
time chief executive of WPP, was intent on transforming advertising’s
business model from the ground up. Unlike his peers, Martin Sorrell
had never been a traditional adman, his background was in finance.
Proclaiming that the days of ‘creativity for creativity’s sake’ were over,
Sorrell saw the future of advertising in data and media asset manage-
ment. Other advertising leaders who had come up through the creative
route disagreed with Sorrell’s vision, arguing that by shifting whole-
sale into digital advertising, Adland would cede creative sovereignty to
fields such as PR. Somewhere in the middle ground was an evolving
view that traditional and digital advertising were not binary opposites,
and that creativity and data management were converging not diverging.
This view from the middle recognised that modern creative advertising
campaigns regularly use data-driven tools such as sentiment analysis to
choose advertising talent and to position messages likely to appeal to
target audiences (Lee & Cho, 2020). However, the schism persisted.
Martin Sorrell was ousted from the leadership of WPP, and started S4
Capital, his own media asset management firm. A few years after, his
old firm WPP launched a global division designed to bring media and
creative back together using data and technology to create ‘addressable
creative’ and ‘creative analytics’, the latter using artificial intelligence to
understand which ads work and which don’t (Oakes, 2021).
Things were fraught for both the PR and advertising professions on
either side of the creative battlefront. Adland could not agree on a shared
future, but PR’s attempts to encroach on advertising’s creative terri-
tory was plagued by obstacles. Global PR firms had lobbied hard for
Cannes Festival of Creativity to introduce the PR category in 2009. Yet
advertising agencies continued to dominate this PR category, leading the
judges to criticise the PR industry for lacking big, disruptive, one-off,
stand-alone creative ideas (Luker, 2012). Further lobbying was required
to change Cannes’ definition of PR creativity from “the creative use of
reputation” to “creative work which successfully builds trust and culti-
vates relationships with credible third-parties, utilising mainly earned
media tactics or channels to influence public dialogue and ultimately
4 Be Creative 85
change perceptions and behaviours” (Czarnecki, 2017). The revised defi-

nition differentiated PR from advertising by emphasising ‘earned media’
as PR’s primary channel, and ‘trust’ as its primary outcome (Czarnecki,
2017). Yet five years later, the 2022 Cannes Festival was marked by a
complete absence of PR agencies in the Gold PR Lions categories, while
the winning entries focused on stunt-driven work, based on metrics long
ago rejected by PR’s industry bodies (Holmes, 2022).
Meanwhile, the PR industry’s new creative impetus produced mixed
reception from practitioners on the ground; industry surveys revealed
professional angst about PR’s creative turn (Holmes Report, 2016).
Professional uncertainty about a new creative identity was entirely plau-
sible. Most PR practitioners do not work for global PR firms and do not
benefit from employer investment in new creative hires, creative training
or creative technologies. Meanwhile, PR’s bureaucratic structures remain
an obstacle. Wherever PR practitioners are measured on media rela-
tions, account management and/or client service, creativity can become
sidelined, while a reliance on time billings leaves little time to foment
creativity from within (Czarnecki, 2017).
Client-Driven Creative Processes

Defining PR Creativity
If ‘Who owns creativity?’ is a vexing question for PR, ‘What is creativity?’

is even more perplexing. PR scholarship has shown growing academic
interest in creativity (e.g. Bowman et al., 2018; Estanyol & Roca, 2015).
While academic typologies of PR creativity are still evolving, similar work
in advertising scholarship is useful to this chapter’s discussion. While
creativity may be the linchpin of many PR campaigns, it is primarily
driven by clients in their constant battle to build new markets and
expand existing ones. Clients have always valorised creativity for its
“newness”, its ability to break new boundaries and establish new genres
(Nixon, 2003). Through creativity, PR professionals can assuage client
anxiety through ever-more sophisticated campaigns to gain traction in
highly competitive markets (Faulconbridge et al., 2011). Nevertheless,
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PR’s professional discourses often invoke the term creativity without

reference to a shared definition. Outside of PR and promotional work,
creativity often suggests artistry, something with intrinsic rather than
measured value or utility (McStay, 2013). In creative industries such
as photography, sculpture, scriptwriting or film production, creativity
comes from the minds of individuals and, despite obvious tensions
with profit motives, labour is ideally shaped through creative autonomy
and independence—creative authorship matters (Hesmondlagh & Baker,
2010).
Conversely, in PR and other promotional professions, creativity is
expected to refer to the nature of the solution on offer; combining
appropriateness for a target audience with originality—something novel,
unusual, aesthetic or different (Koslow et al., 2006; McStay, 2013). PR
practitioners often conceive and deliver creativity to their clients in the
form of a ‘big idea’ to promote a product or service, but the ‘big idea’
is tied to performance and is constrained by client briefs, organisational
objectives, budgets, procurement and approval processes (McStay, 2013).
Furthermore, a PR team’s definition of creativity is never constant—
‘creativity’ is whatever the client or budget-holder determines it to be
at a particular point in time for a particular campaign. Creativity might
mean a sparkling event, an enticing visual campaign or compelling
mobile game. Or more prosaically, creativity might refer to an effective
app design or the creation of a canny algorithm to predict the success
of a product launch (McIlrath, 2020). Additionally, the most creative
solutions for clients might be virtually invisible; rather than creating
a presence, they might create the absence of “a queue, complaint or
problem” (McIlrath, 2020). This commercial pressure remains a tension
between clients and their promotional advisers. From time to time,
PR, advertising and marketing have produced best practice guides to
‘teach’ their clients what creativity is (e.g. Collister, 2009; Field, 2016;
PR Agency One, 2020). Yet, there remains a gap between how clients
and their promotional advisers envisage creativity and assign value to its
outcomes.
4 Be Creative 87
Technocapitalism and Commodified Creativity

Since client-driven creative processes are shaped by commercial aims,
creativity in both PR and advertising often begets commodified
approaches in order to achieve speedy, efficient and profitable results.
Forces of creative commodification in the wider economy have inten-
sified in the digital age. Writing in 1999, Manovich traces this growth
back to the rise of the database as the fulcrum of creative processes in
the computer age. Manovich maintains that historically, individual artists
made their unique creations within a particular medium, wherein the
interface and the work were the same. For instance, a ‘photo’ once meant
both the image and the paper on which it was printed. However, with
digital media, the content of the work and the interface became separate
so that it was possible to create different interfaces to the same mate-
rial, where each digital object (e.g. a photograph) could consist of one or
more interfaces to a database of multimedia material (Manovich, 1999).
Amidst these changes, PR had some advantage over Adland because
traditional advertising promotion sought attention through interruption
e.g. a thirty second television ad interrupts the scheduled programme,
while a print ad interrupts a magazine article. The end of an adver-
tising campaign often meant the end of the life of the advertising object,
be it a display ad or other medium. With digital platformisation, the
advertising object or product has transformed. Advertising objects are
no longer bounded by time (McStay, 2013); it’s not unusual for video
advertisements to continue circulating on digital platforms years after a
campaign has ended. In some ways, PR turned out to be more suited to
platformised promotional campaigns, which seek to engender participa-
tion, interaction and intimacy with digital stakeholders (McStay, 2013).
PR had traditionally regarded the temporality of its outputs rather differ-
ently from advertising anyway, with PR outputs framed as more episodic,
forming part of a longer organisational story, and with potential for
longer shelf-life—corporate storytelling, thought leadership or opinion
pieces, for example.
Digital platformisation has accelerated the commodified approaches to
creativity outlined by Manovich in 1999. In the past, twentieth century
PR production interfaces had limited access to PR content. Some PR
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content was only aimed at journalists who, for example, accessed press
releases sent via the newsdesk (by post, fax, telex or email). Meanwhile,
a PR-penned corporate speech might only be heard by the audience to
whom the speech was delivered, although a wider audience might later
be able to access speech extracts in the news. A PR-produced corporate
video might only be viewed by employees in a workplace setting. Now,
with the advent of computationally-driven communication, dominant
forms of professional storytelling and expression are increasingly stored
on databases, from where they are distributed to users in collections
of digital objects—pieces of data—that users can digitally search, navi-
gate and view (Manovich, 1999). This puts PR on a more level playing
field with advertising, since PR professionals can distribute their creative
content quickly and efficiently to a wider range of stakeholders through
various accessible digital interfaces, such as social media.
Manovich revisited his work on the database in 2012 in an effort to
account for the growth of ‘always on’ media formats, including platforms
and mobile devices. In this later work, Manovich (2012) identified the
data stream—the direct descendant of the database—as the new fulcrum
for the creative process. Applying Manovich’s updated perspective to PR,
the symbolic form of most PR work is now the data stream. Instead
of browsing a collection of PR objects within a data stream, digital
users now experience PR content interwoven with all sorts of other
content as a continuous flow of events, often as a single feed on a mobile
phone (Collister, 2016; Manovich, 2012). Hence, PR and other promo-
tional disciplines must adopt data-driven approaches so they can spread
creative promotional content effectively by taking that content wherever
audiences are (Coleman, 2016).
Luis Suarez-Villa (2009) contends that commodified creativity has
now become a major differentiator of contemporary capitalism. In his
book,‘Technocapitalism’, Suarez-Villa defines commodification as the set
of processes or activities through which the results of creativity are
commercialised to generate products and services “sparing few efforts
to extract value whenever it can do so” (2009: 32). He argues that
since creativity is “this most intangible and elusive human quality”
(emphasis in original), commodified creativity is very different from
the commodification of other resources in previous stages of capitalism
4 Be Creative 89
(Suarez-Villa, 2009: 31). For Suarez-Villa, the process of commodi-

fying creativity disintegrates and reconfigures creative experiences into
new forms, methods or processes (Suarez-Villa, 2009). Even though
PR professionals do not create patents or other intellectual property,
Suarez-Villa argues that with intangible resources such as PR outputs,
creativity is “not exhausted through usage or application”. Rather, knowl-
edge gained serves as a stepping stone to more PR creativity because of
“creativity’s inherently social character” (Suarez-Villa, 2009: 38).
In essence, what Suarez-Villa describes has always been part of the
work processes in both PR and advertising, where creativity is often
produced collectively, unauthored, and where good ideas are almost
immediately copied—whether by competitors or the public. In the
digital age, an accelerated version of creative sociality can certainly be
seen on social media platforms, where Suarez-Villa maintains that “Cre-
ativity begets creativity, adding experience to imagination, along with
new perspectives on how to exercise it in better ways. All of these char-
acteristics depend intensely on social relations and the social context”
(Suarez-Villa, 2009: 38). Digital users are typically the ‘social’ in these
social relations. As Christian Fuchs (2012) puts it, users have become
“content producers who engage in permanent creative activity, commu-
nication, community building, and content-production” (2012: 146).
Such permanent creative activity allows users to become what Fuchs
(2012: 146) calls “double objects of commodification”, commodified
first by platforms, such as Instagram or Snapchat, which in turn sell the
data trails from user activity to advertising clients, completing a second
intensified form of commodification (Fuchs, 2012).
Platform Tools and Beta Creativity

Platforms’ governance over digital creative production grows more inten-
sive each year. Facebook’s Instagram, ByteDance’s TikTok and Google’s
YouTube actively promote themselves as agents of creative self-expression
(Poell et al., 2022). Meanwhile, Google and Facebook do far more
than just offer advertising space; they offer marketing research, product
development and related services to shape creative strategy and content
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production (Helmond et al., 2019). Platforms also offer design tools,

enabling professionals and amateurs alike to build content from and for
platforms. Platforms’ digital tools are now integral to digital production
processes, from project ideation through creation, production, and distri-
bution (Foxman, 2019). Platforms’ proprietary software tools ‘lock-in’
specific practices at each stage of creative production, setting rules and
guidelines based on platformised digital media ecosystems. Correspond-
ingly, platform algorithms ensure that certain formats are prioritised
in users’ searches and feeds. For instance, Google and Facebook tech-
nologies reduce content loading times, but require all digital content
to adhere to their standards. In doing so, platforms exercise “explicitly
editorial” judgements on content and design (WEF, 2018: 7). Proprietary
tools and platform algorithms simultaneously lock-in specific ideologies
of how creativity should be produced, while also requiring users—
including PR professionals—to remain constantly vigilant in learning
new platform rules and algorithmic changes (Foxman, 2019).
Predictive models are now “the basis on which many targeted creative
executions are conceived, designed, developed and deployed”, meaning
that what used to be the ‘back-end’ is now upfront in creative devel-
opment (Rosen, 2013). One particular set of platform rules is ‘beta
creativity’, a process borrowed from Silicon Valley and ‘Design Thinking’
frameworks that use creativity and technology to achieve quicker ‘human
outcomes’ (Coleman, 2016). Beta creativity gives organisations and
brands a way to take an idea that isn’t fully-formed, and ‘throw it
out there’ to get people using it (Coleman, 2016). PR advisers can
experiment with real-time testing of multiple creative ideas, campaigns,
messaging and content by crowdsourcing unfiltered reactions from users
identified by digital platforms. PR practitioners can then create a more
detailed version in response to feedback on user experiences (Facebook,
2020). Testing might involve something as simple as trying two different
subject lines for emails or promoting the same video on Twitter at
different times of day (Lloyd, 2015; Weiner, 2021). As reactions come in,
the PR team’s next step is continuous and iterative; they can constantly
adapt and update key concepts or granular details such as “what level
of colour saturation to use on Instagram in the morning versus the
afternoon or evening” (Bürgi, 2021).
4 Be Creative 91
For PR practitioners working on web content, no two visitors need

see the same version of an organisation’s mobile content or website.
For clients, the benefits are clearer still: beta creativity equips client-
organisations to tap into the pulse of digital audiences in order to answer
the most pressing business questions and establish the building blocks
for new promotional strategies (Facebook, 2020). More importantly,
beta creativity offers a solution to an age-old problem of promotional
planning, namely, how to reduce risk by cutting down on hit-or-
miss efforts and guesswork. This quick-response-and-recover approach
supposedly yields measurable lower average costs on campaigns by eval-
uating message recall and tracking audience interactions. Meanwhile,
the benefits for platform companies are also self-evident. Beta creativity
converts the digital platform, its proprietary tools and algorithms into an
‘ideas factory’ (Coleman, 2016), so that platform companies become the
indispensable partner to brands. However, through the lens of profes-
sional boundary-work, a different view emerges. First, platforms’ beta-
creative services are designed to cut out the middle man, including PR
advisers. Second, beta creativity intensifies the tempo of client demand
for volume in creative work, speed in campaign roll-outs, plus rapid feed-
back and rapid results. It is against this background, that I now analyse
professional boundary-work conducted by Edelman Inc., the world’s
largest independent PR firm, and its strategic focus on earned creative.
Edelman Corporate Insights: Positioning

‘Earned Creative’ as PR Specialism
Global PR firms are under-researched in PR scholarship, yet they are an
important site of professionalisation, major actors in PR’s transnational
professional project, and active in redrawing PR’s professional bound-
aries. This chapter’s data set covers five years of Edelman’s corporate
statements and opinion pieces or ‘insights’ from chief executive, Richard
Edelman, between 2017 and 2021. Richard Edelman assumed leader-
ship of the company in 1996 (Wisner, 2012). Since then, Edelman
Inc., has grown to become the world’s largest independent PR firm, and
Richard Edelman has assumed the mantle of industry doyen. His stature
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is boosted by the global platform given to his firm’s Trust Barometer, an

annual survey launched in 2000 at the World Economic Summit. The
Edelman Trust Barometer now provides a steady diet of media coverage
for the PR firm and is regularly discussed at meetings of world leaders.
Hence, the audience for Richard Edelman’s opinion pieces is broad; his
public interviews and statements represent the PR firm’s views on govern-
ment policy or industry issues and are circulated widely amongst clients,
global employees, competitors and the media.
As chief executive, Richard Edelman’s corporate insights help to build
an episodic story of Edelman Inc’s relevance and stature as the ‘world’s
largest independent PR firm’; while reaffirming corporate strategy to
clients, subsidiaries and management teams, and fostering Edelman’s
employer brand. Edelman’s corporate insights also tell an important
succession story, cementing Richard Edelman’s leadership accomplish-
ments since taking the reins from his father and company founder,
Dan Edelman.3 As successor, Richard Edelman’s public statements relate
in a consistent way how Edelman will continue to compete and grow
in the twenty-first century without losing the company’s private share-
holding and independent status. Richard Edelman’s communiqués speak
of building a hybridised identity for the PR firm, of establishing ‘earned
creative’ as a successful specialism, and of standing up for the role of the
PR profession at the leadership table. Edelman’s corporate insights are
therefore self-generating, self-identifying and self-protective, containing
the meta-messages that help the firm confirm itself to internal and
external audiences (Cheney et al., 2004). Equally, CEO discourses are
often attempts at legitimation strategies in the extent to which CEOs use
communication to deal with negative issues in the corporate landscape,
justify themselves and salvage their reputation after failed initiatives or
corporate disasters (Breeze, 2013).
According to Cheney et al. (2004), corporate opinion pieces are given
to ‘totalising’, insofar as these communiqués might declare a concern
to be overriding, of superordinate importance, or overshadowing all
other issues. This is often true of Richard Edelman’s statements. For
3 Daniel J. Edelman led Edelman Inc. from 1952 to 1996. He subsequently remained active
in the firm for several years and died in 2013.
4 Be Creative 93
Edelman Inc. during the five years under review, the PR marketplace
had been rendered uncertain by several factors including globalisation,
decades of rapid technological change, the aftermath of the 2008 global
financial crisis, a tumultuous political environment, and the COVID-19
pandemic. As well as shaping his PR firm’s image and identity, Richard
Edelman’s corporate insights also contribute to professional boundary-
work at a time of rapid industry change: his communiqués frequently
respond to current events and anticipate future reputational challenges
(Cheney et al., 2004). Crucially, Richard Edelman’s insights often fire
salvos at competitors, including the advertising industry. The totalising
issue for Richard Edelman has been his ambition for PR to establish
pre-eminence over advertising in the communications mix through the
speed, flexibility and ingenuity of ‘earned creative’. The analysis of this
chapter’s discursive boundary-work centres on three statements from
Richard Edelman: a 2017 opinion piece entitled The PR Industry at the
Crossroads; a 2019 opinion piece entitled Crippling the Creative Agency
and a 2021 announcement entitled ‘Why Edelman Studios? ’, outlining
the global PR firm’s latest creative initiative.
Protecting PR as a Stand-Alone Discipline

Richard Edelman’s leadership style has been described as both mercu-
rial and scrappy (Sudhaman, 2013). He is not above tussling with heads
of other global PR and advertising firms via the media. Such aggressive
public forays are the hallmark of a challenger brand, a status Edelman
Inc. held until turbo-charged growth helped it become the world’s largest
independent PR firm and PR Agency of the Decade in 2010 (Sudhaman,
2013). Moving from challenger to established sector leader gave Edelman
Inc. a different position in global communications markets. Edelman
Inc. was now far bigger than all other stand-alone PR firms. But Edelman
was still not diverse enough as a communications provider to take work
away from WPP, Publicis, Omnicom, Ogilvy or other holding compa-
nies that offer a global one-stop-shop for clients’ advertising, PR and
marketing needs. Holding company ‘imperialism’ over PR is an issue
of long-standing, ever since the frenzied takeovers of major PR firms
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by advertising groups during the 1970s and 1980s. PR survived the

advertising industry’s efforts to advance the IMC concept (integrated
marketing communications) during the 1980s and 1990s, although the
IMC ‘wild card’ thrust much of the PR profession into disarray, and
greatly complicated PR’s relationship with advertising and marketing
thereafter (Hutton, 2010).
The first selected discursive excerpt from 2017 appeared just months
after Edelman Inc. had reported disappointing 2016 revenue and its
slowest rate of growth since the 2008 global financial crisis (Sudhaman,
2017). Richard Edelman blamed economic uncertainty for his company’s
slowdown, but competitors and clients alike would have noted Edelman
Inc.’s depressed financial results. Meanwhile, the surrounding environ-
ment for Richard Edelman’s March 2017 insights was highly-charged.
President Donald Trump had just been inaugurated after a raucous elec-
tion campaign in which social media and data science had played a
pivotal role. Meanwhile, digital platformisation was proceeding apace,
with developments such as the launch of TikTok the previous year.
It would seem that for Richard Edelman, the best defence is a good
offence. Instead of passively sitting by and allowing the media to shape
a ‘slow growth’ story for his company, in his March 2017 corporate
insight, he deflected opposition by changing the narrative. By this time,
global PR firms’ encroachment into advertising’s creative domain had
been underway for several years. During that time, Richard Edelman had
argued repeatedly that PR (rather than advertising) was the better lead
creative partner for clients (Lazare, 2014; Rogers, 2014). The opinion
piece, The PR Industry at the Crossroads, posted on Edelman Inc.’s website
on 23 March 2017 is a defensive salvo designed to protect Edelman and
its CEO amidst market turmoil. In this 2017 opinion piece, Richard
Edelman accused Omnicom, Ogilvy and Publicis of relegating PR’s
disciplinary status within their holding groups either by collapsing all
their PR brands under one umbrella, or going further and collapsing
all PR, advertising and marketing units under a single umbrella to
create a so-called client-centric model (Edelman, 2017), as outlined in
Extract 4.1.
4 Be Creative 95
Extract 4.1: 23 March 2017. The PR Industry at the Crossroads.

Edelman Inc.
Richard Line 1 It should be boom times for the PR industry…

Edelman Lines 2–3 Money is flowing out of traditional
advertising into experiential, social and
sports. There are hundreds of challenger
brands sprouting up…
Lines 5–7 And yet in the past few weeks, there have
been surprising pronouncements from
holding companies that indicate a lack of
confidence in the PR business. The business
models going forward do not envision PR as
a stand-alone, but rather as part of the
supporting cast attempting to make the
most of the star performer: advertising-led
creative.
The restructuring described by Richard Edelman is not uncommon and

refers to a form of vertical boundary-work in which a PR team or depart-
ment is collapsed into another department within an organisation, and
practitioners are forced to abandon the name ‘public relations’ from
departments and job titles (Gesualdi, 2019; Lauzen, 1992; Neill & Jiang,
2017). However, Richard Edelman’s opinion piece raised the spectre
of a more serious threat to both the PR profession and the global PR
industry—the potential dissolution of PR companies and long-standing
PR brands altogether. As the opinion piece continued, it illustrates
Cheney et al.’s (2004) view of corporate discourse as totalising. Specif-
ically, The PR Industry at the Crossroads represents a single discursive
episode in Edelman Inc.’s totalising narrative of PR’s “overriding, super-
ordinate importance” (2004: 97) as primary creative partner for clients.
After Richard Edelman’s first volley against the global communication
holding companies, he used the rest of his opinion piece to protect PR
territory, reaffirming why PR professionals should always be more than
the supporting cast in advertising’s show, and why Edelman regards itself
as ‘primary creative partner’, as can be seen in Extract 4.2.
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Extract 4.2: 23 March 2017. The PR Industry at the Crossroads.

