Editor’s essay: Identity and/in/of public relations

In this themed issue, the Journal looks at the intersection of public relations and identity, which has been part of my academic research agenda for decades, inasmuch as the concept of identity has been an area of personal interest for me since childhood. Even before I knew any words to attach to the concept of identity, my lived experiences etched the importance of identity into my mind and thus into my intellectual journey.

As one example, in my kindergarten class at Morningside Elementary in Salt Lake City, Utah, students returned from Thanksgiving break to report on what they had eaten the past Thursday with their families. Feeling very embarrassed and out of place, I shared that my (immigrant) family had eaten noodles; all my classmates, one after another, recounted turkey-centered meals accompanied by various side dishes (none of which were noodles). As a college junior studying in France, I was publicly accosted by a White Frenchman who screamed at me (in French) that France was not a Japanese colony and that I should “go home,” never mind that my heritage is Chinese (not Japanese) and that my home was (and remains) the United States, not anywhere in Asia.

Identity research in public relations

In some ways, the start of identity-related research in public relations began with the work of scholars investigating such lived experiences of minority practitioners, particularly African Americans and Hispanic Americans (e.g., Kern-Foxworth, 1989; Kern-Foxworth, Gandy, Hines, & Miller, 1994; Layton, 1980; Len-Rios, 1998; Zerbinos & Clanton, 1993), as well as women (e.g., Cline et al., 1986; Toth & Cline, 1989). Later research connected various theoretical concepts in public relations to identity-defined practitioner groups delineated by race, ethnicity, gender, and sexual orientation (e.g., Ciszek & Logan, 2018; Ki, 2004; Mundy, 2015; Pompper, 2004, 2007; Sha, 1995, 2006; Sha & Ford, 2007; Tindall, 2009; Tindall & Waters, 2013).

Other research at the intersection of identity and public relations has examined the concept of identity beyond the boundaries of cultural groups. For example, Curtin and Gaither (2005) examined identity as one of five moments in their cultural-economic model of public relations. Sha (2009) connected organizational identities to organizational mission statements and public relations behaviors. Lellis (2012, p. 508) articulated “cause identity” as being a strong collective identity shared among organizations allied in support of a social cause. Sha, Tindall, and Sha (2012) connected organizational identity to corporate image and reputation. Ma (2018) examined the impact of organizational identity on publics’ attributions of guilt to organizations in times of crisis. Ni, Wang, and Sha (2019) incorporated identity into a theoretical framework for managing relationships (and conflict) with organizational publics.

In short, identity research in public relations, like the essence of identity itself, is constantly evolving. In the words of Hall (1994):

Cultural identity … is a matter of “becoming” as well as of “being.” It belongs to the future as much as to the past. It is not something which already exists, transcending place, time, history, and culture. Cultural identities come from somewhere, have histories. But, like everything which is historical, they undergo constant transformation. Far from being eternally fixed in some essentialised past, they are subject to the continuous “play” of history, culture, and power. (p. 225)

Identity of public relations

Just as public relations scholarship in the area of identity has evolved over time, so has the identity of public relations itself, both as a professional practice and as an academic discipline. Indeed, one of the challenges of being a journal devoted to the development of theory in public relations is that, at times, the very definition of public relations is unclear. Traditionally, core knowledge—such as definitions—of a subject area is disseminated in a field’s textbooks (Hilty, 2011), even though such knowledge, as disseminated, has sometimes generated both political and cultural controversy (cf. Britton, Woodward, Binkley, & Woodward, 1993).

In the most recently available citation analysis of public relations scholarship, Pasadeos, Berger, and Renfro (2010) noted that, from 2000 to 2005, the top-cited textbooks in public relations were Grunig and Hunt (1984) and Cutlip, Center, and Broom (1985, 1994). In their textbook, Managing Public Relations, Grunig and Hunt (1984) defined public relations as the “management of communication between an organization and its publics” (p. 4). The most-recent edition of Cutlip & Center’s Effective Public Relations textbook defines public relations as “the management function that establishes and maintains mutually beneficial relationships between an organization and the publics on whom its success or failure depends” (Broom & Sha, 2013. p. 2).

