Public relations and social morality as national identity: a cultural-economic examination of the US Government’s fight against venereal disease in the 1920s

ABSTRACT

A historical case study of how United States Public Health Service (USPHS) officials used public relations in an active attempt to construct meanings within cultural contexts both illuminates and extends the cultural-economic model (CEM) of public relations, which is based on the circuit of culture. The case shows how the CEM would benefit from exploring why practitioners act as they do, as understanding a producer’s motivation can provide even more understanding of the attempts to create a desired meaning.

一项关于美国公共卫生服务（USPHS）官员如何利用公共关系积极尝试在文化背景下构建意义的历史案例研究，阐明和扩展了基于文化回路的公共关系文化经济模型（CEM）。本案例展示了CEM将如何从探索为什么从业者会像他们那样行事中受益，因为了解生产者的积极性可以提供对于企图创造一个理想的意义更多的理解 。

Un estudio de caso histórico de como los funcionarios del Servicio de Salud Pública de los Estados Unidos (USPHS, por sus siglas en inglés) utilizaron las relaciones públicas en un intento activo para construir significados dentro de contextos culturales, ilumina y extiende el modelo económico-cultural (CEM, por sus siglas en inglés) de las relaciones públicas, que se basa en el circuito de cultura. El caso muestra cómo el CEM se beneficiaría al explorar el porqué los profesionales actúan como lo hacen, ya que comprender la motivación de un productor puede proporcionar una comprensión aún mayor de los intentos de crear un significado deseado.

KEYWORDS:

• Social hygiene
• government
• cultural-economic model of public relations
• history

Acknowledgments

I offer sincere thanks to the reviewers and audience members at the 2017 International History of Public Relations Conference in Bournemouth, UK, for their comments and questions, which informed this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. A separate campaign geared toward African American girls was referenced in the Youth and Life campaign materials, but I found no materials related to this campaign.

2. Higham (1988, p. 8) considered “native-born Americans” to be White, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant Americans. The concerns of Native American Indians appeared to be disregarded in this discourse.