Edelman Inc.
Richard Lines 21–25 If you assume PR is not a growth business

Edelman and is only a support element for
advertising, then this approach is wise
and farsighted. But there is another view
held by Edelman and a few others. We
believe in a best-in-class vertical strategy,
with PR at the center as its operating
ethos of earned at the core, social by
design. We aim to be the primary creative
partner, digital channel implementer and
relationship builder with influencers. We
work as peers with ad agencies, digital
firms and media buyers, with CCOs and
CMOs. Ultimately the best programs will
fit under the rubric of communications
marketing, with an inextricable link
between corporate reputation and brand
marketing.
Richard Edelman ended his 2017 thought piece by proclaiming that with
the “advent of cord-cutting, ad blocking, click fraud and a fundamental
loss of trust in bought messages” PR professionals, not advertising, “are
the future”.
Expanding into Advertising’s Creative

Territory
The second discursive excerpt is selected from two years later. This
second opinion piece, entitled Crippling the Creative Agency, was
published on Edelman’s website in July 2019 and delivered an even
stronger critique of restructuring by holding companies. In Extract 4.3,
Richard Edelman cited the heavy toll wrought on creative functions
within holding groups now that corporate resources were being reallo-
cated to data-driven capabilities:
4 Be Creative 97
Extract 4.3: July 2019. Crippling the Creative Agency. Edelman Inc.
Richard Line 1 Do holding companies believe in their

Edelman creative brands? It would appear not, as
evidenced by their latest moves.
Lines 2–4 Publicis Groupe has unveiled its latest
reorganisation…The structure diminishes
further the job of the creative agency CEO.
Lines 6–7 […] As a further signal of diminished power,
the communications hub that comprises
the ad agencies and PR is only one of five
on the executive committee.
Lines 12–16 These reorganisations fly in the face of the
long-standing wisdom of the power of
brand in marketing services…The ultimate
end game is a consolidation of brands,
downsizing of workforce, decapitation of
senior talent and a more commodity
creative product in the guise of a
laser-guided data missile. Holding
companies are squeezing their ad agencies
in order to pay for huge data marketing
acquisitions…
The context for ‘Crippling the Creative Agency’ (Excerpts 4.3 and
4.4) is illuminating. Four months prior, Edelman had announced its
2018 financial results and the shock news of a 1.1% revenue decline
(Sudhaman, 2019). Worse still, Edelman’s flagging performance coin-
cided with key PR rivals’ return to growth. Amongst those bouncing back
were PR firms in the Omnicom Group, following the very restructuring
Richard Edelman had excoriated in his 2017 opinion piece analysed
above. Speaking about Edelman’s 2018 results, the CEO blamed ‘real
pressure’ on Edelman’s brand and digital business, as Edelman clients
continued to take social media and digital asset management in-house.
Nevertheless, Edelman Inc. doubled-down on its earned creative strategy
in 2019, hiring its first global chief creative officer. This hire was a
defining moment for the PR firm, and a major expansionary move,
enabling Edelman to globalise its creative offering for the first time
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(Stein, 2019). Extract 4.4 is taken from the second half of 2019’s Crip-
pling the Creative Agency: in this section of the communiqué, Richard
Edelman went on to make a further declaration of Edelman Inc.’s
encroachment on advertising’s creative territory:
Extract 4.4: July 2019. Crippling the Creative Agency. Edelman Inc.
Richard Edelman Lines 17–18 At Edelman, we are going in exactly the

opposite direction and filling the void
left by the seemingly inevitable
devolution of the creative sector in the
face of religious reliance on digital and
analytics.
Lines 23–24 […] We have embraced Earned Creative
ideas and solutions that are social by
design, rooted in purpose, as fast as the
news cycle and able to spark substantive
change and dialogue.
Richard Edelman may have successfully used his 2019 pronouncement

to triumphantly identify the creative void left by advertising agencies as
they scrambled to reinforce digital capabilities. He certainly helped to
expand the definition of PR by planting Edelman’s flag in the area of
earned creative. Yet, he also managed to gloss over the processes of digital
platformisation disrupting both the global advertising and PR professions
at that time.
Hybridising PR and Data

The final discursive excerpt, entitled Why Edelman Studios, was published
on the PR agency’s website on 17 February 2021. The opening section
of the announcement is set out in Extract 4.5.
4 Be Creative 99
Extract 4.5: 17 February 2021. Why Edelman Studios. Edelman Inc.
Richard Lines 1–5 Today we announced Edelman Studios, global

Edelman content creation and production hub…There
are two main content creation engines. First
is the Blue Room, an earned-first studio that
will create fast and shareable content at the
intersection of news, culture and
attention…The other is Edelman Productions
[this] unit will specialize in content connected
across channels and audiences as part of
campaigns powered by data and insights,
activated by earned, owned and paid
strategies
Edelman’s (2021) announcement detailed how its new Edelman Studios

would meet both the modern requirements of global clients and
the requirements of digital platforms, enabling more digital content,
produced inexpensively and delivered at speed. Edelman Studios repre-
sents the hybridising specialism of creative and digital. In announcing
the new division, Richard Edelman conceded his agency’s weakness
compared with global advertising firms. As can be seen in Extract 4.6,
taken from the same announcement, Edelman Studios was conceived to
address this weakness.
Extract 4.6: 17 February 2021. Why Edelman Studios. Edelman Inc.
Richard Lines 19–22 It frustrated me at Cannes Lions over the past

Edelman five years that our ideas may be stronger but
our production capabilities lagged far behind
our advertising colleagues. CMOs are
interested in data driven, inexpensive content
produced at scale and at pace. Our
production teams will sit in on the first
meetings with clients and be thinking about
how each idea can be made into a story that
persuades, inspires and educates […]
Line 29 […] We will be the only production studio that
has global capability to deliver fact-based
content in real time.
In Extract 4.6, the final discursive excerpt, Edelman’s announcement of

consolidated creative capabilities under the Edelman Studios umbrella
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established symbiosis between creative and the digital. To succeed in

digital platformisation, Dempster and Lee (2015) contend that promo-
tional professions must master the intersection of creative with data
analytics to produce a new, hybridised specialism. Dempster and Lee
itemise three hybridised capabilities as follows: First, promotional teams
need a dedicated band of ‘creative rock stars’, well-versed in digital plat-
forms. Rock stars are so dubbed because they can produce new creative
more regularly, rapidly, and constantly optimised by data analytics.
Second, promotional teams need a creative culture focused on delivering
one-to-one personalised experiences across all media channels. Third,
promotional teams need to craft truly data-driven user ‘journeys’ so that
stakeholders see relevant messages with a consistent brand or organi-
sational experience. The three discursive texts analysed in this chapter
trace Edelman Inc.’s path towards the creative-plus-digital harmonisation
outlined by Dempster and Lee (2015). Time alone can deliver the verdict
on Edelman’s aggressive move into the creative space, but Edelman Inc.
announced record revenues for the 2021 financial year, including a 47%
increase in its creative division, as well as substantial profits from its
COVID vaccine work. In 2022, Edelman officially became the world’s
first US$1 billion PR agency (Sudhaman, 2022b). Announcing his firm’s
turnaround in February of that year, Richard Edelman said “the tide is
turning for us relative to the ad agencies” (Sudhaman, 2022a).
Conclusion: Blurring Creative Boundaries

Digital platformisation has blurred creative boundaries between PR,
advertising and marketing. Using speed as their rationale, digital plat-
forms have widely disrupted promotional work. There are indications
that some PR firms are triumphing in the battle to hybridise profes-
sional identity. A UK industry survey found that client expectations of
PR agency creativity had risen, while 60% of PR firms had achieved ‘lead
creative agency’ designation by clients (Sudhaman, 2021). At the same
time, the survey still found barriers to PR creativity, including client
structure and agency creative quality. Nevertheless, the UK ‘Creativity
in PR’ study, conducted periodically since 2012, does not interrogate
4 Be Creative 101
the deeper impact of digital platformisation. For client-organisations, PR

innovation and creativity are expected to come up with new ways to sell
products, services or ideas via digital content. But platforms ‘see’ differ-
ently—their production logics are in tension with traditional notions of
creativity (MacKenzie & Munster, 2019; Poell et al., 2022). In a plat-
formised media world, ‘content’ no matter how complex, painstakingly
conceived, richly-textured or aesthetically beautiful, becomes simply a
digital object combining creative content with metadata (Bourne, 2022).
Metadata consists of hidden, descriptive material generated about the
content behind the scenes, together with likes, comments and reac-
tions generated by platform users (Dushay, 2002). Inevitably, occupa-
tional shorthand has taken over, and content produced by PR and
other media workers is no longer approached as content but simply as
metadata (Andrejevic et al., 2015). Ultimately, the content itself becomes
commoditised and devalued, because the real value lies in the metadata
and the experience it delivers as the digital content “comes alive” on a
digital platform through sharing and/or manipulation (Dushay, 2002).
That experiential ‘liveness’ attached to media content is what generates
advertising revenues, and captures additional consumer data for future
predictive customer profiling, analysis and data strategy (Bilton, 2019).
PR practitioners not only face deskilling of content creation in favour
of metadata, they must also contend with platformised approaches to
their professional storytelling. Digital platforms require a relentless flow
of malleable ‘spreadable’ content (Jenkins et al., 2013). Journalists, adver-
tising and PR professionals alike have found their storytelling skills have
now shifted from being a professional expertise to being a co-created
project with non-specialists and amateurs. PR and other media profes-
sionals are instead encouraged to become story owners, building a digital
‘story system’ outward through co-creation with third-party media part-
ners, as well as consumers who must be lured into adapting or responding
to the original content, at minimal cost to the digital platform (Bilton,
2019; Lowengard, 2019).
As argued in Chapter 3, it is now apparent that the skills PR
practitioners once honed in producing content to inform, educate or
entertain no longer hold the same professional status. Media and adver-
tising bosses have both grown more focused on the traffic generated by
102 C. Bourne
digital content than by any long-term informational, societal or aesthetic

value that content might reap. Furthermore, promotional media profes-
sionals increasingly compete with everyday citizens who are platform
users, and who, through sheer numbers, can produce far more content,
much more quickly than most professionals who must follow normative
rules and organisational guidelines. So, to end by answering the question:
‘Who owns creativity?’ The answer is whichever institutional stakeholder
wields greatest power over promotional decision-making. In the past, this
was always the client interest. In the digital age, Google, Facebook and
other digital platforms now wield increasing control.
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5
Be Included
Introduction: Diversity Avalanche

Beneath the surface of contemporary PR’s digital discourses runs a
powerful undercurrent of inequality and exclusion. In the UK, one of
the world’s largest PR markets, inequality has shaped the history of PR’s
professional project, first, through feminisation of the field where women
now dominate numerically. For women, feminisation of PR has often
meant lower status, lower pay and a tendency to get ‘stuck’ in tech-
nical roles which, for men, are transitory (Fitch & Third, 2010). The
challenges are greater for under-represented groups in the PR profession,
including neurodiverse and disabled workers, working-class practitioners,
LGBTQ+, as well as racialised minorities. The chapter will focus on
the latter group—racialised minorities in UK PR—exploring how race
and racism shape professional boundary-work. I argue that the spread
of diversity and inclusion policies in UK PR is linked chiefly with
protectionist discourses, where diversity initiatives help to protect white
spaces and mask racism in the profession. The chapter title is a nod
to Sara Ahmed’s (2012) book, On Being Included, which examines the
paradoxical impact of diversity campaigns in organisational life.
Switzerland AG 2022
110 C. Bourne
There has been an avalanche of diversity initiatives across the UK’s

promotional professions. As set out in Table 5.1, recent diversity initia-
tives focus on gender, ageism and disability, but most diversity initiatives
in UK PR are preoccupied with race. The longest-running of these
programmes is the Taylor Bennett Foundation, a charity that works with
PR employers to increase the number of Black and Brown1 recruits
into the profession. The Taylor Bennett Foundation also operates a
reverse mentoring scheme in conjunction with the Chartered Institute of
Public Relations (CIPR) to increase awareness of diversity challenges and
the need for inclusive cultures. Organisations have launched their own
schemes, such as the Government Communication Service’s outreach
programme, targeting secondary school pupils in a bid to improve diver-
sity within this government department (Owen, 2017). More recent
initiatives include BME PR Pros, a platform for nurturing the PR
industry’s Black and Brown talent. BME PR Pros also launched The
Blueprint, a practical scheme for agencies and PR departments to reward
best practice through a diversity kitemark. Several of these schemes are
mentioned in the chapter’s discursive event, a 2020 webinar organised to
publicise an industry report entitled Race in PR published by the CIPR’s
Diversity and Inclusion Network.
Despite many heralded diversity initiatives, few concrete changes
have been recorded in the UK’s PR profession, save the titular end to
unpaid internships following national campaigns across several industries
(Edwards, 2015). A CIPR State of the Profession survey showed that the
needle on PR’s diversity gauge has scarcely budged (CIPR, 2019). Nine
in ten (91%) of CIPR survey respondents in 2020 classified themselves as
white—compared to 92% in 2019. A PR Week survey the following year
found that one in five UK PR agencies had no employees of colour, while
nearly four out of five UK PR agencies had not a single non-white board
member (Harrington, 2021). PR is not alone; poor diversity remains a
hallmark of the UK’s wider creative industries. Despite the concentration
1 For many years, the term Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic or BAME was used to describe
racialised minorities in the UK. In this chapter, I will refer either to practitioners of colour or
to Black and Brown practitioners, using an upper case ‘B’ for the word Black as well as Brown.
While none of these terms captures all racialised minorities, they do, however, articulate the
problem of race and of being ‘Other’ than white in the UK.
Table 5.1 Five years of diversity initiatives, surveys and reports in UK public relations
Launch
date Organisation Programme/initiative Description Website
2022 Citigate Dewe Youth Possibility Two-week paid work https://www.taylorben
Rogerson/Taylor Programme experience nettfoundation.org/
Bennett Foundation forms/youth-possib
ility-programme-2022-
application-form
2022 PRovoke Media Diversity and inclusion Publicised diversity data https://www.provokeme
data for PRovoke’s events, dia.com/
awards juries and
editorial portfolio
2021 Socially Mobile Free industry training Founded by Wadds Inc, https://www.sociallym
school supported by industry obile.org.uk/
sponsors
2021 BME PR Pros Leadership Scheme Supported by the CIPR https://bmeprpros.co.
and industry sponsors uk/the-xec/
2021 PRovoke Media Salary Survey Examines pay equity https://www.provokeme
across gender and dia.com/
race. Survey previously
conducted in 2017
2021 FTI Consulting Apprenticeship Scheme 18 month on-the-job https://fticonsult.referr
training scheme als.selectminds.com/fti
leading toward PRCA studentcareers/jobs/
diploma apprenticeship-strate
gic-communications-
13773
5 Be Included
2021 Taylor Bennett Elevate Leadership Executive coaching and https://www.taylorben

Foundation programme mentorship supported nettfoundation.org/
by industry sponsor news/new-leadership-
programme-elevate
111
(continued)
Table 5.1 (continued)
112
Launch
date Organisation Programme/initiative Description Website
2021 PRCA Equity & Disability@theTable Monthly podcast https://www.prca.org.
Inclusion Advisory podcast celebrating disability in uk/Disability-at-the-
Council the PR workplace Table
2021 PRCA Equity & Inclusion Equity and inclusion https://www.prca.org.
C. Bourne
Advisory Council benchmark setting for uk/membership/gro

(formerly PRCA’s Diversity the PR sector ups/sectoral/eiac
Network)
2021 Women in PR 45 over 45 Addressing ageism in PR https://womeninpr.org.
uk/nomination/
2020 BME PR Pros The Blueprint Industry kitemark for https://bmeprpros.co.
equity and inclusion uk/blueprint/
2020 BAME 2020 No Turning Back Diversity case studies, https://www.noturning
ambassadors and back2020.com/no-tur
return-to-work ning-back/
schemes for PR and
marketing
2020 CIPR Diversity & Race in PR: BAME lived Industry report on https://www.slideshare.
Inclusion Network experiences in PR career journeys of 17 net/CIPRPaul/race-in-
PR professionals of pr-bame-lived-experi
colour ences-in-the-uk-pr-ind
ustry
2020 UK Black Launch event and Addressing racial https://blackcommsne
Communications Survey seniority gap in PR twork.co.uk/
Network management roles
2018 PRCA Diversity and Inclusion Makes the business case prca.org.uk/node/1365
Guidelines for improving diversity
and inclusion in PR
5 Be Included 113
of creative roles in London, the UK’s cosmopolitan and diverse capital

city, the odds of working in a creative role are one in five for the white
and privileged, double the chance of those from racialised minorities also
living in the capital (Carey et al., 2021).
Diversity and Racial Capitalism

Interdisciplinary scholarship on race and diversity suggests that UK PR’s
failure to move the dial on diversity is a feature rather than a bug;
a feature not just of organisational and professional life, but of capi-
talism itself. A decade ago, Sara Ahmed examined the striking futility
of organisational diversity initiatives—from diversity committees, work-
shops and outreach programmes to ‘participatory’ or ‘inclusive’ policies
and agendas. Ahmed observed that these gestures are simply stand-ins for
‘doing diversity’ that fail to produce structural change. In her book On
Being Included , Ahmed argues that institutional commitments to diver-
sity may be considered “non-performatives” because they “do not bring
into effect that which they name” (2012: 119).
In practical terms, Ahmed’s description of ‘non-performatives’ suggests
that diversity initiatives in UK PR are little more than ‘PR for PR’. If
so, the failure to diversify the PR sector brings its professional associ-
ations into sharp relief, since these associations have either instigated
or sponsored many of UK PR’s diversity working groups, diversity
surveys, reports and mentoring schemes (see Table 5.1). One recent trend
does give hope. Several new UK PR initiatives have been launched by
Black and Brown PR practitioners from organisations and networks such
as BAME 2020, BME PR Pros and the UK Black Communications
Network. All aim to provide greater equity and voice to marginalised
groups with whom they identify. These latter initiatives advance an
ethos of collective organising from the ground-up, unlike the sense of
‘PR for PR’ characterised by top-down diversity schemes. Yet diversity
initiatives are rarely designed to dismantle an industry’s structural foun-
dations, which some argue are firmly rooted in racial capitalism (e.g.
Mayorga-Gallo, 2019; Nwonka & Malik, 2018; Saha & van Lente,
2022).
114 C. Bourne
The notion of racial capitalism was first developed as an analyt-

ical framework by Cedric Robinson in his groundbreaking work Black
Marxism in 1983. Robinson argued that racism helps capitalism expand
while capitalism keeps racial hierarchies in place (Saha & von Lente,
2022). Writing more recently, Gargi Bhattacharya (2020) identifies
racism as a driver of key moments of capitalist development, incor-
porating capitalism’s coercion of people to participate in economic
arrangements that consign them to the social margins. For Bhattacharya,
racial capitalism includes the process of getting some form of social or
economic benefit from someone else’s racial identity. In the West, this
usually, though not always, involves white people benefiting from non-
white racial identity, so that white populations are more likely to have the
power and resources to use another person’s identity to benefit themselves
(Illing, 2019). Platform capitalism, which has emerged to organise the
contemporary digital economy (see Chapter 1), is embedded in racialised
structures, both old and new (see Benjamin, 2019; McMillan Cottom,
2020; Noble, 2018). This is fundamental to the chapter’s discussion since
platform capitalism is the central force transforming the PR profession
in the digital age.
Saha and van Lente (2022: 218) contend that diversity initiatives
represent a highly-rationalised form of racial violence in Western organ-
isational settings, commodifying race “for the benefit of the dominant
culture”. Saha and van Lente (in turn drawing on Ahmed [2012], Malik
[2013], and Nwonka [2020]) summarise three ways that ‘diversity’ acts
as a form of racial governance. First, diversity discourses deflect charges
of structural racism. For UK PR, an avalanche of diversity initiatives
achieves this precise objective. Second, diversity discourses reproduce
whiteness in the ‘right way’ so that in order to be included, racialised PR
professionals need to perform their racial identities in ways that conform
to white gatekeepers’ worldview. Third, according to Saha and van Lente,
diversity commodifies race by converting racial identities into a form of
capital, adding a brand or reputational value to an organisation or profes-
sional association, often in reductive ways. All this suggests that diversity
initiatives are a vital part of the UK PR profession’s boundary-work,
encompassing racial capitalism in different forms.
5 Be Included 115
The diversity-as-racial-capitalism typologies outlined by Saha and van

Lente (2022) align with the three forms of discursive boundary-work
featured in this book. The alignment between these typologies should
not be surprising, since entrepreneurial professions like PR are necessarily
shaped by capitalist forces too. I argue in this chapter that diversity in
PR is, at its foundation, a protectionist discourse. The brief history of PR’s
diversity work has been to maintain the profession’s status quo in the face
of public criticism, yet diversity discourses are the very means through
which UK PR’s very noticeable racial hierarchies are kept in place
(Saha & van Lente, 2022). At the same time, diversity work simultane-
ously creates other forms of professional boundary-work that characterise
racial capitalism. To this end, diversity is also an expansionary discourse
helping PR interests to expand into new regions, especially those inhab-
ited by Black and Brown majorities. Finally, and more recently, diversity
in UK PR has become a hybridising discourse through which the PR
profession moves closer to the creative and cultural industries in order
to compete in platformised content production. I discuss these different
forms of boundary-work in the next sections.
Protecting Professional Habitus of Whiteness

To understand the link between racial capitalism and PR’s professional
boundary-work, it is worth asking why UK PR needs to protect its
inherent whiteness when the profession now communicates with a UK
population that has itself become more diversified. And why should
whiteness continue to matter when the PR profession’s urgent concern
is establishing new legitimacy in the digital age? The answer to this lies
in PR’s distinctive form of professionalisation. UK PR often positions
itself as an occupation where professionalisation is a formal process, occa-
sionally recognised through examination and qualifications, but more
typically through honing technical skills such as writing, and manage-
rial skills such as strategic planning. However, as I argued in Chapter 1,
PR has relatively weak control over its professional knowledge, compared
with traditional professions, while PR remains highly responsive to the
organisations and cultures it serves (see also Bourne, 2015). According to
116 C. Bourne
Yeomans (2019), emotional labour constitutes much of the professional-

isation process because PR must repeatedly legitimise itself to clients in
order for its efforts to be taken seriously, alongside the more established
management disciplines such as marketing or human resources (HR).
To this end, despite the trappings of its professional associations
and efforts to introduce PR qualifications, and amidst new pressures
to accumulate digital skills (as outlined in Chapter 3), PR’s profes-
sional legitimacy is therefore “partly accomplished through intensive
interactions with clients, potential clients, and other stakeholders…all
of which constitute emotional labour transformed into an emotional
competence, a form of expertise” (Yeomans, 2019: 3). Personality and
personal chemistry remain part of what clients buy when they buy PR
services, especially from PR agencies (Edwards, 2014; Yeomans, 2019).
This chemistry spans everything from a PR professional’s ability to exude
a bubbly, creative and happy personality to the use of ‘charm’ and even
flirtation in response to client encounters.
But where does race enter the picture? Surely, Black and Brown prac-
titioners are just as competent (perhaps more so) at the soft skills and
chemistry required in professional relationships? As Edwards (2014)
points out, whiteness is part of public relations’ professional habitus in
the UK, but the way the PR industry is constructed makes this reality at
once evident yet hard to call out. PR’s professional foundation of indeter-
minate soft skills enables people management to take place in sequestered
spaces and in opaque ways. These include systems of white privilege
that enable powerful executives and clients to bypass PR recruitment
processes so as to place friends and family in sought-after roles (Boulton,
2015). Such hiring practices are never properly tracked or quantified and
are largely invisible to outsiders thus protecting whiteness as part of PR’s
professional habitus.
In addition to the cultural capital, chemistry and emotional labour
that prop up the whiteness of PR’s professional habitus, there is also the
matter of liminality required in PR work. Collectively, PR’s professional
identity exists in perpetually liminal spaces “of codes and metaphors”
(Brown, 2015: 162) where PR struggles to differentiate itself from adja-
cent professions such as advertising, marketing or sales (as detailed in
Chapters 1 through 3). Furthermore, Reed and Thomas (2021) contend
5 Be Included 117
that PR has an increasing need to exercise ‘liminality competence’ in

which practitioners must reinvent themselves constantly. The liminal
PR professional must, for instance, constantly mirror clients’ affect and
interests in meetings, altering themselves in chameleonic fashion for
the different relationships that must be forged. While many Black and
Brown PR practitioners regularly exercise a form of liminality when
they ‘code-switch2 ’ to mirror white colleagues, the truly liminal UK
PR professional is white and predominantly middle class, because these
practitioners have less distance to travel to reinvent themselves, and to
endlessly shapeshift into everyman/woman as they go about their daily
work. Black and Brown professionals in a white-majority workplace lack
the capacity to be ‘everyman’, so their liminal potential is reduced. Practi-
tioners of colour are, as Puwar (2004) argues, space invaders, occupying
spaces they are not expected to be in, even though their organisations’
latest diversity initiatives may suggest otherwise.
Diversity: Driving Global Expansion

Globalisation has played a significant role in pushing diversity further up
PR’s agenda. To be globally competitive, multinational organisations are
expected to reflect the diversity of every new region they enter in order to
maximise relationships with every stakeholder. The expansion of global
PR firms as well as multinationals’ corporate communications functions
is, therefore, linked with an intensification of diversity discourses in PR.
Senior managers in global PR firms and cross-national PR departments
are increasingly ‘global nomads’ who move across national boundaries
“translating between differences” (Ahmed, 2012: 77). Where global
vision is imperative, where intercultural communications, languages,
corporate diplomacy and management of international teams are critical,
global nomads seem better equipped (Ahmed, 2012). Yet the ultimate
purpose of global diversity under racial capitalism is, quite simply, to
add new consumers, followers and markets, and convert these to profits.
2 Code-switching involves purposefully modifying one’s behaviour in interactions in alien

settings in order to accommodate different cultural norms for appropriate behaviour.
118 C. Bourne
For PR firms and departments, diversity becomes a technology for global

elites and a set of skills designed to extend PR’s global reach (Ahmed,
2012).
If organisations struggle to achieve diversity at home, then global
diversity initiatives are not trouble-free either, but there are shortcuts
to accumulating racial capital. Citing Homi Bhabha (2004), Ahmed
argues that multinationals can affirm their ‘commitment to diversity’ by
associating diversity with elites: these may be highly-educated economic
migrants and/or highly-mobile transnationals. This can be seen, for
example, in global PR firms where Black and Brown directors are invited
to join the main agency board, with their images then featured on
the agency’s website. Unfortunately, some of these PR appointments
followed admonishments from agency clients wanting greater racial
diversity and inclusion on their accounts (Chitkara, 2018). Likewise,
publicly-owned companies are occasionally compelled to improve diver-
sity of their senior management (including chief communication officers)
in response to investor demands.
Creative Hybridisation Through Diversity

Diversity as racial capitalism is also woven into the PR profession’s
hybridising discourses. Digital platformisation has increased the demand
for digital skills, audiovisual experience, social media and pop culture
savvy, all geared toward creative content production (Bylykbashi, 2017).
As explored in Chapter 4, a platformised marketplace has increased
PR’s competition at the boundaries with advertising, marketing, creative
media companies, influencers and amateur content creators. Here, diver-
sity mutates into yet another form of racial capitalism as the PR
profession (in common with advertising, creative and cultural industries)
commoditises different bodies to ‘look’ and perform more creatively. In
line with other promotional industries, PR has been known to incorpo-
rate the increased value that Black and Brown bodies may offer where
PR outputs need to be fun, creative and ‘cool’. Where cultural trendi-
ness is required, diversity in PR can become (at least temporarily) good
for business (Griggs, 2017).
5 Be Included 119
There are drawbacks to attempts to hybridise PR’s professional iden-

tity in this way. When Black and Brown practitioners’ racial identity
is celebrated as a source of creativity, they are reduced to dispensable
commodities whose economic justification is precarious (Puwar, 2004;
Zanoni et al., 2017). If the cost of employing practitioners of colour
becomes greater than their economic return, the creative assets these
practitioners bring to an organisation will be sought elsewhere or simply
jettisoned (Puwar, 2004). And, if efforts to become as ‘cool and creative’
as nearby Adland does not come about, PR employers may no longer
see the need to persist in hiring Black or Brown practitioners. PR prac-
titioners of colour can, therefore, oscillate between being hypervisible
when useful, but invisible when not required (Edwards, 2014; Zanoni
et al., 2017). A second drawback has already emerged in the adja-
cent creative and cultural industries where Saha (2020) has found that
racialised minorities are subjected to tighter forms of creative control
than their white counterparts, because they are seen as inherently risky
investments. Practitioners who have less creative autonomy than their
white peers also lack the same ‘freedom to fail’, which adds to their
precarity (Saha, 2020). Regardless of whether PR deploys diversity as
part the profession’s expansionary or hybridising boundary-work, either
route manifests as racial capitalism in which non-white people are used
as economic assets to make money and boost corporate brands (Illing,
2019).
CIPR Webinar and Race in PR Report