Although textbooks and professional associations in the field have offered myriad variations on definitions of public relations, four consistent elements across definitions are specified or implied to be (a) a focal organization or some other originator of activities and communications, (b) a public defined in relation to that organization or originator, (c) the organization-public relationship, and (d) the management of that relationship.

In this themed issue on identity and public relations, three articles examine the intersection of identity and public relations in quite different ways, while reflecting the history of not only that intersection, but also the field itself.

Queering PR: Directions in theory and research for public relations scholarship

Hall’s (1994) assertion that identity is a process of becoming, inasmuch as it is a matter of being, is well reflected in the article by Erica Ciszek, who offers some political and theoretical foundations of queer theory and articulates why queer theory should, and does, matter to the identity of public relations. For starters, queer theory is not about studying any specific identity group (e.g., lesbians or gays), but about critiquing, problematizing, and deconstructing identities, which themselves are “multiple, unstable, and fluid,” as Ciszek notes on page x.

As we enter an era of fluid identities, this article’s call for “proceeding queerly” (p. x) places public relations research squarely in the midst of that challenge, positioned to interrogate the subjectivities and intersectionalities of organizational publics and organizations themselves. In that process, scholars should carefully consider “the role of public relations in the production of a culture of normativity and the processes of constructing practices and identities that reinforce hierarchies” (p. x). For this journal in particular, Ciszek’s work reminds us that the very definition of theory in a journal purporting to advance theory in public relations should be interrogated, as should be the notions of research and the standards by which that research that is deemed scientifically sound.

Indeed, if “queer inquiry is a theoretical approach that problematizes binaries, resists identity as essential, challenges categorization, examines underlying power relations, and reveals contextuality,” as Ciszek notes (p. x), then what is the impact of queering on we scholars, ourselves? If queer theory, indeed, breaks down all categories, including binary ones such as scholar/practitioner, then who are we as humans in this category labeled “scholars?” If our own scholarly identity is both unstable and fluid, what impact does that have on the success or failure of individual public relations scholars in the tenure and promotion processes currently in place in universities? And if our disciplinary identity is so multiple and in flux, how do (or should?) we maintain our academic space as requiring independent curricular programs, or our academic place as meriting a discipline-centered research journal?

Understanding immigrant internal publics of organizations: Immigrant professionals’ adaptation and identity development

Taking a different scholarly approach to questions at the intersection of identity and public relations, Lan Ni, Qi Wang, and Anushree Gogate introduce in their article the concept of intercultural identity, an identity that spans different cultures. Their research extends the notion of avowed cultural identity to investigate the development of identities of immigrant professionals through processes of stress and adaptation. In particular, their investigation into how “cultural identity is formed in the first place and reformed when exposed to a second culture long term” (p. x, emphasis original) makes an important contribution to theory-building in public relations, which, to date, has largely studied cultural identity as a research concept without troubling too much to consider its ontological origins as a lived experience.

This article offers methodological exemplars in its careful descriptions of processes of sampling, data collection, data analysis, and researcher reflexivity, all of which demonstrate standards of rigorous scholarship in qualitative research. Furthermore, the conceptual framework presented here demonstrates the value of drawing on theories from other disciplines, in this case from intercultural communication, specifically from intercultural communication competence.

Beyond its application in this article to the development of micro-level identities of individual immigrant professionals, the stress-adaptation-growth model (cf. Kim, 2005) might be interesting, I believe, if applied to the meso-level identities of organizations as corporate bodies responding to environmental stressors and adapting to new organizational contexts, possibly growing new identity dimensions in that process. Of course, the concept of intercultural identity also offers fertile ground for future research on organizational publics. In addition to the research directions identified by the authors, future studies might consider immigrant employees working in non-white-collar jobs (e.g., lower-skilled employees), as well as involuntary immigrants (e.g., refugees, trafficked workers, enslaved laborers), all with the appropriate sensitivities and protocols for working with vulnerable research populations.

