Burton St. John III

Saima Kazmi

Joshua Foust

Public relations are entering an era marked by increasing societal dissensus, where shared narratives are breaking down and contentious communication defines the public sphere. This edited volume argues that public relations must move beyond consensus-seeking models to engage with dissent as a critical feature of modern communication.

Narratives, Artifacts, and the Challenges of Meaning

Public Relations in Times of Dissensus

Kirsten A. Johnson

Modern mainstream journalism faces a very real disturbance of its foundational premise that credible news is gathered and articulated from an objective stance. This volume offers new examinations of how the traditional notion of objectivity is changing as professional journalists grapple with a rapidly evolving news terrain—one that has become increasingly crowded by those with no journalistic credentials. Examining historical antecedents, current dilemmas, international aspects, and theoretical considerations, contributors make the case that the journalist’s impulse to hold onto objectivity, and to ignore the increasing subjectivities to which citizens are attuned, actually contributes to the news media’s disconnect from today’s news consumer. Revealing how traditional journalism needs to incorporate “post-objective” stances, these essays stimulate further thought and conversation about news with a view in both theory and practice.

Essays on the Eclipse of Objectivity in Modern Journalism

News with a View

Juita-Elena (Wie) Yusuf

This edited collection focuses on theoretical and applied research-based observations concerning how experts, advocates, and institutions make climate change information accessible to different audiences. Communicating Climate Change concentrates on three key elements of climate change communication – access, relevance, and understandability – to provide an overview of how these aspects allow multiple groups of stakeholders to act on climate-related information to build resilience. Featuring contributions from a wide range of scholars from across different disciplines, this book explores a multitude of different scenarios and communication methods, including social media; public opinion surveys; participatory mapping; and video. Overall, climate change communication is addressed from three different perspectives: communicating with the public; communicating for stakeholder engagement; and organizational, institutional, risk, and disaster communication. With each chapter focusing on implications and applications for practice, this book will be of great interest to students and researchers of climate change and environmental communication, as well as practitioners interested in understanding how to better engage stakeholders through climate change-related communication.

Making Environmental Messaging Accessible

Communicating Climate Change

Margot Opdycke Lamme

Jacquie L'Etang

Over the centuries, scholars have studied how individuals, institutions and groups have used various rhetorical stances to persuade others to pay attention to, believe in, and adopt a course of action. The emergence of public relations as an identifiable and discrete occupation in the early 20th century led scholars to describe this new iteration of persuasion as a unique, more systematized, and technical form of wielding influence, resulting in an overemphasis on practice, frequently couched within an American historical context. This volume responds to such approaches by expanding the framework for understanding public relations history, investigating broad, conceptual questions concerning the ways in which public relations rose as a practice and a field within different cultures and countries at different times in history. With its unique cultural and contextual emphasis, Pathways to Public Relations shifts the paradigm of public relations history away from traditional methodologies and assumptions, and provides a new and unique entry point into this complicated arena.

Burton St. John III

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