Turning now to this chapter’s discursive event, my focus is a webinar
hosted by the CIPR’s Diversity and Inclusion Network in July 2020.
Formerly known as the CIPR’s Diversity Working Group, the network
first met in 2010 to develop a more inclusive culture in public relations.
Its mission is to promote “diversity and inclusion in the public relations
profession, by bringing people together to create networks, initiatives and
thought leadership which support diversity and tackle barriers to inclu-
sion” (CIPR, 2016). The network’s remit is broad, encompassing gender
120 C. Bourne
diversity, ethnicity, sexuality, socio-economic background, disability, reli-

gion/faith and age. On 9 July 2020, the network hosted a webinar
to raise visibility for its Race in PR report, a comprehensive piece of
research, the release of which had been delayed because of the COVID-
19 pandemic. The webinar, entitled ‘From Experience to Action: Creating
Inclusive Cultures in PR’, was facilitated by Avril Lee, chair of the
Diversity and Inclusion Network and a senior executive at a large PR
consultancy. Webinar panellists were Elizabeth Bananuka, communica-
tions consultant and founder of BME PR Pros; Alex Louis, specialist
in structuring public sector communications teams; and Julian Obubo,
Brand Strategy Director at Manifest, a brand communications agency.
The context for the CIPR webinar was multi-layered. The Race
in PR report might normally have been launched at an in-person
event. However, the summer of 2020 was just months into the global
pandemic, and the world was still adjusting to ‘the new normal’. Many
PR practitioners and their clients were working from home per UK
government guidelines. Both the Race in PR report and July 2020
webinar can be seen as promotional opportunities for the CIPR (which
competes with other UK PR professional membership associations).
The webinar was also a platform to promote other PR industry
initiatives including a fundraising campaign for the Taylor Bennett Foun-
dation, and the launch of BME PR Pros’ Blueprint diversity kitemark.
In addition, panel speakers also referred to the very recent murder
of African-American citizen, George Floyd, by police in Minneapolis,
USA in May 2020. A courageous Black teenager had recorded Floyd’s
horrifying lynching on her mobile phone. The resulting footage, shared
around the world, generated intensive media coverage and public debate
in the UK, as well as street protests by Black British activist groups and
the UK branch of Black Lives Matter. Heightened visibility for race rela-
tions led to a corresponding rise in interest in diversity amongst UK
organisations.
The webinar as professional genre had existed for years, but its use
accelerated during the COVID-19 pandemic, as videoconferencing soft-
ware became a primary means of workplace communication. According
to the CIPR (2020b), the July 2020 webinar was its first foray into the
genre, as well as the first CIPR event to be offered free online. Free access
5 Be Included 121
meant greater visibility for the CIPR’s Diversity and Inclusion Network
and its Race in PR report. Since professional association events gener-
ally take place in more restricted spaces, sometimes under the Chatham
House rule,3 the webinar’s freeview format also provides access to the
sorts of conversations that might take place between PR practitioners
behind the scenes. As with other digital formats, webinars can be subject
to technical difficulties such as transmission delays and pixelated video.
Chairing this format also has its challenges. Participants’ contributions
must be moderated remotely, along with questions posted on message
boards or ‘chat’ functions. Timing can also be tricky. The July 2020
webinar was scheduled to last one hour, but the panel discussions took
more time than anticipated, curtailing the level of live audience partic-
ipation during the question and answer section at the end. I did not
‘attend’ the webinar when it was first streamed, but viewed the recorded
event via YouTube one year later. My discourse analytic approach focused
solely on the panellists’ discussion and interaction, and did not include a
visual analysis, nor did it include analysis of audience participation, since
the message board was not available in the recorded version.
Diversity Dividend: PR’s Unwanted Morality Tale
Throughout the CIPR webinar, much of the conversation between the

chair and the three panellists deliberated the value of diversity initiatives
in the context of ongoing racism and exclusion in UK PR. All four partic-
ipants have spoken publicly on diversity in PR and appeared equally at
home with the webinar format as they were in conversation with each
other. For instance, while the one-hour discussion explored very serious
topics, the four participants enjoyed light-hearted moments with each
other, as might have occurred at an in-person event. Half-way through
the discussion, webinar chair, Avril Lee pressed the three panellists to
consider the economic benefits of diversity and inclusion—the so-called
diversity dividend—as seen in Extract 5.1.
3 Where participants are free to use the information received, but neither the identity nor
affiliation of the speaker or other participants may be revealed.
122 C. Bourne
Extract 5.1: July 2020. From Experience to Action. CIPR Webinar
Avril Lee Start: …we often talk about the challenges of diversity
27m:27s and inclusion and we talk about, you know, how
End: do we make the difference and change. But we
27m:47s sometimes forget to talk about the benefits and
the…what I call the diversity dividend. But if we
got this right, actually, it would help our work,
it would help our businesses, it would help the
bottom line. So I didn’t know – other than
doing the right thing – whether you thought
about, you know, how do we sell them what the
benefits are…
Julian Obubo, who is also head of diversity and inclusion at Manifest

PR, was one of the panellists responding to the chair’s question. In his
remarks in Extract 5.2, Obubo offered anecdotal observations about the
reasons for UK PR’s declining diversity numbers.
Julian Start: 31m:13s I don’t think a lot of people in our industry,

Obubo and in the wider world, necessarily believe
Mid: 31m:49s in the value of diversity […]
End: 31m:59s …it’s perfectly possible to have a quote
unquote ‘diverse agency’ but for your life
outside work to not be diverse and to not
value diversity at all.
Obubo pointed out that no matter how racially diverse UK PR becomes,

diversity is something that many white practitioners will only ‘visit’
by day, before retreating to their white lifeworlds. Obubo’s remarks
suggest this sustains PR’s professional habitus of whiteness. Obubo then
addressed the economic argument for diversity head-on in Extract 5.3,
maintaining that a diverse PR culture must add the right kind of value.
5 Be Included 123
Julian Obubo Start: 32m:18s [Diversity] can end up being very functional
End: 32m:41s and, you know, just about quotas and
about putting people in the right positions.
But, but not actually allowing them to
thrive allowing them to bring their whole
selves. So, if you have a visually diverse
culture but then you’re pumping out work
that only maintains the societal status quo
then nothing is gained…
In Extract 5.3, Obubo underscored a structural problem identified at

the start of this chapter, which is that PR is necessarily shaped by capi-
talist forces too. PR campaigns are often deployed to accelerate capitalist
production, often at the expense of social equalities. For some this is an
accepted truism. However, in Extract 5.4, Obubo went on to point out
that any economic arguments for ‘the diversity dividend’ are actually less
likely to build traction in PR when markets are buoyant and business is
good.
Extract 5.4. July 2020. From Experience to Action. CIPR Webinar
Julian Obubo Start: 36m:08s I think when a lot of agencies look at, um,
End: 36m:39s the discussion around a diversity dividend,
they say to themselves ‘Well, we’ve been
successful for the last twenty years
without being diverse.’ Um and so they,
they cannot also see the bottom-line
argument. Because they’re just like ‘Well,
we’re doing well enough. We’re projected
to do better and we have an all-white
staff. So really, I don’t really see why I
should bring anyone in who’s not white
because that might also, you know, disrupt
some of the better cultures’.
124 C. Bourne
Obubo suggests, in Extract 5.4, that PR’s ‘diversity dividend’ is a

morality tale that many senior professionals would rather not hear. For
in-house PR functions, diversity and inclusion are reportedly easier to do
in the context of a company that is growing (Bajawa & Woodall, 2006).
PR agencies may take a narrower view; on the agency-side, putting in
the work to improve racial diversity can seem more worthwhile specif-
ically when entering new regions or markets where whiteness carries
less social capital. But in familiar white-majority markets where there
is room for growth, and the demand for PR services is strong, white
agency managers may see no need to ‘do the work’ of diversity, since it
might disrupt a professional white habitus carefully tended over decades.
In other words, Extract 5.4 suggests that diversity’s expansionary capabil-
ities (within UK shores) are nowhere near as important or legitimating
as PR’s need to protect the ‘better cultures’ of the profession’s status quo.
Black Bodies, White Spaces: When Black

Professionals Are ‘Disappeared’
Efforts to improve racial diversity in UK public relations faced a hiccup

in 2019 when the CIPR recorded a decline in diversity in its annual
survey (CIPR, 2019, 2020b). Panellist, Alex Louis offered her eye-
witness account of how PR diversity can decline rapidly, especially during
a crisis like the COVID-19 pandemic. Many Black and Brown workers
in the UK are concentrated in the public sector. In Extract 5.5, Alex
Louis draws on her extensive public sector experience to explain just how
easily PR spaces can revert to whiteness during organisational restruc-
tures, particularly where practitioners of colour are pigeon-holed in
diversity roles considered peripheral to organisational performance.
5 Be Included 125
Alex Start 22m: 58s I can give you one very quick example of a
Louis Mid: 23m:53s merger that I worked on between two
organisations…in one organisation there
were three black comms people including
the…the head of the team… And after the
reorganisation there were no, no black
people. And at several points in that process,
I questioned the process, because I knew
where it was heading. And I said, you know,
shouldn’t we take account…? And they
said…I actually remember this really
well…that um it was their responsibility to
be completely fair. And if they were being
completely fair this was going to
happen…these three people would lose their
jobs. And if they didn’t do that, then they
would be discriminating against the
other…the other people in the…in the pool.
Mid: 24m:00s What I was saying to them was you’re about
End: 24m: 19s to lose something really important…And you
can’t lose it by accident. It can’t just slip
away… that’s unacceptable. But yet it wasn’t
unacceptable and that’s exactly what
happened
The practice of reducing the headcount of Black and Brown workers

during restructuring is not unique to the PR profession (see Bajawa &
Woodall, 2006; Greene & Kirton, 2011; Kalev, 2014). Employee rela-
tions research has found that women and minorities often occupy “the
least valued, least stable positions, with little or no authority” across
support functions such as HR, community outreach and, of course, PR
(Kalev, 2014). Greene and Kirton (2011) further highlight the role of
line managers as a central conduit for deciding when business needs and
diversity management coincide. While senior management may demon-
strate commitment to diversity principles, line managers may not mirror
this commitment since they are often handed unclear performance objec-
tives for diversity while facing conflicting management priorities (Kalev,
2014). Alex Louis’ first-hand observations reinforce prior research into
UK organisations and demonstrate precisely how Black and Brown
PR practitioners can be decanted from white spaces once their ‘utility’
126 C. Bourne
comes to an end. Alex Louis’ comments further demonstrate that diver-

sity discourses are no match for more concrete, authoritative forms of
organisational power.
White Ignorance: Communicators Refuse

to ‘Boundary Span’
The tension between diversity and downsizing described by Alex Louis

reflects organisational norms across the UK. However, everyday igno-
rance by white PR colleagues can be more disillusioning. In Extract 5.6,
excerpted from an earlier portion of the webinar, Alex Louis recounted
a disturbing experience she had as a consultant interacting with a public
sector PR practitioner in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder in the
USA.
Alex Louis Start: 12m:04s So I spoke to somebody, and I mentioned

George Floyd because… the organisation has
instituted a review into racism… And she said
‘Who’s George Floyd?’ […] And I said ‘You
don’t know who George Floyd is? And she
said, ‘No, who is he? So I said, ‘But you work
in a local authority in a part of London with
a, with a, you know, really diverse
population. You know, you work as a
communicator and you don’t know who this
is?’
Mid: 12m:53s Now we had a conversation. I can’t say it was
End: 13m:11s an entirely comfortable conversation. But at
the end of it, actually, you know she said
‘Well, you know. I really need to make sure I
pay attention to all this stuff. – I just don’t
see how it’s relevant.’ So she’d seen stuff on
radio, TV and tuned out!
Alex Louis’ frustration at the communicator’s wilful ignorance stems

from a professional expectation that PR practitioners will act as boundary
spanners who gather, select and relay information from external publics
and convey this to decision-makers (White & Dozier, 1992). There
5 Be Included 127
are even greater expectations on public sector workers to perform

the boundary spanner role (van Meerkerk & Edelenbos, 2021). One way
of reading the communicator’s lack of awareness (as exhibited in Extract
5.6) is to recognise that PR boundary-spanning is a complex range of
skillsets ranging from information collection and knowledge exchange
to relational skills—including empathy and emotional labour—required
to negotiate, mediate and facilitate cooperation (Meerkerk & Edelenbos,
2021). However, another perspective would position the communicator’s
unsatisfactory response as white ignorance; a form of “non-knowing, that
is not contingent, but in which race—white racism and/or white racial
domination and their ramifications—plays a crucial causal role” (Mills,
2007: 20). White ignorance4 is distinguished from general patterns
of ignorance since it incorporates the rather destructive ‘colour-blind’
ideology, which today plays such an important role in maintaining white
hegemony (Mills, 2007: 28 citing Doane, 2003: 13–14). While this
particular form of ignorance is not uniform across white populations,
for Mills, white ignorance has been able to flourish for so long “because
a white epistemology of ignorance has safeguarded it against the dangers
of an illuminating blackness or redness, protecting those who for ‘racial’
reasons have needed not to know”.
Enforced Silences: Don’t Talk About Racism
If white ignorance is a passive form of conduct, the webinar panellists

also referred to more active behaviours where PR colleagues and clients
enforced workplace silences around race and racism, with material conse-
quences for Black and Brown practitioners. For instance, in Extract 5.7,
Elizabeth Bananuka, founder of BME PR Pros, identified contrasting
responses to her social media posts about ‘diversity’ versus ‘racism’.
4According to Mills (2007), white ignorance also acknowledges the existence of similar types
of privileged, group-based ignorance such as male ignorance.
128 C. Bourne
Elizabeth Start: 5m:52s …what I think is really also interesting

Bananuka is that whenever—whenever– I talk
End: 6m:21s about diversity, it’s interesting how
people respond on my LinkedIn
account or, you know, to posts I do.
Because it’s dramatically less when I
mention racism. People do not like
that word apparently. And it always
leads to me getting a lot of
unfollows…what I think is interesting
is that when I initially suggest that
maybe, just maybe, there might be
something toxic going on again. I lost
a whole load of followers…
Elizabeth Bananuka’s reference to lost social media followers in Extract

5.7 is not inconsequential. Her responsibilities include BME PR Pros
which, like most not-for-profits, relies on social media to garner support
for its programmes and events. Bananuka’s social media experience is
an example of enforced silences in social media spaces and reflects the
power of the word ‘diversity’ to neuter race and racism. It is why the
CIPR Diversity and Inclusion Network found it “bold and important
and necessary” to call its report Race in PR (Julian Obubo, 16m: 29s).
The report itself highlighted several examples of enforced silence in UK
PR. In Extract 5.8, Julian Obubo referred to one instance published in
the report in which a Black PR practitioner faced racism on two fronts
when her employer refused to stand up to a client who had slighted the
practitioner’s work.
5 Be Included 129
Julian Start: 15m: 27s There was a particular story [in the Race in
Obubo PR report] about a black woman who, um,
was on an account and – she was in an
agency – and, um, the client was being
racist essentially and uh doubted her work
and second-guessing her. And her, her
managers in her agency reviewed her
work and said ‘This work is good. This
work is quality.’ So there’s no, there’s no
reason but racism on the client’s part.
Mid: 15m:57s Now what did those managers do? They
End: 16m: 15s essentially said ‘We are going to take you
off the account and we’re going to go to
your meetings, and you know we’re going
to essentially maintain the status quo’.
Instead of actually talking to that client
and say ‘You’re racist’, or resigning the
account, they essentially side-lined her”.
As relayed in Extract 5.8, the Black PR practitioner’s employer openly

acknowledged the client’s racism but enforced a silence over this racist
conduct in order to protect the agency’s revenue; an insidious example
of protectionist boundary-work in the PR profession. Julian Obubo’s
recounting of this silencing during the webinar later helped to frame
Elizabeth Bananuka’s introduction to The Blueprint kitemark, a tangible,
measurable programme for breaking down “systemic barriers to equal-
ity” in UK communications industries (Elizabeth Bananuka, 28m: 34s).
Bananuka outlined The Blueprint’s benefits in Extract 5.9, arguing that
UK PR was behind the curve on race, diversity and equalities when
compared with other UK professions, and with PR practice in other
countries.
130 C. Bourne
Elizabeth Start: 34m:15s …there’s a whole body of work

Bananuka around PR consultants you know
deserving to be on the top table,
you know, with other directors
across a business (when we talk
about specifically in-house roles).
Well, the difference is a lot of those
directors…that you might find on a
boardroom table probably already
know…more than us about
diversity. They’ve already ‘got it’.
Mid: 35m:05s I know…a very big agency who lost
End: 35m: 26s an account. And one of the things,
the feedback they got from the guy
in New York was that ‘Well, you
didn’t get the account, but you
know, not because of [the
work]…we were really shocked that
you have a team of twelve and not
a single person wasn’t white.’ And
what was interesting – the agency
boss said to me – they were really
alarmed that a white guy from New
York said this. Because his
assumption had been that ‘Oh, it’s
only ethnic minorities that care
about diversity.’
Following Extract 5.9, Elizabeth Bananuka then positioned The

Blueprint kitemark as a way to end enforced silences on race rela-
tions in UK PR by requiring organisational commitment to publish
diversity data annually, and by encouraging PR practitioners to ‘whistle-
blow’ on organisations that were not fulfilling diversity commitments
(see The Blueprint, 2022). To this end, The Blueprint is offered as a
formal means of professional boundary-work for UK PR agencies and
client-organisations that choose to dismantle race-related barriers in the
communications industries.
5 Be Included 131
Conclusion: Digital Platforms and Racial

Capitalism
This chapter has examined how diversity programmes play a long-
standing role in PR’s professional boundary-work, enabling Black and
Brown practitioners to cross into the UK PR profession’s white spaces
through diversity initiatives. In this concluding section, I examine PR’s
diversity discourses in the context of the book’s overall concern with
digital transformation in the PR profession. I argued that diversity
management in UK public relations spans the three main discursive
forms of professional boundary-work. Diversity as an expansionary
discourse has undoubtedly helped to globalise the PR industry. Diver-
sity has served as a technology for global elites, enabling global PR
firms to expand into new regions along with the multinationals they
serve. However, as Daniels (2013) argues, racism is also global in the
digital age—the digital environment is as riven with racialised stereo-
types and inequalities as any offline context (Couldry & Hepp, 2016;
Noble, 2018). Critical research on digital platforms now offers plentiful
evidence of the conjuncture of racial capitalism with platform capitalism
(McMillan Cottom, 2020).
In UK PR, racial capitalism meets platform capitalism in a number of
ways. At recruitment stage, more companies now use ‘talent analytics’ to
interview PR candidates, subjecting them to facial and voice analysis and
other screening mechanisms (Saputra et al., 2022). Many of these digital
tools were designed with bias ‘baked in’ (O’Neil, 2017), sifting out candi-
dates who do not meet the algorithmic benchmark for the PR ‘everyman’.
Once employed, practitioners of colour can also find the digital spaces of
PR work are just as exclusionary as in-person encounters. For instance,
more PR practitioners are required to establish social media presence.
Social media spaces are already more challenging for women who make
up the majority of UK PR, but Black and Brown practitioners are espe-
cially vulnerable to racist trolling of their social media accounts (see more
on PR and social media in Chapter 6).
Safiyah Noble (2018: 169) suggests it is no “coincidence that when
women and people of color are finally given the opportunity to partic-
ipate in limited spheres of decision making in society, computers are
132 C. Bourne
simultaneously celebrated as a more optimal choice for making social

decisions”. Noble’s statement indicates that PR’s racial problem could not
only persist, but worsen, in the digital age because Silicon Valley’s high-
tech industries have their own race problem. As Noble (2018) points
out, too few women and minorities have emerged in Silicon Valley to
reframe race and inequities. Black and Brown people are underemployed
at all Big Tech companies including Google and Facebook, particularly in
programming roles. Noble (2018: 108) argues that “by rendering people
of color as non-technical, the domain of technology ‘belongs’ to Whites”
thus reinforcing problematic conceptions of race and difference.
I have argued that PR’s diversity discourse is partly expansionary,
incorporating Black and Brown people as commodities for expansion,
without giving them either voice or legitimacy. However, my greater
concern is the impact of diversity in UK PR as a protectionist discourse
in the digital age. The wider silence that established racist structures
in the PR industry in the first place reflects habits of power that are
strengthening rather than dissolving under platform capitalism. These
habits of power are “heavily indebted to practices of suppression of
variation and privileging of sameness” (Achino-Loeb, 2006a: 8). The
sameness of PR, the liminal practitioner who can be ‘everyman’ or
‘everywoman’ is the very thing that establishes and confirms the PR prac-
titioner as ‘white’. According to Achino-Loeb, the white habitus of the
liminal PR practitioner is not a condition but an activity “which ulti-
mately depends on silence for its successful realisation” (2006b: 35).
Correspondingly, PR’s professional discourses are heavily shaped by a
deep, enforced silence, so that the profession cannot acknowledge out
loud that the real basis for professional identity in UK PR is white-
ness (Achino-Loeb, 2006b; Edwards, 2015). Digital platformisation has
introduced new layers of opacity into PR practitioners’ professional lives.
The traditional secrecy orchestrated by governments and corporations
are expanded in the digital age, because platform capitalism “is about
the scale of secrecy, the value of secrecy, and the logic of obfuscation”
(McMillan Cottom, 2020: 443). Ultimately, the mass hype about diver-
sity in UK public relations with attendant survey findings, blogs and
5 Be Included 133
columns continually shared and re-shared on social media help to protect

the PR profession from visible or radical change that might threaten PR’s
licence to continue as normal.
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6
Be Social
PR in an Era of Hypervisibility
This chapter engages with yet another critical moment in public rela-
tions’ discourses, this time reaching back into recent history and the
aftermath of the 2008 global financial crisis, an important conjuncture
for the global economy and for digital platformisation. The chapter’s
focus is the interprofessional boundary between public relations and
journalism. The boundary between these two professions has always been
fraught, but the decade of the 2000s placed distinct pressures on both
fields due to the rise of social media platforms. Journalism and PR have
always been heavily shaped and influenced by prevailing media forms—
the rise of social media wreaked havoc on both professions. Journalism’s
professional legitimacy was under threat from the rise of alternative
information sources on social media. Meanwhile, the rapid growth of
social media was redrawing the organisational borderlands PR is required
to police. The rise of social media in the 2000s represents a critical

Switzerland AG 2022
138 C. Bourne
moment in the evolution of contemporary PR as organisations increas-

ingly found their interactions on social media could be filled with both
opportunity and monstrosity.
The rise of social media is also a defining moment in PR discourses
because social media introduced an era of hypervisibility for many
PR professionals, and the accompanying phenomenon of trolling and
public shaming online (Ronson, 2015). Those most vulnerable to the
monstrous side of social media include women and marginalised groups.
Yet there have been some notable examples of public trolling involving
PR professionals in elite positions, as happened to former White House
press secretary, Sean Spicer, in 2017. This chapter examines what
happens when everyday media relations work between PR and jour-
nalism moves from behind the scenes to the front stage of public life.
The chapter’s discursive event is situated in global financial markets, one
of the most elite spaces of PR work. The field-level boundary-work in
this chapter is multi-layered involving financial journalists on the one
hand and in-house financial PR counsel on the other.
PR in Financial Markets
Financial markets wield vast influence across the globe and are amongst
the most lucrative places to work in public relations. Specialist PR profes-
sionals build compelling narratives about financial markets as places
of hidden opportunities, promoting an array of financial products and
expertise. In highly-competitive financial markets, PR professionals must
work hard to ‘cut through the noise’ of proliferating corporate messages.
This promotional ‘noise’ is especially high-pitched in international finan-
cial centres, e.g. New York, London and Hong Kong, where finance is
heavily mediated via cable television, news agencies, print news, trade
magazines, internet and social media. Despite the size of global financial
markets, financial PR1 is one of the profession’s most exclusive spaces.
1 In this chapter, the term ‘financial PR professional’ encompasses all practitioners working
in financial services, as well as on behalf of financial institutions, and private and public
organisations accessing financial markets.
6 Be Social 139
This is due to the occupational closure around financial PR, described

by some as “more of a secretive club” (Butcher, 2016). The financial PR
specialism is not well publicised to jobseekers, while specialist knowl-
edge is required to get ahead, e.g. knowing complex financial products,
markets and regulations. Recruitment and hiring can be a black-boxed
process, for instance, roles might be advertised with specialist financial
services recruiters instead of PR recruiters. Corporate communications
managers often canvas their own social networks for new hires, or poach
career-changers from accountancy, banking, corporate law and manage-
ment consultancy (Fone, 2015). There is also a long-standing practice
of PR employers tempting financial journalists to ‘cross over to the dark
side’ to work in financial PR.
Notwithstanding the financial world’s club-like nature, financial PR
practitioners encounter similar challenges faced by other PR profes-
sionals. Agency-based financial PR workers must juggle the demands of
various clients—whether companies building reputations with investors,
or financial and professional services firms serving consumers or B2B
clients. In-house financial PR professionals might also serve a variety of
stakeholders, but unlike agency counterparts, in-house professionals are
expected to have “a sense of total single-minded involvement” with their
organisation (Beard, 2001: 128). Incorporated with this single-minded
involvement is the expectation that in-house financial PR professionals
not only act as boundary spanners (White & Dozier, 1992), they will
also guard the organisation from the outside world and exert control over
organisational discourses (Demetrious, 2015).
Financial markets have their own hierarchies. In 2009, global invest-
ment banks were at the top of that hierarchy and exerted substantial
control over their communications environment; none more so than
Goldman Sachs. One of the world’s largest investment banks, Goldman
Sachs is headquartered in New York, the spiritual home of modern
investment banking. New York and neighbouring New Jersey are also
home to world-famous financial media, including Bloomberg, CNBC,
Crain’s Business, Dow Jones, Forbes, Fortune, The Street and The Wall
Street Journal; as well as a thriving community of online financial news
140 C. Bourne
titles. The professional discourses to be examined surround financial PR

efforts to manage Goldman Sachs’ reputation in the aftermath of the
2008 global financial crisis. At that time, Goldman Sachs had an elite
global corporate communications team, recruited through all the means
discussed earlier and headed by a charismatic and well-known veteran
financial PR expert.
Monstrous Discourses: When PR Becomes

the News
The 2008 financial crisis plunged Goldman Sachs’ corporate communi-
cations team into crisis management mode. A series of PR fiascos plagued
the investment bank in 2009, beginning with the publication of an
article entitled ‘The Great American Bubble Machine’ in Rolling Stone,
a magazine covering music, politics and popular culture—an unusual
place for a financial PR crisis to begin. Written by Matt Taibbi (2009),
Rolling Stone’s award-winning2 contributing editor, the 12-page article
drew on rumour and accusation, backed by little concrete evidence, to
colourfully recount Goldman Sachs’ direct and indirect role in orches-
trating a host of economic problems including the 2008 financial crisis,
and ensuing bailout of the banking system. Taibbi memorably described
Goldman Sachs as a “great vampire squid wrapped around the face of
humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells
like money” (Taibbi, 2009: 52). The term ‘vampire squid’ was highly
evocative; conjuring up the monstrous qualities of the global financial
market and its actors. The article was quickly circulated within the finan-
cial community. Events spiralled once Rolling Stone made Taibbi’s article
available on its website, where it was amplified by the mainstream press
and shared widely on social media. The vampire squid quickly became an
2 While Matt Taibbi has been described as a ‘gonzo journalist’, he won magazine awards for
his political profiles in 2008. His Goldman Sachs article received the Sidney award for socially
conscious journalism.
6 Be Social 141
internet meme that would define Goldman Sachs’ reputation for several
years.3
The bank’s PR team not only failed to diffuse interest in the Rolling
Stone story, the organisational response effectively helped to stoke
unprecedented levels of public interest in Goldman Sachs, even though
the bank was primarily a wholesale market operator at that time, with
no consumer-facing brand. The bank’s robust response temporarily
thrust Goldman Sachs’ communications director into the spotlight via
mainstream and social media. The ensuing events marked an unusual
intersection of financial market and PR discourses, which form the basis
for this chapter’s discourse analysis. While the ‘vampire squid’ embodied
the financial crisis as cultural moment, like all ‘monsters’ produced in
cultural life, the vampire meme can be read in different ways. In this
chapter, I have chosen to ‘read’ the vampire squid as a signifier of profes-
sional anxiety—in this case, the professional anxiety that continually
haunts senior corporate communicators responsible for patrolling the
uncertain boundaries between organisations and the media.
Monsters as Boundary Phenomena