Building theory in public relations: Interorganizational relationships as a public relations paradigm

Regarding matters of appropriate sensitivity in research and evolving scholarship in a research field, I note that Mary Ann Ferguson’s article was first presented at an academic conference in 1984, when she issued what turned out to be a foundational call to focus on relationships in public relations research. Apparently, that call was not initially heeded in earnest by the community of public relations scholars, perhaps in part because when the original manuscript was presented, a powerful senior scholar in attendance purportedly pooh-poohed the research. Three decades later, Ferguson’s 1984 conference paper has been cited hundreds of times the world over, including by scholars who may not have ever actually read the manuscript.

I came to be in possession of an original copy of the 1984 conference paper years ago, when my San Diego State colleague, Susan Hellweg (who had been in attendance when the paper was presented), was cleaning out her office while getting ready to retire from her academic career. When reviewing manuscripts for this themed issue on identity and public relations, I realized anew that our fundamental identity as a field, that of being grounded in relationships between organizations and publics, owed much to that 1984 Ferguson manuscript, which had never been published. Thus, I called the author and got her permission to print the conference paper.

But getting from permission to publication turned out to be an arduous process, as Ferguson herself no longer had ready access to a copy of the manuscript. Thus, I converted my faded paper copy into a hard-to-read portable document file (pdf), which then had to be converted to a less-than-accurate text file (MS Word), so that edits could be implemented. My sincere thanks go to Thomas (T. J.) Alexander and Maria Len-Rios at the University of Georgia for their initial contributions to this painstaking process. Upon receiving the edited text file, I did a word-by-word comparison against my paper copy, which was far more difficult than one would think necessary. From there, I had to make tough calls about what to edit (egregious typos, certainly) and what to leave alone (missing commas, possibly).

Ultimately, I believe that, despite the manuscript’s long road to becoming a journal article, its essential being remains pertinent to public relations scholarship today. In particular, I am struck by how well Ferguson’s work foreshadowed current research on the dimensions of organization-public relationships, as well as by how little has evolved in our field. As one example of the latter, I note that the general categories of research induced by Ferguson—social responsibility and ethics, professionalism, education, program implementation, history, public relations as management, communication technology—all are iterated in current public relations scholarship, but relatively precious few manuscripts really focus on public relations theory development. Within those general categories, scholars today ask the same basic research questions that Ferguson notes throughout her article, and educators today feel “equally beset with demands” (p. x) to publish their research, to teach their students, and to serve their institutions.

We also still face today the same questions of paradigm, which I would term questions of paradigmatic identity. Even so, I note that identity evolution is likewise reflected in Ferguson’s article. For example, the Association for Education in Journalism has become the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, reflecting an identity shift of a broader discipline to which public relations belongs. The scholar cited in 1984 as L. Schneider is today L. Grunig, and J. Van Slyke is J. Turk, offering a gendered lens through which to glimpse the identity evolution of some individual public relations scholars.

To me, the publication of this article in its near-original, conference-paper form offers the following key message to our scholarly community, as we continue to research identity and/in/of public relations: Public relations is still becoming, and we scholars (as humans; or perhaps we humans, as scholars) should continue to interrogate our own ontology, epistemology, and axiology.

As we consider ontological questions, we should respect our past, even while problematizing it in the present, toward a fluid future. As we reflect on epistemological questions, we should respect the diversity of views and voices in our discipline, even when chaos and cacophony feel, at times, overwhelming. As we pose axiological questions, we should respect all scholarship done rigorously, regardless of scholarly method, affiliation, or status.

And here I offer a special note to graduate students, non-US-based scholars, and those working in marginalized territories of inquiry: Remember that your work is valuable and has value, even if that value is not immediately recognized by the scholarly establishment. Just look at the provenance of this article by Mary Ann Ferguson.

Last, I offer thanks to the following reviewers whose thoughtful input enhanced the articles published in this issue:

Lee Edwards, London School of Economics and Political Science (UNITED KINGDOM)

Donnalyn Pompper, University of Oregon

Andrew Pyle, Clemson University (South Carolina)

Bey-Ling Sha

Editor-in-Chief

[email protected]