Reputational capital in ‘the PR University’: public relations and market rationalities

ABSTRACT

Drawing on empirical data, this article identifies the emergence of the ‘PR University’ as an assemblage. Using a case study of university press officers’ work, I analyse how this form of media relations PR stages competition between UK universities through the media. A key form of this competition centres on the accumulation and circulation of what I term ‘reputational capital’. I focus on one core element of reputational capital – media stories about HE research and the circulation of research metrics. I argue that the assemblage of the public relations (PR) University pulls the HE sector into dialogue with PR principles and practices in the context of recent shifts towards market rationalities. But this relationship is not a simple cause and effect model in which increasing HE ‘marketisation’ creates a boom in universities’ PR practices, or intensifying investment in PR by universities merely amplifies or legitimises existing market tendencies in the sector. I argue that the PR University as assemblage starts generating its own logics around which actors in the field must orient themselves. More broadly, the PR University operates not only to promote an individual university’s market position, but also acts upon public debates about the social role, legitimacy and financing of UK Higher Education.

KEYWORDS:

• Assemblage
• competition
• market rationalities
• neoliberalisation
• promotional culture
• public relations
• reputational capital
• universities
• values

Acknowledgements

My thanks to the following for their helpful insights: Paul Ashwin, Anne-Marie Fortier, John Holmwood, Adrian Mackenzie, Maureen McNeil, Andrew Sayer, Cindy Weber and anonymous reviewers.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Anne M. Cronin is a Reader in the Sociology Department at Lancaster University, UK. She is currently working on a monograph on public relations and the public sphere. Previous publications include: Advertising, Commercial Spaces and the Urban (2010) Palgrave Macmillan; Advertising Myths: The Strange Half-Lives of Images and Commodities (2004) Routledge; Advertising and Consumer Citizenship: Gender, Images and Rights (2000) Routledge. Cronin, A.M. & K. Hetherington (eds) (2008) Consuming the Entrepreneurial City: Image, Memory and Spectacle (2008) Routledge. Email address: [email protected].

Notes

1 The project’s data comprise 50 interviews with PR practitioners (including university press officers) and journalists working within the national media and education trade press, and some observation of PR work. Interviews lasted between 30 and 90 minutes. All participants and their employers have been anonymised.

2 The scope of the article does not enable a detailed account of the shifting media context (see Sinclair 2012).

3 I see reputational capital as one element of the broader, composite entity of ‘brand’, which is, ‘a platform for the patterning of activity, a mode of organising activities in time and space’ (Lury 2004, p. 1).

4 On shifting HE policy, see: https://www.gov.uk/government/topics/higher-education.

5 http://www.ucea.ac.uk/en/publications/index.cfm/plan15 (accessed 2 February 2016).

6 Although media coverage generated by PR is framed as ‘free’ (compared to buying advertising space), it is not without cost, as firms must pay for in-house or external agency PR practitioners.

7 In industry terms, this relates to the distinction between ‘owned media’ (universities’ own websites, twitter feeds, etc.) and ‘earned media’ (the media coverage gained by PR practices).

8 For instance, see its 2015 report, ‘Engines of growth: the Impact of research at Russell Group universities’: http://russellgroup.ac.uk/policy/publications/engines-of-growth-the-impact-of-research-at-russell-group-universities/.

9 One criticism is that the calculated costs are inaccurate, as they are based on standard advertising rate card prices. Companies very rarely pay this rate because they negotiate deals.

10 See Davis (2002) and L’Etang (2004) on PR’s understanding of ‘public opinion’.

11 The ‘impact’ agenda also encourages academics’ use of the media as engagement tools.

12 Also see http://publicuniversity.org.uk/.