The monster metaphor is frequently employed to represent ‘Otherness’,
to serve as warnings of looming threats, or to define public fears and
uncertainty (Cohen, 1996; McNally, 2011; Uebel, 1996; van der Sluijs,
2005). Financialised capitalism, its global circuits and digitised assets
represent an area of uncertainty that has repeatedly invoked monster
metaphors in news and fiction (McNally, 2011). In this chapter, I invoke
the monster metaphor as boundary phenomenon. According to Cohen
(1996) and Uebel (1996), monsters have always operated at the border-
lands, whether spatial or metaphorical, and monstrous invocations are as
old as millennia. Medieval merchants, for example, used the monster
3 At the time of writing, the term ‘vampire squid’ still appears in news articles and blogs
referencing Goldman Sachs.
142 C. Bourne
metaphor to protect trade borders; their nautical maps depicted sea

serpents at the borders of merchant trade routes to discourage further
exploration and protect trade monopolies (Cohen, 1996). Centuries
later, similar ‘monsters of prohibition’ (Cohen, 1996) remain rife in the
modern world.
For PR, the advent of social media offered a seemingly utopian future
in which practitioners could bypass media and communicate directly
with stakeholders in real time. Financial PR took longer to embrace
social media than other PR specialisms because financial experts, and the
financial media who covered them, were part of an opaque small world
network relying on their own communicative language and rules (Olsen,
2008). Throughout much of the twentieth century, financial PR worked
closely with specialist financial journalists via traditional media chan-
nels, such as newspapers, financial magazines, radio and television. While
working closely with ‘beat’ journalists, financial columnists, presenters
and pundits, financial PR would attempt to control details, data and
images in static spaces (Aula, 2010). Social media gained prominence in
2006, just two years before the global financial crisis. While Facebook
and Twitter were not the first social media, they were transformational
in changing the way audiences assembled, reshaping both PR and jour-
nalism’s modalities and professional discourses (Aula, 2010; Lewis &
Molyneux, 2018; Powell, 2013).
Where traditional media functioned as audience aggregators,
producing programmes for specific target groups that PR sought to
address; social media allowed greater collaboration, transparency and
‘amplified interaction’ between producers and users (Deuze, 2007).
Earlier media and communications scholarship viewed social media
platforms as conduits that gained currency through instant informa-
tion generation and sharing what mattered to users (Cardoso, 2011).
Revisionist scholarship differentiates between platformised sociality and
human sociality. While revisionist scholars maintain the notion of social
‘currency’, they locate the ‘social’ in social media as a site of contesta-
tion compelling digital life to connect via platforms in order to generate
specific forms of value (Couldry & Kallinikos, 2017; Van Dijck, 2013).
The monstrous aspect of social media is that digital sociality generates
value more quickly when users share rumours, tension, ridicule, anger
6 Be Social 143
Fig. 6.1 A Vampire Squid meme created by DonkeyHotey/FlickR
and strife (Wahl-Jorgensen, 2018). Matt Taibbi’s 2009 Rolling Stone

article depicting Goldman Sachs as a ‘vampire squid’ contained no actual
image of the ‘squid’. But once, the story was shared on social media,
images of vampire squids—real and parodied—began to circulate and
become affixed to Goldman Sachs’ name (Fig. 6.1).
Corporate Communicators and Journalists:

Professional Imperatives
McNally (2011) contends that monstrous borders are sites of contesta-
tion. As such, they present a source of professional anxiety for corporate
communicators in boundary-spanning roles. Social media’s reshaping of
organisational boundaries heightened anxiety for in-house PR profes-
sionals whose first professional imperative is to protect the organisation
by controlling what is said—and not said—about it. This professional
imperative is increasingly unattainable in twenty-first century PR, where
social media instantly shares and reconfigures organisational messages
outside of target groups PR seeks to address. Before social media’s rise,
144 C. Bourne
PR professionals were generally expected to exert ‘control’ over organ-

isational discourses from behind the scenes, acting invisibly, leaving
no fingerprints (Davis, 2002). In turn, journalists traditionally negoti-
ated PR content on condition that PR’s involvement remained veiled
(Davis, 2002). Despite this mutual understanding, offstage interactions
between PR and traditional media were often tense since journalists
always want to reveal what PR professionals yearn to conceal. Yet, no
matter how hostile the encounters between organisations and the media,
journalism and PR balanced conflict with cooperation, with PR gener-
ally respecting journalism’s ends if not the means (Clementson, 2019).
Hence, the best corporate communicators maintained courteous dealings
with their press contacts. This professional courtesy incorporated a second
professional imperative that, even while attempting to conceal, the best
corporate communicators would steer journalists away from publishing
false information. Not providing this steer could make a journalist look
foolish in front of his/her editors, audience and peers, and damage PR’s
interprofessional relationship with a journalist irreparably.
Meanwhile, news journalists had their own professional boundaries
to control, as gatekeepers framing news into ‘the first draft of history’
(Lewis, 2012). The advent of social media threatened journalists’ gate-
keeper role and changed media boundaries forever. Editorial bosses
pressured journalists to save news organisations by becoming active
social media users who could steer audiences back to media content
online (Lewis & Molyneaux, 2018). Some journalists embraced social
media as an opportunity to develop a personal brand and interact with
fellow journalists. Unfortunately for PR, social media also amplified
journalism’s ‘pack mentality’ (Lewis & Molyneaux, 2018: 16). PR profes-
sionals had always been the butt of journalists’ jokes behind the scenes
but on social media—especially Twitter—journalists openly swapped
stories about flawed PR work. Social media shifted these interprofes-
sional taunts away from water cooler moments and into the public eye.
While the relationship between PR and journalists could be fraught, the
code of conduct governing their interaction was broadly understood. No
such bilateral relationship exists between PR and social media, where a
‘journalist’ can be anyone operating from anywhere (Aula, 2010). Social
6 Be Social 145
media users have no incentive to mask PR professionals’ role in news-

making; and will often distort and amplify an organisation’s measured PR
response to reputational attacks. This threatens the corporate communi-
cator’s third professional imperative—to remain behind the scenes and
never ‘become the story’.
In financial markets, social media has proved immensely popular
with retail investors who eagerly turn to it as a means of interpreting
‘mass amounts of equivocal financial messages’ (Herrmann, 2007: 14).
Social media has therefore helped to redraw the borders of financial
markets. Professional news outlets for the financially ‘savvy’ are now far
outnumbered by myriad social media sites purporting to speak to ‘real
people’. Social media has also redrawn the borders of ‘where’ financial
scandals play out. Once upon a time, only specialist financial media
would have covered a scandal affecting Goldman Sachs. Today, social
media enables professional investors and laypeople to collaborate and
share stories instantly about ‘bad behaviour’ by any financial institution,
amplifying views through microblogs, humour and memes. The need to
defend organisations from scandal has always drawn PR professionals out
to monstrous borderlands. Social media now quickens the pace at which
a monstrous reputational issue can arise and escalate. PR’s boundary-
spanning role has always been a source of professional anxiety, social
media intensifies this anxiety, no more so than when PR itself becomes
embroiled in the story.
Monstrous Discourses: Goldman Sachs’ PR

Goldman Sachs’ history spans more than a century. For much of its
existence, the investment bank protected its borders effectively through
operational secrecy. One protective mechanism was its partnership struc-
ture. While the bank is now a public company, Goldman Sachs’ partners
remain one of Wall Street’s most prestigious, lucrative cliques (Turner &
Agnew, 2012). Another protective mechanism was Goldman Sachs’ posi-
tion in wholesale finance. Much of what the bank ‘manufactured’, e.g.
debt instruments were sold directly to other firms rather than to the
general public. The lack of a consumer brand shielded Goldman Sachs
146 C. Bourne
from public scrutiny and shaped its traditionally reactive approach to

PR, long-governed by a single ‘omerta’—“Stay away from the press”
(Cohan, 2012). The bank’s stock market flotation in 2000 changed
Goldman Sachs’ borderlands. Moving from a partnership structure to
public ownership meant the bank now had a wider audience of everyday
shareholders, in addition to its existing audience of employees, clients
and regulators. All four core audiences—but particularly shareholders—
got much of their information about Goldman Sachs from the media.
This pressed the bank to expand its PR function from a reactive ‘no-
comment’ one-man-band to a global corporate communications team,
promoting narratives about Goldman Sachs in ways that would unlock
value for the bank’s various constituencies.
The arrival of veteran financial PR expert, Lucas van Praag, at
Goldman Sachs heralded the bank’s new approach to PR. A grad-
uate of the University of Durham, one of Britain’s oldest universities,
van Praag served in the Merchant Navy, then worked in banking and
manufacturing before joining Brunswick, a renowned financial PR firm
(Abelson, 2010). At Brunswick, van Praag counted Goldman Sachs as
a client. He was later ‘seconded’ to Goldman Sachs’ in-house corpo-
rate communications team in 2000, swapping London for New York.
From Goldman Sachs’ New York headquarters, van Praag oversaw the
creation of a ‘global’ communication function, poaching top PR profes-
sionals and financial journalists to work for the bank’s PR teams in
New York, London and Paris. Van Praag led Goldman Sachs’ commu-
nications through many twenty-first century challenges—notably the
bank’s heightened visibility following its 2000 stock market flotation,
the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, well-publicised internecine
struggles between senior partners, and the departure of prominent CEO,
Hank Paulson in 2006. In recognition, van Praag was promoted to
partner, joining the prestigious clique of highest paid corporate commu-
nicators on Wall Street.
6 Be Social 147
Goldman Sachs in the News

Even after its 2000 stock market flotation, Goldman Sachs’ partners
maintained their distance from the press, periodically granting only
a select few journalists with “a peek behind the Goldman curtain”
(Silverman, 2012). No matter how the financial press clamoured for
access to Goldman Sachs’ senior partners, it was van Praag who generally
fielded questions from the press with trademark lively repartee, as well as
withering rebuttals that reflected the bank’s haughtiness toward outsiders
(Cohan, 2012). In this way, Goldman Sachs maintained a constant, if
strained, relationship with specialist financial media. By contrast, the
bank had no reason to engage with Rolling Stone magazine. This changed
in the summer of 2009 when Rolling Stone’s July 9–23 issue hit the
newsstands, exposing the inner workings of the bank to a wider audi-
ence. The Rolling Stone article’s colourful prose captured the public’s
imagination, tapping into the post-crisis discourse of inequality pitting
‘average America’ against the richest ‘one percent’. Matt Taibbi’s article
wove together conspiracy theory and financial lore to identify “an inti-
mate role” for Goldman Sachs in several “historic bubble catastrophes”
(Taibbi, 2009: 100) in which, purportedly, the bank artificially inflated
the price of oil, agricultural commodities and home mortgages.
Goldman Sachs’ boundary-spanning corporate communications team
was experienced in tackling various metaphorical monsters at the organi-
sation’s borders. Since the 2008 financial crisis, the notoriously press-shy
bank had instructed its PR representatives to defend the bank strenu-
ously against reputational attacks. The Rolling Stone article represented
a new monstrous encounter. A financial blogger scanned the article,
circulating it online before the print edition even hit the newsstands. A
Reuters journalist, who followed the financial blogger, picked up the story
bringing the article into the financial mainstream. ‘The Great American
Bubble Machine’ quickly gained traction in mainstream media. Mean-
while, social media pundits who read the article were quickly able to
convert Taibbi’s vivid symbols, stories and rumours into pop culture
parody, a valued currency on social media platforms.
148 C. Bourne
Journalism vs PR Discourses
In order to understand the trajectory of social media boundary-work
between Goldman Sachs’ communications team and media pundits, I
downloaded 107 publicly-available print and web-based news stories and
opinion pieces mentioning Goldman Sachs in conjunction with ‘PR’ or
‘public relations’ or ‘Lucas van Praag’. All articles were published between
July 2009 and February 2012; and retrieved via LexisNexis (July 2009
marked the point when Matt Taibbi’s Rolling Stone article first appeared,
while February 2012 marked Lucas van Praag’s departure from Goldman
Sachs). My focus was on PR and journalism, the two professions brought
into tension with each other during the ‘vampire squid’ debacle, and
evidence of protectionist, expansionary or hybridising boundary-work
exhibited by either profession.
The professional genre featured in this chapter is mediated discourse,
encompassing news stories and opinion pieces. Of the former cate-
gory, most news stories in the data set carried a byline so it was apparent
which journalist(s) contributed to a news story. However, a journalist’s
byline is not the same as a first-person voice, since news stories can have
multiple contributors, and generally represent a certain editorial slant
(Scollon, 1998). The subjects of a news story—the ‘newsmakers’ them-
selves—are also discursive participants; although a newsmaker’s voice is
carefully controlled by the journalist, who directs the audience in how
to respond (Scollon, 1998). The second category of mediated discourse
featured in this chapter is the opinion piece, part of a long-standing trend
of ‘views as news’. In opinion pieces, the author is always known to the
audience and often declares an overt bias to the material from the outset.
That very bias determines the author’s popularity with his/her readers.
The opinion piece or ‘views as news’ has become increasingly important
in propping up the traditional media business model, as well as forming
a key component of social media writing, particularly by bloggers and
influencers.
6 Be Social 149
In the 107 articles reviewed, while Goldman Sachs was always the
subject of the story, the bank itself was given very limited voice by
the journalist-authors. It was sometimes possible to sense the voice
of Goldman Sachs behind the scenes, for example, when a journalist
referred to ‘sources close to the bank’. The following discourse anal-
ysis spans four years of mediated discourse. Findings are presented
in three discrete periods arising from discursive events in mid-2009,
early 2010 and finally, early 2012. The analysis focuses on interprofes-
sional boundary-work at the borders between financial PR and financial
journalism, following the publication of the Rolling Stone article.
Financial Journalists Protect Their Expert ‘Borders’

from Alt Media
Protectionist discourses are often sequestered from public view, but occa-
sionally they erupt into the open as happened after Rolling Stone’s July
2009 edition appeared. It was the height of New York summer when
many financial market professionals were on vacation. Had it not been
for a well-known financial blogger, the article might never have spread
widely in Wall Street circles. ZeroHedge, a financial blogger and news
aggregator, scanned the 12-page Rolling Stone piece and circulated it
on social media. At the time, ZeroHedge was a mere start-up, founded
by a former hedge fund analyst (Martin, 2016). The founder’s prox-
imity and access to financial market stories and rumours (the currency
of social media) soon helped ZeroHedge win popularity in the finan-
cial community and beyond.4 During the first month after publication,
Matt Taibbi’s article seemed only to pose a minor irritation for Goldman
Sachs’ PR team; the social media ‘monster’ was yet to pose a particular
threat. Instead, my analysis revealed a protectionist discourse amongst
the small community of Wall Street financial journalists. Matt Taibbi’s
Rolling Stone article had circulated widely amongst the mainstream finan-
cial press; their mediated response suggests Matt Taibbi and Rolling Stone
4The main ZeroHedge Twitter account had 1.3 million followers in May 2022. There is no
way to confirm how many of ZeroHedge’s 2009 followers were human vs bots, although, since
bots are also used in investment trades the distinction may not matter.
150 C. Bourne
magazine posed a threat to the small world of financial journalism and

its specialist expertise.
Extract 6.1 sets out excerpts from five news articles and opinion pieces
selected from the first month after the Rolling Stone article appeared. The
five featured journalists were all experienced financial correspondents at
the time, namely, Jessica Pressler, co-editor of New York magazine’s ‘Daily
Intel’ blog; Rob Cox, co-founder of Breakingviews financial commentary
site; Megan McArdle, columnist at The Atlantic , Heidi Moore, busi-
ness writer at The Slate, and Charles Gasparino, columnist for The Daily
Beast . All five were part of an ‘aristocratic small world network’ of New
York-based financial journalists. The similar tenor of commentary in
Extract 6.1 illustrates the groupthink associated with pack journalism,
where a group of journalists cover a dedicated news beat for some time
(Brown, 2018). It can be assumed that all five journalists had some
knowledge of Goldman Sachs’ product range and its personalities, as well
as some rapport with the bank’s in-house PR team. In their dealings with
Goldmans Sachs and other investment banks, financial journalists would
regularly have encountered stonewalling and ‘no comment’ responses to
press enquiries. Seasoned financial journalists therefore built up their
expert knowledge and Wall Street press contacts wherever they could,
and ‘paid their dues’, as suggested in the excerpts in Extract 6.1.
Extract 6.1: July/August 2009: Financial Journalists defend

financial borders from alt media
1 July 2009 ‘”Dickweeds”, “vampire squids” by Jessica The Internet. It’s good for so
New York magazine and “morons”’ Pressler many things! …almost every
single day you can witness
full-grown adults
abandoning the decorum
with which they conduct
themselves in their ‘real’
lives and laying into each
other…[Matt] Taibbi took
100 years of Goldman Sachs
conspiracy theories and
packaged them together for
the reading pleasure of
teenage boys in the current
issue. [The] Winner:
Goldman Sachs. They sound
more amused than
displeased by the story, and
rightly so…
(continued)
6 Be Social
151
(continued)
152
1 July 2009 ‘Sachs, drubs and rock ‘n roll’ by Rob Cox The musician Dr Hook once
Breakingviews financial news noted that there is nothing
blog more thrilling than
appearing on the cover of
the Rolling Stone. Goldman
Sachs begs to differ. …the
glossy [magazine] advertises
C. Bourne
a 12-page manifesto of the

firm’s role in causing various
plagues, from the housing
crisis and oil price spikes to
general famine. –- At the
risk of being branded by the
screed’s author one of the
thousand hacks out there
willing to pimp Goldman’s
viewpoint, the arguments
for the firm’s evildoing
aren’t really new, they’re
porous and come in a
package that diminishes
their credibility.
(continued)
(continued)
10 July 2009, ‘Matt Taibbi Gets His Sarah by Megan …a number of you have
The Atlantic magazine Palin On’ McArdle asked me what I thought of
Matt Taibbi’s Rolling Stone
piece on Goldman Sachs.
What I think, sadly, is that
Matt Taibbi is becoming the
Sarah Palin of journalism. He
seems to deliberately eschew
understanding his subjects,
because only corrupt,
pointy-headed financial
journalists who have been
co-opted to the system do
that. And Matt Taibbi is here
to save you from those
pointy-headed elites. –-
Taibbi is a gifted narrative
journalist… But financial
meltdowns don’t offer
villains, for the simple
reason that no one…group
is powerful enough to take
down a whole system.
(continued)
6 Be Social
153
(continued)
154
29 July 2009 ‘Will Everyone Please Shut Up by Heidi The image of Goldman
The Slate magazine About Goldman Sachs?’ Moore Sachs…as a Borg-like hive
mind that breeds a bald
master-race of capitalists has
picked up speed during the
last month. […] Enough
already. After years of
C. Bourne
full-on Goldman Sachs

conspiracy
theories—implying that the
firm runs the world…the
real question to ask is why
they don’t do better. […] It’s
not that Goldman doesn’t
have its egos…but as a
matter of management, the
firm also has several
safeguards in place to keep
rampant egos from
destroying decision-making.
(continued)
(continued)
2 August 2009 ‘Stop Blaming Goldman Sachs’ by Charles I’m sure Matt Taibbi is a nice
The Daily Beast news website Gasparino guy, and I know he’s a good
writer, but it’s making me ill
to watch his recent Rolling
Stone hit job on Goldman
Sachs gain increasing
credibility. […] That storyline
isn’t just wrong, it’s pretty
naïve. But it’s gaining
credibility following Taibbi’s
Rolling Stone piece, first in
the blogosphere and now
with a growing number
of…mainstream media. It’s
one thing to watch
half-literate bloggers in
desperate need of attention
jump on ‘the Goldman is the
root of all evil story’; it’s
quite another to
see…experienced editors do
it…
6 Be Social
155
156 C. Bourne
The five journalists featured in Extract 6.1 were just a selection of

specialist financial writers who initially appeared to close ranks around
Goldman Sachs. Adopting the lens of discursive boundary-work, the
journalists’ comments can be seen not so much as a defence of Goldman
Sachs, but rather a defence of financial journalism’s turf in the face of a
burgeoning ‘alt’ or alternative media. In 2009, the ‘alt media’ included
local newspapers and magazines, but moreso, the vast range of social
media commentators who were motivated to investigate the causes of the
2008 financial crisis; encroaching on financial news territory to dissect an
opaque financial world and name its ‘villains’ (Longobardi, 2008). The
journalists featured in Extract 6.1 did not consider Goldman Sachs to
be immune from media criticism but rather felt that financial journal-
ists were best qualified to mount such criticism. Rolling Stone, as part of
the alt media, was deemed an outsider, clumsily stomping over finan-
cial journalists’ professional turf. But the journalists featured in Extract
6.1 are not addressing the alt media. Scollon (1998) contends that
journalists’ primary social interactive purpose is to write for other jour-
nalists, and to position themselves “in relationship to others in their own
community of practice” (1998: 249). The reading of the discursive data
supports Scollon’s contention that the five financial journalists featured
in Extract 6.1 were actually speaking to their own small world network
of Wall Street’s financial community, while engaging in protectionist
boundary-work to defend their professional specialism.
Communication Chiefs Defend PR’s Professional

Borders
Rolling Stone magazine did not publish an online version of Matt Taibbi’s
article until mid-July, after which the 12-page article circulated widely
outside of the financial community, arousing the interest of policy-
makers and the general media. Social media’s blogosphere had shared
the ‘vampire squid’ article and other financial conspiracy theories widely,
helping the banking sector to become the most-disliked industry in the
6 Be Social 157
USA. As one journalist put it, “the spirit of Taibbi’s piece, if not its
details” had caught on (Carney, 2009), compressing Goldman Sachs into
the symbolic representative of “Wall Street versus Main Street” (Usher,
2014: 53). In a relatively short time, financial media stopped defending
Goldman Sachs. Editors had recognised that slating Goldman Sachs was
good for business. All media—specialist financial media, mainstream
media and social media alike—found they could boost their audience
figures by publishing content designed to stir up public anger against
Wall Street and Goldman Sachs.
Behind the scenes, Goldman Sachs’ in-house PR team urged senior
management to face the maelstrom by engaging more directly with the
media. The bank’s senior management granted broad access to London’s
Sunday Times in November 2009, including an exclusive interview with
Goldman Sachs’ then CEO, Lloyd Blankfein. This did not end well. At
the end of the interview, Blankfein made an off-the-cuff remark to the
Sunday Times journalist about ‘doing God’s work’. The Sunday Times
ran that quotation as its front page headline and splashed the phrase on
its pre-publication advertising to drum up newspaper sales. The bank’s
executives purportedly blamed van Praag for orchestrating this new PR
fiasco. The financial press smelled blood. Max Abelson, a financial jour-
nalist at The New York Observer , skewered Goldman Sachs’ PR chief in
an irreverent article that propelled the Goldman Sachs partner into the
public eye. The article entitled ‘Goldman’s Rococo PR Prince’, published
in February 2010, depicted van Praag as an arrogant PR mouthpiece who
had directly contributed to Goldman Sachs’ negative press. Abelson’s
Observer article also included a chorus of (mostly) anonymous profes-
sional critiques from other Wall Street communication chiefs. Abelson’s
use of third-party quotations from other PR professionals reveals a
further layer of professional boundary-work in this chapter’s analysis,
represented as four discursive excerpts in Extract 6.2.
158 C. Bourne
Extract 6.2 : Wall Street PR Professionals Attack Goldman Sachs’

Communications
17 February 2010, The New York Observer – ‘Goldman’s Rococo PR Prince’ by
Max Abelson: Excerpts
First PR Communications executive at a [Goldman Sachs] has to
commentator finance firm make its case that it is
not some black-hearted
villain. And when you’ve
got somebody [like van
Praag] who is openly
disdainful toward the
press, making that case
is very difficult…It’s not
as though it’s
ineffectual. It’s positively
causing harm.
Second PR Former communications colleague Look, Lucas is an
commentator amazingly brilliant guy
[but] in the best of
times, he can come off
as arrogant, slightly
pompous, flippant and
condescending.
Third PR Communications executive at a Is it that these guys [at
commentator rival bank Goldman Sachs] just
smoke their own crack,
that their culture is so
insular that they don’t
have someone giving the
perspective that this [PR
strategy] is just
ridiculous?
Fourth PR PR elder statesman, Howard In any crisis, the
commentator Rubenstein spokesperson, or head of
the company, has to
proceed with
modesty…Stick to the
facts, be clear, don’t
belittle, and you will
protect the client.
The excerpts featured in Extract 6.2 were edited quotations from Wall
Street PR experts whose remarks were, of course, intentionally framed
by journalist, Max Abelson and his Observer editors. Abelson’s article
presented the PR professionals’ third-party commentary in a particular
order so as to dramatise his story; the penultimate comment is arguably
the most colourful, while the most sedate quotation is left for last. Yet
even through Abelson’s constructed media frame, we can surmise that
6 Be Social 159
the Wall Street PR professionals featured in the Observer article were

‘policing’ and protecting the borders of PR itself. Crisis communica-
tions are generally the moment for experienced PR advisors to shine. Van
Praag’s PR critics used the Observer article to engage in professional iden-
tity work by narrating Goldman Sachs’ PR as ineffective when contrasted
with their own preferred approach as PR professionals. Abelson’s article
was also widely shared on social media. This would have enabled many
financial PR professionals—both on Wall Street and in other interna-
tional financial centres—to contrast their own (superior) approaches to
crisis communications when compared with Goldman Sachs.
Goldman’s PR Chief Mounts Defence by Proxy
In the months after the Abelson article, attacks on Goldman Sachs’

PR chief moved to social media. On 23 February 2010, anonymous
financial journalists set up a ‘fake Lucas van Praag’ Twitter account.
For nearly a year, the authors lampooned the PR chief with simulated
‘van Praag’ tweets such as “I get the feeling we just made a boatload
of money today. Is this going to be a problem?” Or, “Everyone thinks
I’m Charlotte, but I’m really Samantha5 ” Or, “Media call at 9. Analyst
call at 11am. Ritual flogging from Lloyd6 at noon. Pub crawl at 1”
(Unknown Author, 2010). The fake Twitter account attracted a great
deal of attention in the financial world, and several of the ‘fake’ tweets
were published in media stories. Social media’s monster had raised its
head: PR had become the news. Over the next year, continued interest
in Goldman Sachs’ PR activity was sustained by growing US govern-
ment scrutiny of wholesale financial markets. By this stage, the ‘vampire
squid’ had been cited by US Congress, ‘roasted’ by private equity titans,
and featured on T-shirts and posters (Roose, 2011). In December 2011,
the Occupy Wall Street movement marched on Goldman Sachs’ head-
quarters brandishing ‘papier-mâché replicas’ of vampire squids. Inside the
bank’s inner sanctum, Goldman Sachs severed ties with its PR chief. Van
Praag resigned in the early weeks of 2012, the sixth PR staff member
5 A reference to two of the characters in the HBO television series, ‘Sex and the City’.
6 A reference to Lloyd Blankfein, then Goldman Sachs CEO.
160 C. Bourne
to leave the bank over the space of one year (Rappaport, 2012). Thus
far, van Praag’s voice has been missing from the chapter’s analysis. He
declined opportunities to comment about events on-the-record.7 Yet it
is feasible that a seasoned PR expert might conduct his own image repair
from behind the scenes. Extract 6.3 contains the final set of discursive
excerpts, taken from an opinion piece written by Richard Mahony, a
financial PR expert with a similar career background to Lucas van Praag.
Both had been former bankers, and both had led communications for
the world’s largest investment banks. Because of Mahony’s proximity
to van Praag, his opinion piece excerpted in Extract 6.3 is treated as a
credible proxy for van Praag himself.
Extract 6.3: Goldman’s PR chief mounts professional defence
3 February 2012: Richard Mahony, Mahony Partners Risk Communications

‘Defending Goldman Sachs: The 5 reasons its PR has triumphed under
Lucas van Praag’
Excerpt 1 Lines 1–4 Lucas van Praag, the long-time communications
chief at Goldman Sachs, is stepping down. To
those of us in the PR trade, this news yesterday
was much more significant than Facebook’s IPO
filing and the legion of twentysomething
millionaires it will spawn.
Excerpt 2 Lines 6–11 Van Praag has done a brilliant job of defending
Goldman and handling the outsized egos that
walk its halls. Goldman is smart, arrogant, highly
successful and envied—qualities that make it a
PR challenge, every day. No one has handled it
better. –- (Disclosure: I’ve known Lucas for a long
time, and sought his help when he was a
partner at a UK public relations firm and I led PR
for JP Morgan.)
Excerpt 3 Lines Van Praag’s departure is a clear sign that the
13–14 image crisis is largely over for Goldman.
Ironically, even though its financial results have
been weak lately, its reputation has improved.
(continued)
7 van Praag spoke about the 2009–2012 events in his remarks to the Chartered Institute of
Public Relations Corporate & Financial Division in London, in January 2013. His remarks
were made privately, not for attribution.
6 Be Social 161
(continued)
Excerpt 4 Lines Van Praag was an unashamed advocate for
19–22 Goldman and he was very effective. At a time,
when most spokespersons recite canned
statements and ineffective variations of ‘no
comment’, van Praag unleashed sharply worded
retorts.
Excerpt 5 Lines A lot of reporting on the financial crisis was
24–26 shoddy—badly informed, sloppily written, poorly
sourced. The New York Times still gets basic facts
about financial markets wrong, and it’s not
alone. Few aside from van Praag were willing to
call them on it.
Excerpt 6 Line 28 He also waded into the blogosphere to take on
critics—turf most wholesale firms keep away
from.
Excerpt 7 Lines Of course, it was far better for Goldman that van
45–46 Praag was the focus of the media’s ire instead of
the firm.
Richard Mahony’s opinion piece was posted on his company’s website,

where it could be viewed and shared by clients, financial journalists and
other members of the Wall Street community. Mahony positioned van
Praag as the consummate in-house PR professional; one with such a sense
of “total single-minded involvement” to the organisation that he effec-
tively ‘took one for the team’ by directing Goldman Sachs’ media flak
toward himself. True or not, one thing is certain: van Praag’s elite status
in financial PR enabled him to bounce back with ease in the ensuing
decade, while his frontline role in one of history’s worst economic crises
may have even increased his professional cachet. In any organisational
crisis, a senior PR adviser’s response can do more to build his or her
professional stature than any other PR activity. In the high-testosterone
world of investment banking, a PR professional could certainly garner
the respect of financial markets by embodying the ‘right stuff ’. In
the case of Goldman Sachs, the ‘right stuff ’ undoubtedly meant guts,
stamina, even insouciance. Lucas van Praag went on to launch his own
financial PR agency, which he sold on to a larger firm five years later. For
some time, he even penned an ‘agony uncle’ column for PR Week US,
the trade publication. A decade later, social media’s hypervisibility affects
162 C. Bourne
all professions. Meanwhile, Lucas van Praag no longer holds the record
for the most mediated PR professional.8
Conclusion: Hypervisibility, Sociality

and Professional Monsters
This chapter was situated in the aftermath of the 2008 global financial
crisis, at a crucial juncture for both the journalism and PR profes-
sions in financial markets. The elite world of wholesale finance had
been largely hidden from public view. This changed when pop culture
magazine, Rolling Stone, conjured the ‘vampire squid’, which quickly
entered the public imagination through widespread social media memes.
In the social media era, ‘reporters’ can be anyone, operate everywhere,
and be responsible to no one, rendering PR’s first professional imper-
ative—to control organisational narratives—all but impossible. When
Rolling Stone introduced the ‘vampire squid’ into financial and political
discourses, it gave the American public a fleeting sense of power. This
disrupted financial journalists’ gatekeeper role and financial PR advisors’
boundary-spanning role. Social media enabled both the ‘alt’ media and
everyday citizens alike to peer into the opaque financial world, sharing
views that were often comedic, but also polemical and indignant. As a
social media event, the ‘vampire squid’ helped democratise financial news
coverage, while threatening financial journalists’ expertise and exclusive
access. Journalists and everyday users engaging with negative Goldman
Sachs’ coverage could “react quickly, engage, respond and interact in a
free-form manner” (McStay, 2013: 45), whether or not they had any
connection with wholesale finance. Likewise, PR professionals in the
digital age find the rhizomatic nature of social media complicates organi-
sational response, confounding and confusing “the ability to form a clear
picture of events for the purposes of decision-making” (Huhtinen &
Rantapelkonen, 2016: 50).
8 For a time in 2017, former White House Press Secretary, Sean Spicer became the most
highly-mediated PR professional on the planet.
6 Be Social 163
PR’s second professional imperative discussed in this chapter was the

corporate communicator’s need to maintain cordial relations with the
press. Any evidence of splintered relations between Goldman Sachs and
the financial press in this chapter’s discourse analysis was traced through
third-party reportage, specifically through reported speech from anony-
mous Wall Street PR chiefs. However, the discursive excerpts indicate
that during systemic crises, such as the 2008 financial crisis and its
aftermath, a range of implicated professions must defend their prac-
tices, resulting in protectionist discourses from different directions. In
this chapter’s analysis, protectionist discourses were deployed by finan-
cial journalists, by interests close to Goldman Sachs’ PR chief, and
by the wider financial PR profession. Other forms of professional
boundary-work may have been present across the 107 articles in the data
set, including the hybridisation of media into its social media forms.
Nevertheless, expansionary and hybridising discourses did not feature
prominently in the discursive strands.
At the heart of this chapter’s analysis was the public slating of
Goldman Sachs’ senior PR advisor, ranging from critiques of Lucas van
Praag’s approach to defending the bank, to lampoons in the financial
press, and later a Twitter parody account reportedly operated by finan-
cial journalists. At the peak of this public slating, from 2010 to 2011,
the world had already witnessed ‘a great renaissance of public shaming’
on social media (Ronson, 2015: 9). By the start of the 2010s, parody
social media accounts were regularly skewering corporate brands by
spoofing their in-house PR, e.g. @QuantasPR Twitter account, created
after an industrial dispute grounded the airline’s fleet; and @BPGlobalPR
created after BP’s global CEO made light of a disastrous oil spill (Wan
et al., 2015). However, personal attacks on individual PR professionals
doing their job remain an unusual occurrence. Social media magnified
the personal attacks on Lucas van Praag, momentarily breaking PR’s
third professional imperative: never to become the story. The sugges-
tion that van Praag deflected attention away from Goldman Sachs and
‘took one for the team’ (see Mahony, 2012), might be plausible for a
well-compensated, well-connected partner of one of the world’s most
164 C. Bourne
powerful investment banks, but seems far too risky a strategy for a more
junior or less well-connected PR professional. Meanwhile, the ‘vampire
squid’ debacle served as a warning to all PR professionals of any rank:
social media had shown its monstrous side, the era of hypervisibility had
arrived.
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7
Be Posthuman
Introduction
“Amelia has been a household name in the world of enterprise AI the past
few years. But in 2020, she took a big step forward. Using our platform,
she became a digital human, adding an exciting and essential dimension
to what she offers her clients. [Amelia] now has the personality and EQ
to form deeper relationships and connections to users. On our platform,
she can deliver the human side of “face to face” conversation—expression,
emotion, empathy and understanding—driving deeper customer connec-
tion and greater business value…Are you interested in turning your AI
into a complete digital human experience, or building one that embodies
your own brand and values? …we’re here to help make that into a reality.”
(UneeQ 2021a)

Switzerland AG 2022
170 C. Bourne
Digital Humans, Digital Employees

The above quotation is taken from the website of UneeQ, an avatar tech-
nology company based in New Zealand and the USA. UneeQ markets its
avatars as so-called digital employees to help companies achieve a ‘giant
leap in brand and customer experience’ (UneeQ, 2021b). Originally
called FaceMe, the company was founded in 2009 to focus on human-
based customer service video chats, serving clients in retail, telephony
and financial services. Advances in conversational artificial intelligence
(AI) and neural rendering1 techniques enabled UneeQ and tech firms to
shift over to non-human customer service solutions. Today, UneeQ is one
of several tech firms aggressively pushing AI-enabled ‘digital employees’.
One of UneeQ’s best-known neural renderings is its updated version of
Amelia AI, a ‘digital employee’ created and developed by New York-based
IPsoft2 . Amelia represents a form of AI known as machine learning,
where machines are taught through complex algorithms, powered by
cloud computing. This form of AI ‘learns’ from big data and data-sharing
regimes enabled by digital platforms. The Amelia avatar, based on human
model, Lauren Hayes, is rendered as a young, slim, blonde, white woman
and referred to as ‘she’ and ‘her’ in the company’s promotional literature.
While Amelia AI has had several upgrades, its interface took a leap-
forward in 2020 when IPsoft unveiled Amelia’s more lifelike appearance,
powered by UneeQ’s avatar platform.
Another of UneeQ’s digital humans is Sophie AI. Like many chatbots,
Sophie AI’s conversational capabilities are powered by GPT-33 , the avatar
is also rendered as young and slim, but with brunette hair, freckles and
indeterminate ethnicity. Built as a free public health advisor, Sophie AI
started speaking to people about the COVID pandemic in April 2020,
keeping the public informed and educated using data from the World
1 Neural rendering combines advanced computer graphics and machine learning to create algo-
rithms that synthesise images, including human faces, from real-world observations (Tewari
et al., 2020).
2 IPsoft rebranded as Amelia in October 2020. Since both the company and its flagship product
are now called Amelia AI, to avoid confusion, I use the holding company name ‘IPsoft’ to
differentiate the company from its AI product.
3 GPT-3 is one of many deep learning neural networks; it was created by OpenAI, a research
business co-founded by Sam Altman and Elon Musk amongst others.
7 Be Posthuman 171
Health Organisation and US Centres for Disease Control. Through in-

depth conversations during the pandemic, Sophie AI was reportedly able
to address issues of social isolation and loneliness. UneeQ also posi-
tioned its digital employees as a solution to the pandemic workplace
phenomenon known as the ‘Great Resignation’. The ‘resignation’ effect,
visible in the US, UK and other economies, encompassed various worker
movements including redundancies, job and career change, early retire-
ment, and withdrawal from the workforce to provide COVID-related
caring responsibilities (Doneghan, 2021). The pandemic accelerated the
use of machine-learning technologies in the workplace: Amelia AI and
Sophie AI are part of a growing platform-enabled algorithmic culture
now re-organising many occupations.
AI ‘disruption’ could have greater implications for PR and other
professions since many white-collar tasks can potentially be replaced
by cost-effective conversational bots hosted by cloud platforms. This
contrasts with earlier forms of automation such as the intricate, expen-
sive physical robots that replaced blue-collar jobs, for example, in
automobile manufacturing plants (Docherty & Fanning, 2019). AI
companies are already providing digital employee solutions in banking,
customer care, health care, insurance, IT services and telecommunica-
tions (IPsoft, 2021). Tailored AI solutions like Della AI are also used
in the legal profession to on-board clients, review legal contracts and
provide paralegal services (Della, 2021). While AI tools are widely used
in PR and marketing to automate and speed up the human practitioner’s
work, at the time of writing, PR practitioners’ potential replacement
by digital employees is not seriously contemplated in industry litera-
ture. But, as Susskind and Susskind (2015: 159) point out, professional
boundaries are “being pushed back as our machines become more capa-
ble”. Consequently, how professionals experience and interpret a new
technology plays a central role in how they reconfigure their professional
identity (Goto, 2021).
In Chapter 1I examined the rise of digital platforms, which attract
and intermediate big data flows by continuously measuring audiences,
ranking preferences, and applying predictive analytics. Digital platform
infrastructures are built on AI technologies; platforms also provide AI
tools as an external service to customers and partners (Mucha & Seppala,
172 C. Bourne
2020). Since the modus operandi of all digital platforms is continuous

information gathering, the resulting mountains of big data are too
complex and unmanageable for humans to decipher. Consequently, a
key role for modern AI and deep neural networks is crunching big data
and making sense of it for human workers. Therefore, understanding
how platformisation can and will disrupt the PR profession requires a
closer look at the AI technologies now changing the boundaries of all
professions, work relations and processes.
The future of PR is one in which professional boundaries will increas-
ingly be forged with and by non-human actors, powered by artificial
intelligence. Chapter 7 imagines what the PR profession might look
like once so-called ‘digital employees’ move from transactional customer
service roles into more intuitive, empathy- and relationship-driven, advi-
sory roles required to execute PR work. The extent to which the platform
economy is being shaped by AI could herald a new era of posthuman
public relations in which the PR profession must face the possibility
“that a machine will be the organisation or the audience, or the PR prac-
titioner, or all three” (Moore, 2018a: 110). Posthuman PR may seem
far-fetched at the time of writing, yet PR is already communicating to (if
not really with) chatbots online (Moore, 2018a). As such, PR’s profes-
sional discourses now encompass both human and non-human agency,
and we are not so far off from witnessing PR-bots from one organ-
isation interacting with marketing-bots from another organisation, or
with press-bots in the media. I therefore build on some of the previous
chapter discussions about PR’s professional boundary-work to consider
a number of questions in respect of PR’s professional project. How
will the PR profession evolve in response to next-generation AI that is
more visually-driven, conversational and empathetic? Could AI agents
come to be regarded as non-human PR colleagues that manage client
and stakeholder relations? If, as Moore (2018a) suggests, we are moving
into an era of posthuman public relations, will PR’s professional project
persist? Will PR’s turf wars intensify with adjacent professional fields
such as marketing? Or will PR become absorbed entirely, disappearing
into organisations’ new platformised, automated processes?
7 Be Posthuman 173
Understanding AI
The term ‘Artificial Intelligence’ or AI was coined in the 1950s by John
McCarthy, who defined it as “the endeavour to develop a machine that
could reason like a human” (Dignum, 2018). Nearly seventy years later,
this endeavour is not yet reality. AI includes a host of activities, including
cognitive robotics and human-agent–robot interaction (Dignum, 2018).
Even so, much of what we currently call AI is ‘machine learning’, where
machines are taught through complex algorithms, enabled by greater
twenty-first century computing power. Machines gather and learn infor-
mation from the world’s biggest ‘school book’—the avalanche of ‘big
data’ shared by humans online (Bourne, 2019).
While contemporary AI includes a host of activities, it is more useful
to think of the term ‘AI and automation’ encompassing a range of auto-
mated tools that are both simple and complex, following instructions to
perform specific tasks by algorithms and protocols. These amalgamations
of code have non-human agency, since they continue to share informa-
tion even when not receiving human direction (Howard & Kollanyi,
2016). Bots, expressly, can produce content and mimic human users
(Marechal, 2016); they have grown in strategic importance thanks to
the rise of social media, making up some 40.8%4 of online traffic in
2020 (Imperva, 2021) and accounting for a significant portion of active
users on the most popular social media platforms. Bots are versatile, ever
evolving and cheap to produce, living on cloud servers that never go
dark. Simpler bot algorithms can push out automatic messages, boost
follower numbers, share messages, promote trends, engage in a site’s
public discourse, or simply ‘scrape’ publicly viewable data for research
purposes (Marechal, 2016). Sophisticated machine-learning bots attempt
to infer emotions, enabling these bots to agree, argue, and otherwise
actively participate in public discourse.
Machine-learning bots are now embedded in PR discourses; their
ability to manipulate public opinion via hashtag spamming, smear
4 The ratio has been as high as 50% in previous years, however, significantly more traffic flowed
through the internet in 2020, according to the Imperva ‘Bad Bot’ report, presumably due to
the COVID pandemic.
174 C. Bourne
campaigns and political propaganda is a reputational issue. Even benign

PR campaigns can go wrong, since bots have had a difficult time inter-
acting with people in all their human complexity. This chapter’s focus is
on a more sophisticated form of machine learning marketed as ‘digital
humans’. I argue that this more recent development in the AI market-
place could have real potential to reshape PR’s professional boundaries.
Digital humans form part of the next phase of AI development known
as conversational AI. Earlier-generation chatbots can engage with human
users, but cannot lead a conversation to resolution, thus requiring human
intervention. Conversational AI agents offer a more versatile user inter-
face since they are trained to speak off-script and recognise customer
intent (IPsoft, 2021). These next-generation non-human agents allow
customers to interact with a company’s digital systems through natural
conversation and can triage multiple tasks without referring to a human
worker. Amelia AI and Sophie AI are just two examples of non-human
agents that not only sound more human, but also have a visual rendering
or avatar. Avatars have also come a long way thanks to advances in
computer graphics and neural rendering technologies that infer human
faces from training data (Seymour et al., 2022). Visual imperfections still
exist and are detectable, but next-generation digital humans are consid-
ered ‘good enough’, in that their rendered features and skin tone look
more human, and they emulate human speech and eye movement more
realistically (Seymour et al., 2022).
The PR profession’s response to AI is evolving, shaped primarily by
professional uncertainty about PR jobs and status where threatened by AI
technologies (Valin, 2018). PR industry responses have taken the form
of fact-finding missions, for example, identifying the number of AI tools
now used in PR—estimated to be at least 240, according to one UK
study (Waddington, 2020). Early industry reports generally assessed AI
tools as a ‘good thing’, enabling PR professionals to act “more quickly
and with greater intelligence” (e.g. Weiner & Kochhar, 2016: 5). AI
tools were even portrayed as the ‘genie in the lamp’—able, at long last,
to bestow the respect of company directors on their PR and marketing
functions (Tan, 2018). Other PR industry research cheerily predicted
that AI technologies would never replace PR’s human touch with client-
organisations (Davis, 2018). A notable exception is the UK’s ‘AI in PR’
7 Be Posthuman 175
network led by Emerita Professor Anne Gregory and practitioner, Kerry

Sheehan. This group produced a series of reports warning the profession
that PR is ‘sleepwalking’ into AI. But what does this mean? And what
does ‘everyday AI’ look like in the PR profession?
AI in Everyday PR
AI tools are becoming normalised into many forms of professional work
without users ‘feeling’ that they are using AI technologies (Guzman,
2019). Use of AI tools is accelerating across PR, advertising and
marketing to run campaigns that are cheaper, quicker, more efficient
and more personalised. Various AI tools are used in one-to-one conver-
sations via social media, customer service systems and email marketing
management, content creation, display marketing and communication
research, influencer targeting, attribution software, audience mapping
and targeting, stakeholder behaviour change, as well as workflow
automation (Waddington, 2019; Weiner, 2021; Virmani & Gregory,
2021). There was considerable hype in 2017 when advertising giant,
Publicis Groupe5 , launched its in-house Marcel AI platform designed
to link employees together on cross-border projects. Initial publicity
suggested that Marcel AI would help ‘manage’ Publicis employees
(including PR practitioners in its subsidiary companies) by selecting
and matching employees to suitable projects. Later, Publicis repositioned
Marcel AI as a sort of automated concierge that would book travel,
accommodation and services for mobile and hybrid workers in Publicis
offices around the world (Marcel AI, 2021).
While PR has lagged behind the advertising industry in digitalisa-
tion (see Chapters 3 and 4), more recent industry research (Virmani &
Gregory, 2021) suggests PR practitioners now recognise a range of uses
for AI-enabled tools including media and social media implementa-
tion, media monitoring and analysis. Content creation is one of the
fastest-growing areas of PR-AI use. Similarly, there is increased awareness
5 Holding company, Publicis Groupe, owns PR firms including MSL, Taylor Henry and
Octopus Group.
176 C. Bourne
amongst PR practitioners of AI-enabled content creation and writing

tools even if these practitioners cannot name specific tools or how to
use them (Virmani & Gregory, 2021). In more complex scenarios, AI-
driven content creation can deliver localised press releases; an appealing
function in large geographic markets like the USA where similar auto-
mated or guided content creation has been in use in journalism for some
time (Weiner, 2021).
AI also supports crisis communications: automated tools can use
‘PR big data’ to identify crises and recommend appropriate organisa-
tional responses, where ‘appropriate’ is defined as the shortest time to
reputational neutrality (Weiner, 2021). As PR big data grows bigger,
machine learning could be applied to still more PR applications. For
Weiner (2021), the ripest opportunities for AI and automation in
the corporate world relate to repetitive or dangerous tasks which, he
concludes, “hardly describes public relations as we know it” (2021: 8).
In reality, there are plenty of ‘dangerous’ tasks to which AI is applied in
PR, notably misinformation, including the mass spreading of fake news
and deep fake videos, hashtag spamming, driving artificial trends, smear
campaigns, death-threat campaigns and political propaganda (Gallagher,
2017; Marechal, 2016).
Professionalism, AI and the Posthuman PR

Practitioner
Scholars have recently interrogated important instrumental, ethical and
philosophical questions about AI in communications. Neff and Nagy
(2016) examine the role of non-human agents in strategic communi-
cation. Here, they include simple pre-programmed schema bots that are
not AI because even simple bots are intended to elicit a response and to
have an effect, thus forming part of a communications strategy. Hepp
(2020) shares this view, maintaining that cheap, simple workbots not
only perform communicative labour alongside human PR practitioners,
they are also “companions in content production” (Hepp, 2020: 1415).
Simple workbots may have limited capacity but they can liaise with other
7 Be Posthuman 177
non-human agents, particularly in simpler written communication—

tweets, blogposts, emails, etc. Examining computational propaganda,
Woolley and Howard (2016) contend that the plethora of non-human
agents on digital platforms now problematises how to trace agency or
place blame for deliberate misinformation or miscommunication online.
(See also Moore’s, 2018a exploration of human/non-human agents and
selfhood; and Moore & Hübscher’s 2022 work on digital interfaces).
Collister (2016) introduces the concept of ‘algorithmic PR’ to describe
modern public relations in which algorithmic computation and non-
human agency have an increasing influence on PR planning. For
instance, an organisation’s reputation can be instantly damaged by
‘trending’ news stories on Google, Twitter or Facebook. Yet the order
of so-called trending stories is governed by algorithms that are tightly
guarded secrets, requiring communicators’ skill, research and guesswork
to ‘game’ or ‘optimise’ the results. Since an organisation’s reputation is
now partly subject to AI and automation, Collister (2016: 365) identifies
an emerging role for digital reputation managers who would lead on non-
representational communication strategy where the aim is to produce a
material effect on platform algorithms (e.g. Google Search) rather than
exerting “a representational or phenomenological response by a human”.
As AI and automation develop, earlier scholarly interventions on bots
and algorithmic communications (see Hepp, 2020; also Collister, 2016
or Moore, 2018a above) must now be updated to encompass the tech
industry’s use of conversational AI, empathic AI and neural renderings
to create ‘digital humans’. In organisational contexts, ‘digital employees’
with human-like voices and visual form are intended to offer and recip-
rocate emotional responses as well as perform routinised tasks efficiently
and expertly. Tech companies now have their sights on disrupting profes-
sional work. Several years ago, IBM resolved that its Watson AI would
learn ‘the language of professions’ (IBM, 2018). Conversational AI may
still be in development, but it has already increased the professional work
processes that can be ‘taskified’ and automated. AI could already execute
some content creation, along with online user sentiment analysis, and
reputational risk profiling. The high-tech sector’s new frontier for its
‘digital employees’ is to step-up from retail customer service to deliver
more complex business-to-business (B2B) client services and manage
178 C. Bourne
client relationships (Goto, 2021). Not long ago, PR felt reasonably

cushioned from the threat of AI because so much of PR’s professional
knowledge is embedded in soft skills, emotional labour and the chemistry
of client management (see, e.g. Valin, 2018; see also Chapter 5’s discus-
sion). Be that as it may, the prospect of an audible, visible ‘digital PR
practitioner’ now marks a critical moment in PR’s professional project.
Cheerleading ‘Digital Employees’

The chapter’s discursive text is a 27-page e-brochure entitled ‘What are
digital humans?’ published by UneeQ in 2021. Most of this e-brochure
showcases UneeQ’s AI avatars or ‘digital employees’, including UneeQ’s
neural rendering of IPsoft’s Amelia AI product. UneeQ’s e-brochure is an
example of digital content marketing, which has evolved as an effective
B2B lead-generating strategy, and an ideal tool for building relationships
in markets where products and services have long sales cycles (Spiller,
2020). Digital content marketing eases some of the B2B marketing
burden through compelling visual storytelling and quick, cost-effective
ways of tracking which storytelling techniques work best. Digital content
marketing’s function is to market a product or service by creating
and distributing free informational or entertainment content, especially
online. It is “storytelling for sales” across multiple genres, through hyper-
linked texts (Wall & Spinuzzi, 2018). Digital content marketing includes
communicative text, images, video, audio, slideshows, infographics, and
other media. Here “communicative” indicates the structural elements
that work with search engine crawlers to keep readers’ attention on
the sponsored content. These structural elements include links that
connect the article to other websites, and language and design elements
intended to steer the audience to click on links (Wall & Spinuzzi, 2018).
UneeQ’s e-brochure is hyperstylised; each page features image-led design
set against a futuristic, glossy black background. Pages 16 to 25 of the
e-brochure feature case studies, each enabling prospective customers to
click on the e-brochure’s hyperlinked images to view further information
and case studies on UneeQ’s website, https://digitalhumans.com/.
7 Be Posthuman 179
‘Digital Employees’ Expand into the Service Economy
UneeQ’s e-brochure should be regarded as just one of many texts

designed to hail the virtues of artificial intelligence. Cheerleading for
AI is by any objective standard one of the largest, most expansionary
discourses of our time. As I have written elsewhere (see Bourne,
2019), the emerging AI economy is being aggressively naturalised as the
common-sense way of life (Pueyo, 2017)—and a ‘public good’. Unfet-
tered support for 21st-century AI technologies goes right up the food
chain, from multinational businesses to national and regional govern-
ments, all keen to compete in the AI ‘space race’. AI and automation
offers the various sectors of the global economy a shared narrative, a
demonstrable vision of the future, and a promise to ‘jump start’ the
global economy through advanced technologies. Global AI investment
reached US$66.8 billion in 2021, doubled from the previous year (CB
Insights, 2022). In the words of Safiyah Noble (2018: 169) ‘if ever there
were a time when politicians, industry leaders, and academics were enam-
oured with artificial intelligence as a superior approach to sense-making,
it is now’. AI is increasingly positioned as humanity’s inevitable future,
as illustrated in Extract 7.1.
Extract 7.1: ‘What Are the Advantages of Digital Humans?’ in:

What Are Digital Humans, UneeQ, 2021b
Page 6 Line 9 By 2025, AI will power 95% of customer interactions.

Lines That should be a concern for the 90% of brands
10–13 today who say they’re competing on the basis of
customer experience (CX), because the human touch
is so valuable in creating an emotional connection
with people—albeit notoriously hard to scale.
Lines Digital humans are today the only solution that can
14–16 bring a scalable human-like emotional connection
and customer experience to the digital world.
Lines They build trust, improve CX, embody brands’
17–19 personalities and provide 24/7 service—and they do
so using the most universal, time-tested interface
that’s ever existed: the human face.
180 C. Bourne
The utopian vision of AI as universal market solution, illustrated in

Extract 7.1, is heavily shaped by neoliberalism, an ideology which “con-
fidently identifies itself with the future” (Brown, 2006: 27). Mainstream
economic theory has held up the human as homo economicus—a hypo-
thetical person (consumer or producer) who behaves in exact accordance
with rational self-interest. However, neoliberalism’s homo economicus
has proved both demanding and perennially inefficient. Human workers
demand adequate pay and rest, while human consumers are unpre-
dictable in their buying behaviour. In the digital era, neoliberalism
reconceptualises marketplaces as information processors, with humans
modelled less as thinkers and more as inefficient, low-powered proces-
sors, a means of information circulation, rather than thinking subjects
(Mirowski & Nik-Khah, 2017). With the advent of AI interfaces, the
neoliberal economy supposedly has its ultimate capital-labour hybrid,
the ‘perfect’ model of efficiency. Some scholars argue that the advent of a
‘superintelligent’ economy will enable neoliberalism to enter a transfor-
mative phase, in which machina economicus or AI will replace homo
economicus as the ultimate rational economic actor (Pueyo, 2017).
UneeQ’s e-brochure is aligned with this perspective, its expansionary
discourse suggests that UneeQ’s AI avatars can replace up to ‘95%’ of
human workers. Meanwhile, in Extracts 7.2 and 7.3, UneeQ provides
more detail on the lifelike nature of its AI avatars:
Extract 7.2: ‘What is a Digital Human?’ in: What Are Digital

Humans, UneeQ, 2021b
Page 5 Lines 8–9 Sitting behind the digital human is an AI platform

that determines behaviour, EQ6 and speech in
real-time, so conversation can flow naturally, as it
tends to in real life.
Lines The digital human can easily connect to another
10–11 “brain” to share knowledge, whether that’s a
chatbot, NLP7 or even a human directly supervising
their learning.
(continued)
6 EQ stands for Emotional Intelligence.

7 NLP stands for Natural Language Processing, the popular but controversial, subfield of AI
that helps computers understand, interpret and manipulate human language.
7 Be Posthuman 181
(continued)
Lines Importantly, digital humans embody the personality,
12–14 voice and nature of the brands they work for. They
can show emotions like happiness, empathy,
warmth and friendliness—they can crack a joke or
show support through their actions, tone and body
language.
In Extract 7.2, UneeQ’s AI avatars are depicted with idealised human

traits. A similar message is repeated throughout UneeQ’s e-brochure, as
illustrated in Extract 7.3.
Extract 7.3: ‘Bringing Brands to Life’ In: What are Digital Humans?
UneeQ, 2021b
Page 7 Lines Digital humans can exist as a recreation of a brand
10–13 ambassador, founder, mascot or any other existing
personality. Or they can be designed to embody the
brand itself.
Lines 6–9 They can be deployed digitally or in the physical
world to act as an interactive and personality-driven
interface across multiple customer
touchpoints—providing consistency and greater
connection to the brand.
Lines Digital humans act as loyal brand ambassadors. They
10–13 may recreate human emotions, but they never have
a bad day, and won’t get frustrated answering the
same questions 24/7.
In Extracts 7.2 and 7.3, UneeQ positions its AI avatars as the coveted
machina economicus, able to process information rationally as homo
economicus never could. Specifically, UneeQ brings forth machina
economicus in digital form, visually rendered as young, healthy, attractive
AI avatars able to replace—and outperform—human customer service
workers. While machina economicus might operate more rationally
than human workers, UneeQ’s e-brochure demonstrates that a truly
effective customer-facing digital employee will deliver an empathic expe-
rience. AI avatars do not experience emotions and are not capable of
genuine empathy. Nevertheless, now that human bodies and emotions
are (supposedly) rendered machine-readable by yet other AI tools,
UneeQ professes that its AI avatars can be trained to sense and classify
182 C. Bourne
human behaviour, and respond appropriately. This ‘situational empathy’

says McStay (2018) only requires the capacity to interpret an emotional
state and make predictions about a person’s disposition, then allocate,
adapt or modify behaviour accordingly.
Applying this to PR work, any future client interaction with PR
avatars would only ever be a pseudo-relationship. Yet some might argue
that the forced nature of certain PR-client relationships are themselves
pseudo-relationships. Certainly, machines may be far better at simu-
lating empathy than an insincere or self-absorbed human might do
(Susskind & Susskind, 2015). In any case, UneeQ’s AI avatars have
no need for real understanding of emotions and intentions, when
the marketplace merely requires effectiveness in understanding those
emotions and intentions (McStay, 2018). Similarly, machines will not
need to emulate all that human PR practitioners offer so long as
they deliver outcomes more efficiently (Susskind & Susskind, 2015).
UneeQ offers prospective clients the dawn of a new service economy
populated by a hybridised workforce of digital and human employees,
although with a strong portent that the cost effectiveness of digital
employees will lead to replacing as many human customer-facing workers
as possible. To this end, evidence of hybridising boundary-work in
Chapter 7 differs from explorations of professional fragmentation and
the emergence of new specialisms in the previous data chapters. UneeQ’s
marketing brochure suggests that as AI and automation expands into
the professions, next-generation machines could do more than hybridise
new occupational specialisms. AI could encroach entirely by gener-
ating individual PR avatars, drawing on what it learns from the best
human practitioners to create its own new artificial PR life where human
professionals once operated.
Hybridised PR Under Martech Control?
UneeQ’s e-brochure is primarily focused on customer service. Since

marketing often controls the customer service function, chief marketing
officers are key prospects for AI technology firms like UneeQ. This
gives the marketing profession some authority over the future of AI in
7 Be Posthuman 183
customer-led organisations. For decades, the marketing profession has

asserted its value and managerial identity in organisations by solving
technical problems and achieving organisational efficiencies. In the
digital era, marketing has now cannily positioned itself at the vanguard
of professions embracing the business case for AI (Parsons, 2018). As
AI is further absorbed into PR, the future of PR work is potentially
dependent on strategic decisions by an organisation’s marketing team.
Extract 7.4 suggests the direction of travel for next-generation digital
employees. Even though UneeQ focuses on providing customer service
interfaces, the e-brochure hypes UneeQ’s AI avatars as empathetic, inter-
active communicators, able to automate occupations that rely on soft
skills, potentially including PR. The speed with which this does (or
does not) happen could be contingent on an organisation’s marketing
function.
Extract 7.4: ‘Foreword’. in: What Are Digital Humans. UneeQ,

2021b
Page 3 Lines 1–2 When we published our first What are Digital
Humans eBook back in 2019, the technology was
far behind where it is today. […]
Lines Today, much has changed. We have digital human
6–11 creation platforms like UneeQ Creator, for one. And
it’s meant some incredible use cases have worked
their way to the fore in record time— from
assistants to help with loan application forms (an
emotionally charged step in many buyers’ lives) to
sleep and mental health coaches and digital
companions. It’s been genuinely exciting to see the
breadth of ways smart people are using our
platform!
Lines But in many other ways, not a lot has changed. The
12–14 vast majority of today’s customer-facing channels
still lack any form of personality, interaction or
engagement.
Lines Websites, chatbots, online forms, FAQs and other
15–16 self-service automatons remain transactional, not
interactional. In reality, that’s all they’ll likely ever
be. And that’s creating a huge disconnect in the
customer journey.
184 C. Bourne
In Extract 7.4, UneeQ is making a direct pitch at chief marketing

officers amongst other decision-makers, contending that competitors’
AI interfaces are inferior, little more than transactional bots. If true,
then competitors’ rudimentary interfaces could not approximate PR’s
interpersonal advisory relationships with clients and bosses, so the PR
profession might remain cushioned for now. Yet, if PR is to secure its
future, the profession must address its lack of influence and agency in
AI decision-making, especially when compared with counterparts in the
marketing profession. While many PR professionals use AI software,
these tools are generally cheaper off-the-shelf solutions developed specifi-
cally for marketers—digital tools are rarely designed by PR professionals8
or tailored for PR needs (Armour & Sako, 2020; Waddington, 2020).
In order for PR to gain more say over its AI tools, it would need to
acquire greater expert oversight, initially by integrating data scientists
and data engineers into PR teams, as is happening at some large PR
firms. Accordingly, Armour and Sako (2020) suggest that the future for
professions like PR is likely to be a hybridised one where ‘professionalism’
itself would be defined by the ability to manage AI to deliver taskified
PR services, with the human having oversight over strategy and strategic
change. Even if the PR profession can rapidly advance its technical exper-
tise and oversight, this is unlikely to divert AI’s overall direction of travel,
or the prospect that AI avatars could replace certain PR roles and func-
tions. It is the marketing profession which may have the greater say.
Marketing is not only a target customer for AI services; marketing profes-
sionals also work more closely with the tech professions (Vaccaro et al.,
2019). Above all, marketing is more likely than PR to have board-level
representation to influence organisational strategy around AI.
Furthermore, marketing and PR are unlikely to have the same outlook
on AI’s progress since the two professions have different approaches
and mindsets. Marketing has a customer-focused mindset which, in the
8There are exceptions: PRophet AI is a digital PR platform designed by a PR professional,

while Signet AI had its genesis in media monitoring.
7 Be Posthuman 185
digital era, is driven by microtargeting and personalisation. AI tools

help with microtargeting, and also nudge consumer behaviour toward
immediate results such asonline purchases (Smith, 2021). Marketing
campaigns also designate certain consumers as ‘waste’, discarding them
if they fit the wrong customer profile, and never engaging with these
discarded consumers again. PR work is often required to take a
broader stakeholder approach, appealing to groups with varying influ-
ence, and fluctuating levels of organisational engagement over time.
Where marketing might focus on an immediate outcome or behaviour
change, PR might be tasked with building awareness of messages
to be activated in people’s minds later on as memory recall (Smith,
2021). Equally, PR activity might seek confirmation of existing opin-
ions or behaviour, engender goodwill, enlist support on various issues,
or shape belief systems over time (Gregory, 2010; Page 2014). Empa-
thetic, conversational AI could be trained to deliver PR’s varied stake-
holder requirements, but marketing and/or other budget-holders may
not authorise the necessary investment required to do this well.
PR-AI Client Relations: The Everyman that’s Always

on
A hotly-debated issue for many workers in the digital age is the pres-
sure to be ‘always on’. For many PR professionals, this pressure existed
prior to platformisation, where clients and bosses expected round-the-
clock availability from their PR advisers (Surma & Daymon, 2014: 52).
UneeQ’s e-brochure suggests yet another reason that AI avatars might
play a role in client relations. No client or boss would be too demanding
for a PR avatar, particularly one loaded with neurolinguistic program-
ming for managing difficult personalities. A PR avatar could validate
narcissistic personalities by providing constant attention, while simulta-
neously getting on with the job. A PR avatar could answer anxious emails
sent at midnight, and smile sweetly after receiving testy comments from
clients or bosses, all while remaining reliable and self-assured. Where
186 C. Bourne
human PR professionals need to ‘switch off ’ eventually, a PR avatar

would have no such issues, as suggested in Extract 7.5.
Extract 7.5: ‘Available in Ways Humans Simply Cannot Be.’ in:

What Are Digital Humans, UneeQ, 2021b
Page 10 Lines By virtue of not being human, digital humans are

1–4 non-judgemental, can provide 100% confidentiality
and remain available around the clock when real
people simply cannot be.
Lines Those traits have made digital humans valuable in
5–9 combating people’s financial anxiety and illiteracy,
for instance. They’ll never judge users for asking a
question they’d be too embarrassed to ask a real
person.
Lines For these reasons, digital humans have been used as
10–13 mental health coaches, financial guides, home loan
specialists, support workers for people recovering
from heart surgery and more.
In Extract 7.5, UneeQ depicts a future in which decision-makers will

forge neat, undemanding relationships with non-human agents that will-
ingly execute tasks for humans without dispute. This would be a bleak
future for PR, suggests Donath (2019:14), because the more clients
and bosses are spoiled by “the coddling and convenience of synthetic
companions” the more such “robot-enabled narcissism” could destroy
patience for “the messy give-and-take of organic relationships.” For
instance, human PR practitioners already find it challenging to speak
truth to power when those in power do not wish to be challenged.
It is unlikely that a PR avatar would be programmed to challenge a
decision-maker in a way that was not supportive (or even entertaining!).
Additionally, as explored in Chapter 5, many PR practitioners are
expected to have the capacity to be everyman or everywoman, to
endlessly shapeshift as they go about their working day (Reed & Thomas,
2021). Yet that ‘everyman’ quality, as suggested by UneeQ’s avatars,
remains typically rendered as young, slim, attractive and light-skinned.
The expectation for PR professionals to represent a narrow cross-section
of physical types and social backgrounds is already prevalent. The move
toward digital employees may exacerbate client expectations of the
7 Be Posthuman 187
‘everyman’ or ‘everywoman’ PR adviser. As Cremin (2009: 132) puts it:

“The quality of being human cannot be assumed, it must be thought
about and projected. We must become human, learn it and fake it,
seeking to become human in an image recognisable to the boss, the one
possessed with the power to decide who or what is human. But what s/he
wants is enigmatic…”. If, as Cremin suggests, the boss or client decides
who or what is human in the workplace, then the way is easily paved for
PR avatars that are able to respond in exactly the way the boss or client
desires.
What if the Client Were an Algorithm?
In considering possible futures for the PR profession, other permutations

are already visible in today’s platformised workplace. In the digital age,
many workers now ‘report’ to an algorithm as ‘boss’, including workers
in factories and the gig economy, where various tools and devices use
sophisticated rating mechanisms to manage their workforce (see Adams-
Prassl, 2019; Dzieza, 2020; Moore, 2018b). Reputational algorithms are
typically a means to exercise control over workforces, operating as a prob-
lematic substitute for organisational management structure. According to
Adams-Prassl (2019: 12), such reputation systems amount to “the boss
from hell: an erratic, bad-tempered and unaccountable manager that may
fire you at any time, on a whim, with no appeal”.
Many PR practitioners are already ‘reporting’ to algorithms insofar
as they are monitored by software tools that log inputs (e.g. billable
hours) and outputs (e.g. social media posts, exchanges with journal-
ists or influencers, or press releases disseminated). PR practitioners also
‘report’ to algorithms whenever they are required to measure and recalli-
brate the impact of their PR work via tracking software (Collister, 2016).
In Extracts 7.6 and 7.7, the final excerpts from UneeQ’s e-brochure,
I pose the following scenario: What if the client were an algorithm?
Here, I suggest that even though the prospect of PR professionals finding
their roles outsourced to non-human agents in the high-tech sector is
an obvious concern, a more disturbing scenario is one in which the
boss/client and AI platform become one and the same. Excerpts 7.6 and
188 C. Bourne
7.7 describe two more of UneeQ’s AI avatars, but with a difference. These
two avatars are known as ‘digital twins’. They are rendered to represent
real humans who are very senior professionals. The first avatar portrays
the chief economist of UBS, a Swiss wealth management company. The
second avatar portrays a former New Zealand rugby player turned mental
health advocate. These avatars open up possibilities for a different kind
of posthuman PR—one in which most PR practitioners remain human
but take their instruction from an algorithm.
The first digital ‘twin’ is described on page 17 of UneeQ’s e-brochure,
excerpted in Extract 7.6.
Extract 7.6: ‘UBS.’ In: What are Digital Humans, UneeQ, 2021b
Page 17 Lines For UBS’ Chief Economist in Switzerland, Daniel Kalt,

1–7 time is quite literally money. UneeQ recreated his
likeness to the very pore to create Dani the digital
human, who now gives wealth management
forecasts to clients digitally, as well as in the flesh,
using UBS data.
The second digital ‘twin’ appears on Page 22 of UneeQ’s e-brochure,

excerpted in Extract 7.7.
Extract 7.7: ‘Mentemia.’ In: What are Digital Humans, UneeQ,

2021b
Page 22 Lines Former All Black Sir John Kirwan is also the founder
1–8 of Mentemia, a mental health app in Australia and
New Zealand. Digital John Kirwan listens to
Mentemia’s users and helps guide them to a better
sleep. Who better to show that tough people can
look after their mental health too than an all-time
rugby great?
Current forms of algorithmic management conjure a number of possi-

bilities for the PR profession. The first is that existing algorithmic PR
management is likely to intensify. This kind of automated oversight
might reduce the number of human contact hours required to manage
a PR brief. Meanwhile, failure to meet PR commitments could end
7 Be Posthuman 189
a contractual engagement for a PR agency or affect an in-house PR

practitioner’s appraisal. There is the additional possibility that AI and
automation will consign many PR practitioners to the gig economy, as
happened with journalism, where gig journalists find themselves poorly
compensated based on social media ‘likes’ or subscribers’ read time (Arias
2020). Since much of PR’s compensation model is weighted toward
outputs, similar ranking systems might be implemented for PR workers
too. At the other end of the spectrum are more remote suggestions that
CEOs could one day be replaced by AI platforms; one possible pathway
if the digital twins featured in Extracts 7.6 and 7.7 were to become
normalised in the workplace. Billionaire investor Jack Ma, for instance,
forecasts a robot revolution in corporate leadership because “machines
are quicker and more rational than humans—and don’t get bogged down
with emotions” (Morgan, 2017). In such a futuristic world, perhaps the
algorithmic CEO and PR adviser would even be one and the same,
hosted on an AI platform.
Conclusion: Whither the PR Strategist?

This final discourse analytic chapter offered a speculative look into
the future of public relations amidst the expansion of AI into a raft
of professions. Yet to acknowledge a posthuman public relations is to
understand the history of PR’s professional project and PR’s relationship
with knowledge-production, as explored in Chapter 1. As a decidedly
entrepreneurial profession, PR has adapted the rules of its own game
so many times in the past century that we can reasonably expect it do
so again. There are many philosophical issues for PR to ponder even
as the boundaries of PR work shift more radically. These include consid-
ering the shift in online power relations between human and non-human
agents, and the possible advent of machine-to-machine PR (Collister,
2016; Moore, 2018a).
The chapter’s discourse analysis explored both AI’s expansionary
discourse and the prospect of further hybridising PR work. Various
authors (e.g. Collister, 2016; Moore & Hübscher, 2022; Moore, 2018a,
2018b) have proffered thoughts on what hybridisation could mean for
190 C. Bourne
the future of PR. Certainly, greater knowledge and understanding of AI

and automation must form part of this mix. For instance, Bollmer and
Rodley (2017) argue for the need to acknowledge emergent AI ecologies,
and to assess how and where communication already takes place inter-
dependently without human involvement (Bollmer & Rodley, 2017). If
PR is to gain a fuller understanding of human–machine communication,
Collister (2016) argues that the field’s critical gaze must refocus on the
broader set of material components and actors encompassing not just
AI avatars and chatbots, but also “urban infrastructure, software code,
physical space, economy and corporeality” (2016: 362).
A more unsettling proposition comes from Moore (2018a) who
suggests that it may be important for PR to reverse the notion that
“humans must be persuaded and machines instructed” (2018: 116). My
own view is that such an outlook is risky, since it would cede territory
not just to machines but to their human creators. It is worth reiter-
ating here that the rapid acceptance of AI and automation into the
world of work forms part of an expansionary global discourse backed
by billions in investment finance, and widespread support from private
and public sector elites (Bourne, 2019). Against such powerful backing,
few professions can successfully protect and cordon off their human
knowledge and expertise from AI’s advances. However, knowledge and
expertise are not the only aspects of professional identity that PR should
champion. A posthuman PR must value and advocate for its human
collective (Couldry, 2010) by actively registering the experiences of its
most marginalised practitioners, including its most junior and precarious
workers.
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8
Conclusion: Be Platformised
PR and the Digital: Field-Level Discourses

Discourse analysis as social science method is useful for examining rela-
tionships between representations of contemporary professions and their
reality, through patterns of language in use. The field-level approach
adopted throughout this book primarily looks for cultural patterns of
professional intent and conduct by exploring professional texts, their
genres and contexts. The book’s focus on PR’s professional boundary-
work is, at its heart, a study of professional controversy, power and
resistance, contests and struggles. PR’s professional discourses are, after
all, a “fluid, shifting medium in which meaning is created and contested”
(Taylor, 2001: 9). The methodological framework set out in Chapter 2
(and applied previously in Bourne, 2019, 2020) highlights expansionary,
protectionist and hybridising boundary-work as the main focus for
field-level professional discourse analysis. Chapter 2’s methodological
framework was influenced by a range of interdisciplinary scholarship
including Gieryn’s (1983) classic sociological discussion of boundary-
work, as well as organisational theory on professions and borders (e.g.
Bucher et al., 2016; Thomas & Hewitt, 2011); and communications
Switzerland AG 2022
198 C. Bourne
theory on encroachment in both PR and journalism (Gesualdi, 2019;

Lewis, 2012).
Changes taking place in and around PR practice have fomented a
series of critical moments in PR’s professional discourses (See Candlin,
2000). Some of these critical moments are explored in the book’s five
data chapters, which analysed various discursive genres generated by the
PR profession, about the PR profession, and adjacent to the PR profes-
sion. The most important of these critical moments is the rise of digital
platforms as a new means of production in the wider global economy.
Increasingly, PR’s professional discourses have turned to the challenge of
working with or through these digital platforms. In this final chapter,
therefore, I return to the questions that framed the book. Where do
the professional boundaries lie in the platformised future of PR work? Who
controls the shifting nature of these boundaries? I resolve these questions
under a number of themes. The first section of this chapter summarises
observations about interprofessional boundary-work between PR and
adjacent fields. The second section looks at inherent boundary issues
facing individual PR workers, including organisational structures and
new technologies. The chapter then moves on to consider the implica-
tions of platformisation for PR’s professional project, before offering final
thoughts on the future of the PR profession in the digital age.
The PR Profession: Boundary-Work

with Advertising, Marketing, Journalism
Chapter 1 painted a picture of PR as an ever-changing profession that
operates differently from traditional professions such as medicine or
law, encompassing longstanding practices that only began to formalise
under a professional umbrella in the early twentieth century. Much
of PR’s interprofessional boundary-work is conducted with similarly
entrepreneurial professions. As outlined in Chapter 2, now more than
ever, there is much to be learned from examining interprofessional
relations between PR and adjacent professions including advertising
and marketing, as well as emerging professions such as digital content
production and social media management. All these established and
emerging professions are highly responsive to the organisations and

cultures they serve (Muzio et al., 2008), and equally responsive to
whichever institutional and media structures govern their work. Today,
this undoubtedly means digital platformisation, which is intertwining
previously separate areas of PR, advertising, marketing and media in a
way that erases much-cherished professional boundaries. PR, advertising
and marketing all compete with each other to be the preferred provider
to organisations and brands, able to deliver return on investment (ROI)
quickly and efficiently. At the same time, all promotional professions are
under pressure to prove that their strategic ability, technical dexterity and
carefully-honed soft skills cannot simply be replicated and automated by
machines.
Chapter 3 featured recruitment ads disseminated by specialist
recruiters who cater to the PR, advertising, marketing and communica-
tions industries in the UK. Chapter 3’s analysis of recruitment ads across
various categories of work showed gaps in the PR profession’s digital
skills when compared with digital marketing and social media manage-
ment. The sector comparison goes some way to support charges of PR’s
‘technophobia’, still extant at the time of writing. The chapter’s discourse
analysis further chronicled the inexorable rise of digital content produc-
tion as a powerful expansionary discourse encompassing PR, marketing,
social media management, and indeed all promotional industries, as well
as other digital content producers such as influencers and consumers.
As the Financial Times quipped in 2018, “We’re all content providers
now” (Stoppard, 2018). Chapter 3 contextualised the totalising impact
of digital content production practices as part of the disciplinary power
wielded by digital platforms such as Amazon, Google, Facebook and
TikTok. Platformisation therefore engenders new boundary negotiations
for PR, advertising, marketing and other professional content producers.
The shift towards data-driven storytelling and content production
outlined in Chapter 3 is more than just a ‘blip’ on the continuum of
change in the promotional industries, it is also one step further towards
integration and convergence between news, entertainment, advertising,
branding, marketing and all professional communication. In the past,
the public was rarely compelled to detect the boundaries between these
200 C. Bourne
activities, but today’s frictionless social media and mobile media experi-
ences render such boundaries meaningless to platform owners or to their
end-users.
Chapter 4 examined PR’s own aggressive move into advertising’s terri-
tory to claim the crown of ‘creativity’. The chapter’s discourse analysis
of global PR firm, Edelman Inc, and its corporate communiqués indi-
cate the capacity and clout required to engage simultaneously in all three
forms of professional boundary-work—expansionary, protectionist and
hybridising. The power relations evident in Chapter 4 suggest that PR’s
expansionary discourses continue to be led by global PR firms, which
have the resources to challenge the larger, more powerful global adver-
tising industry. This does not hold true for PR in all regions and would
be a risky approach for smaller PR firms in any market, unless they chose
to break away from their profession’s traditional practices by hybridising.
In the final analysis, Chapter 4 was about global PR firms’ battle to
hybridise PR’s professional identity, thus creating a new form of digital-
first PR. Consequently, Chapter 4 underscored the role played by global
PR firms in shaping PR’s professional project, a theme that has been
inadequately researched to date.
Chapter 6 explored another critical moment in PR discourses, the
rapid expansion of social media. The chapter’s site of struggle was the
interprofessional boundary between PR and journalism. The border
between these two professions has always been fraught, but the decade of
the 2000s placed distinct pressures on both fields due to the rise of social
media platforms. While journalism and PR have always been shaped
and influenced by prevailing media forms, new social media practices
wreaked havoc on both professions. In 2009, when the chapter’s anal-
ysis begins, journalism’s digital disruption was already well underway.
The professional genre analysed in Chapter 6 was a longitudinal data
set of journalistic opinion pieces published in mainstream news media
between 2009 and 2012 during a crisis affecting Goldman Sachs, the
global investment bank. The chapter’s analysis of journalism discourses
emphasised the tensions between journalism and PR, while also exam-
ining each profession’s protectionist boundary-work in response to the
rhizomatic power of social media. Chapter 6 further illustrated the
implications for one profession—in this case PR—when it encounters
protectionist discourses deployed by an adjacent professional field. This

further reiterates the value of incorporating field-level discourse anal-
ysis into studies of professional projects. Ultimately, the discursive data
analysed in Chapter 6 confirmed the existential challenge posed by
digital platformisation for the future of journalism and PR’s professional
projects.
Closing the Production-Consumption Gap: New

Platformised Professions
While PR’s occupational boundaries have never been clearly distinguish-

able, digital platformisation puts PR’s more limited data-driven expertise
into sharp relief against professions such as sales and marketing that
were earlier adopters of new digital technologies. Advertising, sales and
marketing are now major players in what Dave Beer (2019) calls ‘the
data gaze’, where big data is manipulated to yield actionable insights
and detailed projections of the future. What’s at stake, says Beer, is the
need for speed. Corporations have always endeavoured to be faster than
the competition; PR’s client-organisations are no exception. However,
temporality has changed in the platform economy; platforms distribute
almost everything faster by bringing producers and consumers together
more quickly. Like advertising and marketing, PR has always operated in
the space between the production and consumption of goods, services,
messages and ideas. As platform economies close this temporal gap (to
near ‘real-time’ in the case of messages and ideas) traditional PR workers
become squeezed. From the PR profession’s perspective, its added value
becomes shaky when PR work must be produced just-in-time and often
in ‘beta’, as explored in Chapter 4.
In addition to PR’s interprofessional struggles with its traditional
neighbours in advertising and marketing, the book also highlighted
the emergence of several new promotional occupations over the past
two decades. These new occupations include digital asset manage-
ment, digital content marketing and content strategy, mobile marketing,
programmatic advertising, SEO and search marketing, social media
management and user experience (UX) design. Some of these new
202 C. Bourne
occupations look very different from traditional advertising, marketing

and PR, while some look very similar indeed. PR roles appear to be
holding value fairly well thus far: according to Major Players’ 2022
salary survey, PR salaries compare favourably to digital-first specialisms
at entry level and junior roles (See Table 8.1). However, the digital-
first specialisms in Ecommerce & Digital Marketing, CRM/Data &
Analytics and Growth & Performance Marketing seem to command
higher pay further up the ladder. That said, several of the selected digital-
first specialisms do not list senior management categories, a situation that
is likely to evolve as these occupations mature.
Meanwhile, several emerging digital-first specialisms are taking steps
towards professionalisation. In the UK, there are now professional asso-
ciations for branded content marketing (thebcma.info), digital marketing
and social media management (e.g. digitalmarketinginstitute.com), data
marketing (dma.org.uk) and user experience design (uxpa-uk.org). Since
many of the newest promotional professions exist because of digital
platforms, everything about the way they work responds to platforms,
even where these specialisms also respond to client-organisations too.
In this era of platformisation, we may need to think rather differently
about professionalisation processes for PR and adjacent specialisms going
forward, as I go on to explore later in the chapter.
The PR Professional: Individual Boundary

Struggles
In addition to interprofessional boundary-work, the discourse analyt-
ical chapters also revealed boundary-work engaged in by individual
PR professionals. This was the key theme in Chapter 5, which exam-
ined diversity initiatives as part of professional boundary-work in UK
public relations. Several diversity initiatives in UK PR supposedly enable
Black and Brown practitioners to cross into the profession’s predom-
inantly white spaces. A key argument emerging from Chapter 5 is
that diversity is an expansionary discourse that has helped to glob-
alise the PR industry, incorporating Black and Brown practitioners as
commodities for industry expansion, without giving these practitioners
Table 8.1 UK Salary scales for PR roles vs select platformised roles
Ecommerce & digital Growth & performance Social, content
PR & Comms marketing CRM/Data & analytics marketing & influencer UX & UI
Press £32– Digital marketing £20– CRM or £30– SEO or PPC/Paid £25– Content £30– Junior £35–50 k
officer/Comms 40 k executive 35 k executive 40 k social 30 k manager 40 k UX
executive executive designer
PR £45– Ecommerce £35– Data analyst £35– SEO or Growth £40– Content £40– UX £35–70 k
manager/Comms 55 k manager 55 k 45 k Marketing 50 k strate- 50 k researcher
manager manager gist
Senior £55– Head of £70– Data scientist £400– Paid £55– Social £40– Mid- £50–65 k
PR/Comms 65 k online/Digital 90 k £600 Media/Biddable 60 k media 60 k weight
manager day account strate- UX
rate1 director gist designer
Head of £65– Head of £70– Head of CRM £70– Head of PPC £75– Head £45– UX £65–75 k
PR/Head of 80 k E-commerce 100 k 110 k search/Biddable 90 k of 50 k copy-
media social writer
relations
Director of £90– Director of £100– *** *** *** *** Influencer £60– UX £90–120 k
communi- 120 k online/E- 110 k Director 80 k Director
cations commerce
1 Thedata scientist role only featured in the freelance category of Major Player’s 2022 survey, after featuring as a
permanent role commanding an average of £50–70 k in 2021
Source Major Players (2022)
8 Conclusion: Be Platformised
203
204 C. Bourne
true professional voice or legitimacy. However, in this chapter, I was

primarily concerned with protectionist discourses as a form of profes-
sional boundary-work within the PR profession itself, as PR’s influential
‘in-groups’ seek to protect the profession’s status quo by deterring indi-
vidual professionals whose arrival might change the profession from the
inside out. While racial inequalities have always been a feature of UK
PR, Chapter 5’s discussions will be familiar to countless PR practitioners
around the world, since the PR profession in many countries mirrors its
privileged groups.
Chapter 5 further highlighted the very real concern that digital plat-
formisation is now intensifying racial inequalities in wider society. Many
of the digital tools that shape platform environs have been designed with
racialised biases. Meanwhile, social media platforms often encourage,
or fail to censure, racial trolling. Critical research on digital platforms
now offers plentiful evidence of the conjuncture of racial capitalism
with platform capitalism (McMillan Cottom, 2020). In UK PR, this
conjuncture occurs, for example, in recruitment practices where digital
HR tools enact biases against certain candidates. For practitioners of
colour, negotiating race as boundary-work can be the normative expe-
rience of PR work, not just when entering the profession, but when
seeking progression and promotion, as well as in everyday encounters
with colleagues, managers and clients. I concluded in Chapter 5 that a
wider silence protects racist structures in the PR industry, and that such
silencing habits of power are not only masked by diversity initiatives,
these silencing habits are likely to strengthen rather than dissolve under
platform capitalism.
Chapter 7 imagined what the PR profession might look like once
certain AI and automation systems—currently branded as ‘digital
employees’—evolve from transactional customer service functions into
more intuitive, empathy-driven and advisory relationships required to
execute PR work. PR’s professional discourses already encompass both
human and non-human agency—we are not so far off from witnessing
PR-bots from one organisation interacting with marketing-bots from
another organisation, or with press-bots in the media. Chapter 7 drew
on an e-brochure from UneeQ, an AI avatar company, to presage
PR’s future. UneeQ’s content marketing brochure exemplified the rapid
acceptance of AI and automation into the world of work. Accordingly,

Chapter 7 examined the high-tech sector’s totalising ambition to disrupt
all professional work as part of expansionary global discourse backed by
billions in investment finance, and widespread support from private and
public sector elites (Bourne, 2019). Against such powerful backing, few
professions can successfully protect and cordon off their human knowl-
edge and expertise from AI’s advances. While Chapter 7 highlighted
field-level boundary-work between PR and the high-tech sector, a more
poignant struggle faces individual PR professionals as their roles become
a site of professional boundary-work, as their daily PR tasks are shared
with, executed alongside, or taken over by non-human agents, powered
by artificial intelligence. Chapter 7 concluded that while AI and automa-
tion are often depicted as a question of robots replacing human workers,
the issue is more realistically framed as one in which professional work
could be outsourced, wholly or partly, to cloud-based platforms.
Reconfiguring PR Knowledge in the Digital

Age
Research in the sociology of professions has found that new technolo-
gies can trigger new work practices, occupational reconfigurations, and
professional identities as professions renegotiate new boundaries with
each other (Goto, 2021). Successful metamorphosis therefore plays a
key role in a profession’s capacity to survive prolonged digital disruption
(Utesheva et al., 2016). Professions that are early-adopters of new tech-
nologies are generally quick to claim “a new visionary identity template”
even before new technologies are assimilated into professional routines
(Goto, 2021: 18). However, PR was a relatively late adopter of digital
platform technologies. Only in the mid to late 2010s did more savvy
PR practitioners adopt digital tools that might put them on a par with
their sales and marketing peers (Saxe, 2016; USC Annenberg, 2019). To
this end, while history has proved PR flexible enough to assimilate new
skills and services, PR’s professional habitus may have been too rigid
where platformised technologies are concerned. Late adoption of the
digital has put PR at a disadvantage against advertising and marketing, as
206 C. Bourne
well as a host of new promotional specialisms. While PR may continue

to command comparable salaries (See Table 8.1), PR skills have been
encroached on by these newer digital-first specialisms. A useful way to
locate PR’s place in the new digital landscape is to understand how
different forms of promotional work relate to big data flows through
digital platforms. Drawing on Manovich (2011) and Dimitrov (2018)
I argue that promotional roles have become bifurcated into upstream
versus downstream activities within data flows, where upstream activ-
ities include all workers involved in wholesaling data strategies, while
downstream are those workers involved in retailing content (Bourne,
2022).
Upstream: Big Data Ownership, Management

and Strategy
Upstream activity centres on wholesaling data strategy and insight. Key

players are the major owners and controllers of data capital, including
digital platforms such as Google, Facebook, Amazon and Apple. They
in turn generate revenue by capitalising on big data generated through
digital traffic as users engage with content. Another upstream player is
the data brokerage industry; this large, opaque industry includes compa-
nies such as Acxiom, Datalogix and Epsilon, which supply big data and
data inferences to interested corporates and brands. Then there are the
professionals who specialise in big data. These include highly-valorised
data engineers who design, build, test and maintain platform infrastruc-
tures; data scientists, who design and test experiments using statistics,
calculus and linear algebra; data analysts, who implement strategy around
data; audience strategists, tasked with protecting and growing value of
collective audiences; and digital knowledge managers, who control data
integrity for the organisation, brands, products, people, locations and
services (Baer, 2017; Liffreing, 2018). Data science in particular has been
dubbed the ‘sexiest job of the twenty-first century’ by the Harvard Busi-
ness Review (Davenport & Patil, 2012). Some of these big data experts
now work alongside or within promotional teams (See Table 8.1). These
working relationships represent new boundary-work in the professional

landscape.1
Midstream: Evolving Roles and Influence
Many large corporates (e.g. supermarkets, banks, retailers, utility and

travel companies) amass their own sizeable pools of first party data.
However, these pools do not always constitute big data, since the term
is less about data that is ‘big’ than it is about searching, aggregating
and cross-referencing large data sets (boyd & Crawford, 2012). These
large corporates could be said to occupy a mid-stream role: they are
able to invest in in-house technology stacks, whereas very few small to
medium sized firms would be in a position to do this, placing smaller
firms very firmly downstream with other content producers. The rela-
tionship between large corporates and digital platforms is even more
ambivalent, according to Kenney et al. (2020) because many corporates
could be said to ‘work’ for platforms in the sense that a “search for Nike
on Google may trigger an advertisement by either Nike or another firm,
and the appearance of this advertisement triggers a micropayment to
Google” (2020: 22). In this example, Nike’s work therefore represents
free labour for Google, while for Nike, it is the cost of doing business.
Larger media publishers including national newspapers and print
media, broadcast, cable and streaming media providers are mid-stream
operators too. (Small media publishers are weaker in influence and
operate downstream.) Larger media publishers historically derived much
of their power, profitability and significance from controlling old media
technologies and channels (Nielsen & Ganter, 2018). However, the
digital platform business model disarticulates publishers’ power by
closing the gap between media production and consumption when plat-
forms make large volumes of mostly free, shareable media content avail-
able to consumers. To earn revenue, traditional media publishers increas-
ingly had to craft their strategy around digital platform tools, but found
1There are many other workers not included in this brief discussion, including content
moderators; and workers involved in data mining, who are not generally experts in big data
manipulation or analysis (See Kennedy 2016).
208 C. Bourne
themselves acting as little more than digital traffic drivers, shunting their
media content towards platforms in order to generate advertising revenue
(Rein & Venturini, 2018). The largest media publishers can invest seri-
ously in driving digital media traffic, but platformisation has, at least
temporarily, converted media publishers into wholesale producers of
content. Recent developments could shift this power imbalance. This
includes legislative change—in 2022, Google announced that it would
pay more than 300 European publishers for their news content (Chee,
2022). It is also possible that one or two large media publishers could
evolve into big tech platforms themselves.
Downstream: Battle for Content Production
Downstream, meanwhile, is a vast swath of workers involved in retailing

digital content (Dimitrov, 2018). Content production is the knowl-
edge apparatus for digital platforms, and the strategic link between
platform producers, consumers and intermediaries (O’Farrell, 2005).
Content producers include journalists and other media production
workers, as well as advertising, marketing and PR practitioners who
are involved in retailing digital content. The declining status of tradi-
tional media and promotional work taking place ‘downstream’ of data
flows is a matter of some concern, as outlined in Chapters 3 and 4.
Downstream, media and promotional activity are collectively described
as ‘content creation’. This catch-all phrase incorporates expert activity
by professionals who spent many years perfecting their skills in news
and feature writing, investigative coverage, film and video production,
magazine publishing, speechwriting, copywriting, blogging, vlogging,
photography, graphic design and animation. Nevertheless, in a plat-
formised media world, ‘content’, no matter how complex, painstakingly
conceived, richly textured or aesthetically beautiful, becomes simply a
digital object combining creative content with metadata (Bourne, 2022).
Metadata consists of hidden, descriptive material generated behind the
scenes to tag content as it traverses digital spaces. This original metadata
then combines with accumulated metadata from likes, comments and
reactions generated by platform users (Dushay, 2002). From the perspec-

tive of platform owners and media publishers, the outputs of professional
content production is no longer approached as content but simply as
metadata (Andrejevic et al., 2015). Ultimately, professional content itself
becomes commoditised and devalued, its culturally symbolic dimen-
sions downplayed, because the real value lies in the metadata and the
experience it delivers as the digital content ‘comes alive’ on a platform
through sharing and manipulation (Collister, 2016; Dushay, 2002). The
experiential ‘liveness’ attached to content produced by digital marketers,
social media managers, PR practitioners and others is what generates
advertising revenue for platforms, while capturing additional consumer
data for future predictive customer profiling, analysis and data strategy
(Bilton, 2019).
Consequently, much of traditional PR work is being collectively
commoditised and devalued by digital platforms. The skills that PR
practitioners once honed when producing content to inform, educate
or entertain no longer hold the same professional status when millions
of digital content producers do similar things. In the digital age, the PR
profession has battled to position its practitioners as the crème-de-la-
crème of digital storytellers, able to build online relationships between
organisations and publics, large and small, by developing new stories
all the time. However, the storyteller role is problematic even where
PR storytelling is data-driven (i.e. starting upstream) because it is still
content production—a downstream activity, which can be executed by
anyone. This locates much of contemporary PR at the centre of a
bunfight with other digital content providers, both professional and
amateur.
It would seem that, in the digital age, PR’s perennial pursuit of
strategic influence must now combine both greater proximity to the
client (i.e. PR’s traditional quest for a ‘seat at the board’), together with
greater proximity to digital platforms. This will entail building greater
digital capital for the PR profession, even a collective digital habitus,
in order to situate PR’s professional expertise further upstream of data
flows. Greater digital capital for PR goes beyond understanding pack-
aged digital tools for existing PR tasks. Professional digital capital is
likely to mean influencing, even conceiving, the design of new digital PR
210 C. Bourne
tools. Digital capital is also likely to mean hiring people into PR who
have stronger data and programming skills. Additionally, according to
Sevigny (2021), digital capital includes breaking into corporate conver-
sations about AI, automation and digital technologies, understanding the
language of big data experts, and encouraging greater engagement with
the concepts and culture of AI, data science and technology. Only then
can PR be at the table to take part in forging client-organisations’ digital
strategies, including the creation of automated promotional tools such as
bots, apps or even data-management systems (Sevigny, 2021).
Platforms: Disarticulating Professional Work

The quest to relocate PR skills further upstream of digital platformisa-
tion must begin sooner rather than later. Platforms are rewriting labour
relationships throughout the global economy; and blurring the bound-
aries of the firm by reorganising where and how work takes place (Goto,
2021; Kenney et al., 2020; Muzio et al., 2019; Nelson & Irwin, 2014).
Studies of platformised labour conditions suggest that PR professionals
will face further disarticulation of cherished skills and processes as a
result of digital transformations in the workplace. To begin with, disar-
ticulation happens through taskification, involving the piecemealing or
slicing of work activity into smaller activities and tasks that can, for
example, be performed by AI tools or by crowdsourcing to amateurs and
gig-workers (Chen & Sun, 2020; Poutanen et al., 2020). The second
digital disruption of professional labour is individualisation (Kovalainen
et al., 2020). This process reverses the spatial agglomeration of labour
that has obtained since the industrial revolution, where large groups of
workers commuted to central locations where they worked together in
factories, urban office buildings or out-of-town campuses. In a partial
reversal of this longstanding practice, dedicated collaborative work plat-
forms, digital tools and devices allow more professionals to work on their
own from home or off-site, with fewer in-person interactions. The third
digital disarticulation of professional work involves changes in speed
and temporality governing turnaround times for client work, for media
outputs, and for meeting consumer or stakeholder expectations of on-

demand service (Beer, 2019; Chen & Sun, 2020). Some refer to this as
the ‘Uberisation’ of work, since any workers subject to an increasingly
hectic work tempo find it hard to keep up, even though they are likely
to be tracked by algorithmic systems.
Closely related to speed and temporality is agility. Agile work is
marked by constant iterative processes of production, involving much
‘sprinting’ by teams. This labour process grew up in the software
industry2 before moving into project management and general manage-
ment, as well as into marketing and PR (See Workfront, 2015; van
Ruler, 2015). In promotional work, agile processes enable practitioners
to use dataveillance techniques for delivering hyper-relevance through
more personalised content and choice (Darmody & Zwick, 2020). The
ability to deliver hyper-relevance to consumers and other stakeholders is,
in turn, dependent on promotional workers’ understanding of constantly
changing platform architectures (Bishop, 2020; Duffy et al., 2019). Agile
processes are not without problems, since this managerial approach is
often used to manage ambiguity, where a plethora of processes, timelines
and metrics can give workers a false impression of ownership and control
over their own work (Posner, 2022).
A related form of disarticulation is the demand for expansive or M-
shaped skills, which stems from the platform economy’s need for speed
and agility. Expansive skills are a hallmark of certain technical elites,
notably data scientists who combine STEM3 capabilities in statistics,
pattern recognition and analysis, and/or digital technologies, with skills
in analysing human psychology and behaviour, as well as the soft skills
and chemistry needed to get along with colleagues, managers and clients
(Fiore-Gartland & Tanweer, 2016). To this, Avnoon (2021) also adds the
ability to add new skills at the drop of a hat, for instance media skills,
storytelling and content strategy. Bartosova (2011) suggests that media
and promotional workers can build their M-shaped skills by starting
skills acquisition in reverse, moving rapidly from acquiring symbolic and
2 Agile dates its provenance to the authors of the Agile Manifesto, a set of programmer values
devised in 2001 (See more in Posner [2022]).
3 Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics.
212 C. Bourne
Algorithmic
Taskification Individualisation Speed Agility M-shaped skills
governance
Replacing large group in-

Slicing work into smaller Increasingly hectic work Constantly iterative Combining multiple skillsets. Tracking and ranking worker
person work settings with
tasks, which can be done by tempo to meet expectatons production processes, Absorbing more skills on inputs/outputs with software
individuals working
AI tools or crowdsourcing of service on-demand always in 'beta' steep learning curves tools and devices
home/offsite
Fig. 8.1 How platforms disarticulate professional skills
communicative skills to conquering data-driven skills and analytics in

order to compete further upstream. The final form of labour disartic-
ulation is increased algorithmic governance (Kovalainen et al., 2020).
This includes the software and hardware used by platforms, employers
and even clients to track and evaluate PR practitioners’ work inputs and
outputs.
The disarticulation illustrated in Fig. 8.1 is not taking place evenly in
all professions or even in different regions, but the process is underway.
Disparities also apply to professionals’ ability to build digital capital in
order to move further upstream of data flows. Practitioners wanting to
keep up with the pace of digital change will be helped or hindered by
the type of company they work for, and the sector or country they are
in. Those working for global PR firms or well-resourced in-house teams
will be at an advantage since larger companies are fast-tracking digital
transformation, even starting ‘digital first’ subsidiaries to beat the compe-
tition (Marr, 2020). If PR work is further disarticulated along some or
all of the paths indicated in Fig. 8.1, then there are questions to be asked
about the long-term future of the PR profession; these I explore in the
final section of the chapter.
PR Futures
Client vs Platform Imperatives
This book’s exploration of PR’s professional discourses appears even

while a wider debate takes place in the social sciences about the poten-
tial demise of professions altogether. Muzio et al. (2019) point to a
number of threats to professions, both political, economic and tech-

nological. They acknowledge that digital platform technologies are a
uniquely disruptive force, without historical precedent, affecting both
low-skilled and high-skilled occupations. Writing a few years earlier,
Susskind and Susskind (2015) predicted two possible futures for the
professions. The first would be reassuringly familiar, simply a more
efficient version of what already exists, with more standardised and
systematised work routines. The second future would be a very different
proposition that could transform the way professional expertise is made
available in society. Susskind and Susskind resolve that initially, the two
futures will be realised in parallel, but in the long run, the second future
will come to dominate so that professions are steadily dismantled.
The second future could arrive even more quickly for PR because the
profession sits between two tectonic plates. The Big Tech platforms make
up the first tectonic plate: their stake in the promotional professions is
‘stickier’ than in other professions currently facing digital disruption (e.g.
law and accountancy) because Big Tech platforms are the largest players
in the promotional industries today. Google (owned by Alphabet) and
Facebook (owned by Meta) are the world’s largest advertising companies
with more advertising ‘real estate’ for rent than any traditional media
publisher (print, broadcast, cable, online) can hope to offer. Big Tech4
platforms also provide marketing services to brands including just-in-
time market research services, as well as digital marketing and design
tools. Platform services are not limited to advertising and marketing;
social media companies operate directly in the PR space by positioning
their platforms as the ideal way to build relationships and communities,
support causes, and offer voice. Platforms not only possess the knowledge
and tools for managing communities, promoting causes and amplifying
voice online, they also set the algorithmic rules and protocols for how
this communication is most effectively achieved in digital spaces e.g.
via likes, ‘trending’, engagement. To this end, Tesla’s CEO Elon Musk
has used Twitter as his personal press office for years, even shutting down
4 Here, the term ‘Big Tech’ includes not just the big social media platforms, but also Amazon.
While not a social media platform Amazon is one of the world’s largest players in digital
advertising. Amazon’s foray into social media via Spark, was short lived; the service was limited
to Amazon Prime users.
214 C. Bourne
Tesla’s PR department in 2021. Musk had 93.6 m Twitter followers at the

time of writing—few press offices can ever hope to have this reach. Some
regard Musk’s 2022 bid to purchase Twitter as a logical progression of his
platformised PR strategy.
Client-organisations—corporates, brands and other organisations—
make up the other tectonic plate forging the future of PR. As outlined
in Chapter 5, client-organisations desire numbers (even vaguely accu-
rate numbers), efficiency and ROI. Platforms’ ability to deliver big
data, efficient campaigns and ROI makes them indispensable partners
to client-organisations, potentially cutting out PR and marketing as the
‘middleman’. For example, platforms’ beta-creativity services (discussed
in Chapter 5) equip client-organisations to test campaigns on select
digital audiences and tweak messages algorithmically before widening
the campaign net. Beta testing cuts down on hit-or-miss campaign
efforts, reducing corporate risk. Platforms’ ever-expanding services to
client-organisations could undermine PR professionals’ role as the domi-
nant interface between organisations and their publics. Platform-client
tectonic plates could move closer together, as suggested in Chapter 7,
which explored the implications of next-generation AI and automation
technologies for PR. I contemplated a future in which clients and bosses
might easily forego interactions with human PR advisers in favour of
pseudo-relationships with cheaper, more pliable, always-on PR avatars.
These AI machines would not need to emulate all that human PR prac-
titioners can offer so long as they can deliver PR outcomes more quickly
and efficiently. Chapter 7 ended with a few speculations about the future,
including a world in which AI and automation technologies combine the
‘client’ and platform as one.
PR Problems, Solutions and Agency
Susskind and Susskind (2015) believe the time has come for all profes-
sions—not just PR—to abandon firmly held beliefs and practices. They
argue that once upon a time professionals’ source of differentiation lay
primarily in their access to data or information that others did not have.
But this no longer holds true. Certainly, in the case of PR, profes-
sionals’ access to media and other opinion formers is no longer a unique
selling point. Susskind and Susskind further maintain that many of
the tasks in professional work were already repetitive and routinised
before the digital age, and that professions are prone to exaggerating
the number of occasions where “deep expertise is genuinely required”
(2015: 279). Likewise, they add, various problems tackled by profes-
sionals are defined by solutions and proprietary tools that professions
have themselves developed. Susskind and Susskind argue that in an era
of increasingly capable systems, “the professions, or elements of them,
should survive and prosper because they bring value and benefits that no
system or tool can” (2015: 45). The authors go on to say that professions
must disentangle themselves from the problems and complications they
have evolved to address and instead ask ‘to what problems are the profes-
sions our solution?’ (2015: 268). If platformisation does indeed instigate
‘the end of PR as we know it’, then Susskind and Susskind’s outlook
affirms that, for PR, this could be the beginning of something better—a
time of opportunity, excitement and new approaches—less focused on
protecting the way things have been, on cynically expanding into other
professions’ territory, or hybridising into still further specialisms. If such
a future is to emerge, then PR must exert greater agency over its future
in the digital age (Saari et al., 2020).
PR: Representing the Digital Commons?
What might the PR profession’s collective agency be unleashed to do?

For Susskind and Susskind, two possible routes lie ahead in a world
beyond professions. One route leads to a society in which “practical
expertise is a shared online resource, freely available and maintained in a
collaborative spirit” (2015: 307). This route channels the notion of the
digital commons (See, for example, Dulong du Rosnay & Stalder, 2020;
Muldoon, 2022). The second route leads to a society where such knowl-
edge and experience are available online but owned and controlled by
gatekeepers such as digital platforms and the wider tech sector, who will
charge for access. In examining these routes, we must centre one of PR’s
216 C. Bourne
major shortcomings as a profession—most people cannot afford or access

PR services—leading Munshi and Kurian (2021) to question whether
the ‘public’ in public relations is really public at all. They contend that
PR discourses have long been obsessed with aligning with dominant
elite publics who relentlessly promote their goods, services and ideas to
the many who are not represented at all. Holtzhausen (2016) adds that
PR’s promotional inequity is exacerbated in the digital age, since big
data is not expected to empower stakeholders but instead to reproduce
hegemony over them.
Munshi and Kurian argue that to truly live up to the ‘public’ in its
name, PR needs to situate itself “in the larger context of citizenship,
the values and ethics that inform it and the attitudes and behaviours
that characterize it” (2016: 405). Similarly, when writing about PR in
financial markets, I maintained that financial inequality was the most
crucial issue arising from the 2008 global financial crisis; it remains no
less crucial today (Bourne, 2017). I proposed that if PR experts working
in financial markets could unite on the single issue of financial inequality
and take action, instead of paying lip service to corporate-sponsored
financial literacy programmes, such collective action could well lay the
foundation for the PR profession to reasonably associate itself with
building and managing trust. In the digital age, surely all professions—
not just PR—have a moral imperative to represent the marginalised and
the under-represented, rather than the many elite groups who have access
to technologies and have demonstrated repeatedly that they can and will
look after themselves before all others. In other words, if the so-called
fourth industrial revolution is indeed the death knell for professions as
we know them today, then surely the greatest opportunity for profes-
sional meaning in PR’s future lies in addressing the planetary digital
divide. This route presents considerable challenges of course, not least
ensuring that fulfilling and meaningful PR work on behalf of the under-
represented can also be adequately compensated. Representing society’s
marginalised is an audacious goal requiring collaborative policy and
pooled resources from private, public and third sector concerns, but
audacious goals are the requisite response to the radical change now
facing the PR profession.
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Index
A Always-on 4, 15, 88, 185, 212

Accenture 16 Amazon 2, 11, 70, 83, 197, 204,
Accountancy 31, 43, 44, 139, 211 211
Addressability 73 Amelia AI 170, 171, 174, 178
Adtech 83 Artificial Intelligence (AI) 3, 4, 19,
Advertising 3, 6, 8, 12, 15, 16, 20, 21, 28, 38, 44, 54, 74, 84,
21, 31, 33, 34, 36, 37, 39, 169–185, 187, 189, 190, 202,
51–56, 58, 60, 70–72, 81–89, 203, 208, 212
93–96, 98, 99, 101, 116, 118, The Atlantic 150, 153
157, 175, 196–200, 203, 206, Audience insights 82
207, 211 Audience strategists 56, 70, 204
‘Advertising for trust’ 7 Author’s warrant 19
Agile (project management) 209 Automation 21, 22, 28, 38, 51, 54,
AI avatars 44, 178, 180–185, 188, 171, 173, 175–177, 179, 182,
190, 202. See also Avatars 189, 190, 203, 208, 212
Algorithmic PR 177, 188 Avatars 170, 174, 182, 185–188,
Algorithms 212
algorithmic benchmark 131
algorithmic culture 171
algorithmic governance 210
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2022 223

and Organizations, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-13956-7
224 Index
B Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity

BAME 2020 112, 113 34, 81
Bell Pottinger 11, 43 Canva 66, 68, 139
Beta creativity 90, 91, 212 Charity PR 9
Big data 2, 8, 21, 53–55, 57, 63, 64, Chartered Institute of Public
66, 69, 72, 73, 170–173, 176, Relations (CIPR) 5, 42, 54,
199, 204, 205, 208, 212, 214 110–112, 119–121, 123, 124,
Black Lives Matter 10, 120 126, 130, 160
Black PR professionals 20, 128, 129 Chatbots 3, 170, 172, 174, 180,
Blogging 71, 206 183, 190
The Blueprint 110, 112, 129, 130 Chatham House rule 121
BME PR Pros 110–113, 120, 127, Chemistry (agency-client) 7, 116,
128 178, 209
Bots 149, 171, 173, 174, 176, 177, Chief creative officer (CCO) 83, 96,
184, 208. See also Chatbots 97
Boundaries 3–5, 7, 12, 18–20, Chief Executives 82–84, 91, 92
27–29, 32–36, 38, 43, 45, 51, Chief marketing officer (CMO) 96,
52, 57, 58, 60, 85, 91, 100, 99, 182
117, 118, 137, 139, 141, 143, CIPR Diversity and Inclusion
144, 171, 172, 174, 189, Network 128
196–199, 203, 208 CIPR State of the Profession report
horizontal 34–36 54
vertical 34, 95 Client 6–8, 10, 12, 15, 19–21, 31,
Boundary work 34, 44, 55, 62, 65–69, 74, 82,
expansionary 21, 33, 41, 60, 119, 85, 86, 91–95, 97, 99, 100,
148, 195, 198 102, 116, 117, 127–129, 139,
hybridising 21, 41, 119, 148, 146, 158, 170, 172, 177, 182,
182, 195 184–188, 202, 207–210, 212
protectionist 21, 34–36, 41, 129, Code-switching 117
148, 156, 195, 198, 202 Commtech 52
Brand stewards 55 Consumer PR 9, 17, 69
Breakingviews 150, 152 Content
Bytedance 2, 89 content creation 71, 99, 101,
175–177, 206
content marketing, marketers 4,
8, 19, 33, 34, 56, 200, 202
C content moderation 205
Canadian Public Relations Society
(CPRS) 71
Index 225
content production 4, 16, 57, downstream 70, 71, 204, 206

60–63, 69, 70, 72, 90, 115, upstream 70, 204, 207, 210
118, 176, 196, 197, 206, 207 The ‘data gaze’ 63, 199
content strategy, strategists 82, Data-management tools 66
199, 209 Data scientists 70, 184, 201, 204,
Continuous Professional 209
Development (CPD) 12 Della AI 171
Conversion funnel 52, 56 Deloitte 16
Copyright 82 Digital asset management 4, 97, 199
Corporate rhetoric 176 Digital capital 4, 55, 207, 208, 210
Covid-19 pandemic 15, 16, 28, 57, Digital content marketing 13, 17,
93, 100, 120, 124, 170, 173 51, 56, 178, 199
Creative analytics 84 Digital divide 214
Creativity 21, 34, 59, 81, 82, Digital knowledge managers 71, 204
84–90, 100–102, 119, 198 Digital marketing 21, 34, 52,
Creativity in PR survey 34 54–60, 62, 63, 66, 67, 69, 73,
Cultural discourse analysis 30 197, 200, 201, 211
Customer Relationship Management Digital natives 15
(CRM) 36, 51, 56, 64–66, Digital platform 1–5, 22, 28, 52,
200, 201 61, 68, 70–72, 82, 87, 90, 91,
99–101, 131, 170–172, 177,
196, 197, 200, 202–207, 211,
D 213
Daily Beast 150, 155 Digital tools 13, 16, 28, 52, 53, 56,
Data 57, 90, 131, 184, 202, 203,
data asset management 84 207, 208. See also Software
database 87, 88 tools
data-driven 51, 53, 57, 69, 71, Disinformation campaign 11
72, 74, 82, 84, 96, 99, 100, Diversity
197, 199, 207, 210 diversity and inclusion 5, 109,
data-driven creativity 21, 88 111, 112, 118, 119, 121, 122,
data integrity 71, 204 124
data privacy 11 diversity dividend 121–124
data stream 53, 88 diversity initiatives 109–111, 113,
metadata 101, 206 114, 117, 118, 121, 131, 200,
Data analysts 70, 201, 204 202
Data engineers 184, 204 Downstream 70, 71, 204–207. See
Data flows 2, 60, 70, 71, 204, 206, also Data flows; Upstream
207, 210
226 Index
E Foucauldian discourse analysis 31

Earned creative 91–93, 97, 98 Funnel 140. See also Conversion
Earned media 55, 60, 62, 63, 84, 85 funnel
Ecommerce 64, 200, 201
Edelman
Edelman Creative Newsroom 82
G
Edelman, Richard 82, 83, 91–100
Gatekeepers 54, 114, 144, 162, 213
Edelman Trust Barometer 92
Gender 5, 9, 21, 110, 111, 119
Elites 5, 6, 118, 131, 138, 140, 153,
Gen Z 14, 15, 28. See also
161, 162, 190, 203, 209, 214
Postmillennials
Email marketing 55, 56, 62, 175
Gig economy 187, 189
Emotion 54, 169, 173, 181, 182,
Global financial crisis 14, 21, 93,
189
94, 137, 140, 142, 162, 214
Emotional Intelligence (EQ) 169,
Global nomads 117
180
Global North 21
Emotional labour 116, 127, 178
Goldman Sachs 43, 139–141, 143,
Emotionally-charged networks 36
145–152, 155–163, 198
Employer branding 59
Google 2, 56, 64, 70, 72, 83, 89,
Employment rights 11
90, 102, 132, 177, 197,
Ethnicity 120, 170
204–206, 211
Everyday Sexism movement 10
Graphic design 71, 206
Grassroots activists 10, 33
The Great Resignation 16, 171
F
Facebook 2, 11, 33, 70, 72, 83,
89–91, 102, 132, 142, 160,
177, 197, 204, 211 H
Fake news 4, 36, 176 Habitus 43, 116, 122, 203, 207
Fashion PR 9 High-tech industry 19
Feminisation 9, 109 Hiring practices 14, 116. See also
Filter bubbles 4, 36, 72 Recruitment
Financial markets 10, 21, 138–141, Human-machine communication
145, 149, 159, 161, 162, 214 190
Financial PR/financial Human Resources (HR) 5, 6, 14,
communication 9, 17, 19, 35, 37, 39, 44, 59, 116,
138–140, 142, 146, 149, 159, 125, 202
161–163 Human rights 11
Financial press 147, 149, 157, 163 Hyper-relevance (of digital content)
Floyd, George 120, 126 209
Index 227
Hypervisibility/hypervisible 3, 21, LGBTQ+ 109

119, 138, 161, 164 Liminality 116, 117
Linkedin 56, 128
Litigation PR 9
I Lucas van Praag 146, 148, 159–163
IBM 16, 177
iMovie 66, 68
Impartiality 36 M
Individualisation (work tasks) 208 Machine learning 170, 171, 173,
Influencer 4, 55, 63, 67, 69, 96, 174, 176
118, 148, 175, 187, 197 Manifest brand communications 120
Influencer marketing, managers 51, Marcel AI 175
62, 65 Marketing 3, 4–6, 8, 12, 15, 20, 21,
Instagram 89, 90 27, 33, 35, 36, 39, 51–54,
Integrated Marketing 56–58, 60, 62, 63, 72, 73, 81,
Communications (IMC) 94 83, 89, 94, 96, 97, 112, 116,
Internal communications 68 118, 171, 174, 175, 178, 182,
IPsoft 170, 171, 174, 178 184, 185, 196, 197, 199–201,
Iterative processes 209. See also 203, 209, 211. See also Digital
Agile; Beta creativity marketing
Martech 52, 53
Martech industrial complex 52
J
Media asset management 84
Job mobility 36
Media monitoring 52, 175, 184
Journalists 3, 17, 36, 43, 54, 60, 62,
Medicine 6, 30, 32, 37, 196
67, 68, 71, 88, 101, 138, 139,
Mentemia 188
142, 144, 146–150, 153, 156,
Meta 2, 11, 211. See also Facebook
157, 159, 162, 163, 187, 206
Metadata 101, 206, 207. See also
Jurisdictions 6, 16, 18, 21, 27, 29,
Data
32, 43, 45
#MeToo 10
Metrics 9, 61, 65, 85
K Micro targeting 52, 185
Knowledge apparatus 70, 206 Millennials 14, 15
Mobile marketing 199
L
Landing page 56 N
Law 6, 21, 30, 32, 35, 37, 139, 196, Natural Language Processing (NLP)
211 3, 180
228 Index
Neural rendering 170, 174, 177, 178 micro-level 18, 31, 39

Neurodiverse 109 Professional genre 17, 40, 42, 58,
New York magazine 150, 151 120, 148, 198
New York Observer 157 Professional project 3, 6, 7, 9, 16,
New York Times 161 18, 20, 27, 29, 30, 45, 69, 70,
91, 109, 172, 178, 189, 196,
198, 199
O Profit & Loss (P&L) 9, 64, 73
OECD 14 Programmatic advertising 199
Offentlichkeitsarbeit 7 PRophet 184
Ogilvy 93, 94 PRovoke Media 34, 42, 111
Omnicom 93, 94, 97 Public affairs 58, 66
One-way communication 38 Publicis Groupe 97, 175
OpenAI 170 Public Relations and
Owned media 55, 61 Communications Association
(PRCA) 11, 111, 112
PwC 16
P
P&O Ferries 11
Paid media 33, 55, 62, 201 R
Partisanship 36 Race 18, 21, 35, 109–111, 113,
Payment-by-results 8 114, 116, 120, 127–130, 132,
Pay-Per-Click (PPC) 56, 62, 64, 201 154, 179
Peloton exercise equipment 11 Race in PR study 110, 112, 120,
Personalisation 73, 185 121, 128, 129
PESO model 55, 61, 62 Racial capitalism 113–115,
Platform capitalism 1, 4, 114, 131, 117–119, 131, 202
132, 202 Recruitment 5, 17, 19, 43, 58–63,
Platform marketer 73 66, 69, 73, 74, 116, 131, 139,
Political communication 9 197, 202. See also Hiring
Posthuman PR 21, 172, 188, 190 practices
Postmillennials 14, 15, 28. See also Recruitment advertising 58, 59
Gen Z Recruitment firms 58
Poststructural tradition 38 Robinhood Tax 10
Press cuttings 63 Rolling Stone magazine 147, 150,
PR Grand Prix award 83 156
Professional discourse analysis 18,
28, 29, 31, 39, 44, 45, 195
macro-level 18, 31
Index 229
S T
S4 Capital 84 Taibbi, Matt 140, 143, 147–149,
Search engine optimisation (SEO 151, 153, 156, 157
marketing) 4, 15, 51, 56, 61, Taskification 208
64, 66, 199, 201 Taylor Bennett Foundation 110,
Sentiment analysis 3, 52, 84, 177 111, 120
Shared media 55 Tayloristic principles 57
Shopify 64, 65 Technocapitalism 87, 88
Silence 35, 127–130, 132, 202 Technophobia (PR profession) 51,
Silicon Valley 90, 132 54, 69, 197
Silo-thinking 45 TikTok 2, 70, 89, 94, 197
The Slate 150, 154 Trust 11, 27, 84, 85, 96, 179, 214
Snapchat 89 Truth to power 11, 186
Social media 1, 3, 4, 8, 11, 15, 21, Tweets 56, 159, 177
33, 34, 36, 40, 42, 43, 52, 53, Twitter 43, 90, 142, 144, 149, 159,
55, 56, 59, 61–63, 65, 66, 82, 163, 177, 211, 212
89, 97, 118, 128, 131, 137, Two-way communication 8, 38
138, 140, 142–145, 147–149,
156, 157, 159, 161–164, 173,
175, 189, 198, 202, 207, 211 U
Social media management 4, 13, 21, Uber transport 11
51, 56, 58, 60, 62, 63, 66, 67, UBS 188
73, 196, 197, 199, 200 UK Black Communications
Soft skills 116, 178, 183, 197, 209 Network 112, 113
Software tools 67, 69, 72, 90, 187. UneeQ 169–171, 178–183,
See also Digital tools 185–188, 202
Sophie AI 170, 171, 174 Upstream 70, 72, 204, 207, 208,
Sorrell, Martin 84 210. See also Dataflows;
Speed (of platforms) 4, 99, 100, 209 Downstream
Stand with Standing Rock 10 User Experience/User Interface
Storytelling/organisational (UX/UI design) 56, 61, 64,
storytelling 33, 52, 87, 101, 90, 174, 199, 200
178, 197, 207, 209
Strategic counsel 72–74
Strategy 56, 63, 65, 67, 69, 70, 74, V
82, 89, 92, 96, 97, 101, 120, Vampire squid 140, 141, 143, 148,
158, 164, 176–178, 184, 204, 151, 156, 159, 162, 164
205, 207, 212 Visual storytelling 33, 34, 178
Sunday Times (London) 157 Vlogging 71, 206
230 Index
Volkswagen 11 WordPress 66, 68

Wordsmithing 33, 69
World Bank 10, 16
W World Economic Summit 92
Wall Street 145, 146, 149, 150, WPP 84, 93
156–159, 161, 163
Watson AI 177
Webinar 17, 19, 40, 42, 110,
Y
119–123, 125–130
Welcome packs 63 YouTube 42, 83, 89, 121
Whirlpool home appliances 11
Whistleblow 130
White habitus 124, 132 Z
White ignorance 126, 127 ZeroHedge 149

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COMMUNICATING IN

PROFESSIONS AND ORGANIZATIONS

• The growing importance of communication as a form of professional

Books in the series combine up to date overviews of issues of language

ISSN 2947-812X ISSN 2947-8138 (electronic)

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2022

Cover credit: oxygen/Getty Images

Jacob Mukherjee, Liz Moor, Michael Klontzas, Mirca Madianou, Milly

• An earlier version of Chapter 2 appeared in Bourne, C. (2019) The

Finally, much of this book was written during the COVID-19

1 Introduction: Public Relations in the Digital Age 1

Expanding into Advertising’s Creative Territory 96

Conclusion: Hypervisibility, Sociality and Professional

Fig. 1.1 Four types of platforms (Source Watts, 2020) 2

Table 3.1 Top trending skills—UK media & communications

Extract 3.1 Content Production 61

Extract 6.2 Wall Street PR Professionals Attack Goldman Sachs’

Platformising the Public Relations Profession

Fig. 1.1 Four types of platforms (Source Watts, 2020)

big data, cloud and mobile telephony together as an increasingly compet-

Increasingly, PR’s professional discourses have turned to the challenge

‘always-on’ for client-organisations and being forced to counter personal

(Valentini, 2015). However, PR practitioners now find their profes-

Stubbornness of Legacy Discourses

Public Relations as Professional Discourse

of the game, that, increasingly, they challenge and displace traditional

Different Cultures and Working Lives

PR also has markedly different professional cultures, with contrasts

up to manage the client-agency relationship, rather than to discharge

PR’s professional project is further hampered by a process of feminisa-

managerial expertise have potentially left PR practitioners adrift since

Second , PR’s professional discourses are an important area of research

associated with free trade and minimal government intervention in busi-

PR as Attractive, Creative Career

Despite these realities, the field of PR continues to expand, which brings

PR’s Critical Moment

2 2022 TBRC Business Research.

discourses as the greatest moments of challenge “where the commu-

3 The Baby boomers generation began approaching retirement in 2000.

latter illustrated by recent forays into advertising by global manage-

“It Is the People Who Dance…”

PR’s Professional Discourses: Theory

discursively constructs its boundaries, and how differences in field posi-

Some of that career overlapped with roles in related fields of sales,

How the Book Is Organised

future amidst the growing prospect of commoditisation and automation

Candlin, C. (2000). Reinventing the patient/client: New challenges to health-

Goto, M. (2021). Collective professional role identity in the age of artificial

USC Annenberg. (2018). The evolution of ethics: 2018 global communication

dismantling silos where PR as an occupational and intellectual domain

Expansion Protection Hybridisation

Fig. 2.1 Field-level Professional Discourse Analysis (Bourne, 2019)

PR’s Discursive Boundaries

engaged in a professional project must establish their legitimacy on an

Foucauldian discourse analysis (Bourne, 2017; Motion & Leitch, 2007).

profession’s discursive unity by subjecting PR’s central tenets to scrutiny

The first area of field-level boundary-work is expansionary discourses, these

The second significant area of boundary-work for the PR profession is

protectionist discourses can take place between PR and other manage-

1988; Bucher et al., 2016). PR’s horizontal boundary-work with adja-

PR industry subverts these claims by advancing PR’s professional skills

The third and final area of boundary-work examined in this book

Laskin observes that in previous decades, IR tasks were assigned to publi-