Post-Truth Public Relations Communication in an Era of Digital Disinformation

This book explores the purpose, practice and effects of public relations (PR) at a time that has been variously described as an era of populism, post-truth and fake news. It considers how PR processes have contributed to the current social condition of post-truth and what constitutes PR work in this environment. Post-Truth Public Relations: Communication in an Era of Digital Disinformation proposes that while we can now look back upon the last 80–100 years as a period of classical PR, that style is being supplemented by the emergence of a post-classical form of PR that has emerged in response to the post-truth era. This new style of PR consists of a mixed repertoire of communicative work that matches the new geometry of digital media and delivers a mix of online engagement and persuasion in order to meet the needs of increasingly partisan audiences. Using contemporary case studies and original interviews with PR practitioners in several countries, including China and the Philippines, the book investigates how PR workers have reconciled their role as communicative intermediaries with the post-truth era of digital disinformation. This thought-provoking book will be of great interest to researchers and advanced students interested in the changing nature of PR and its practice.

1 Introduction 2 Classical public relations 3 Post-classical public relations: a new style of public relations work for the post-truth era 4 The mixed public relations repertoire for the age of disruption 5 The rhetoric of certainty and division 6 Facts don’t matter: truthiness and fake news 7 Performativity and public communication 8 The digital mixology of online engagement 9 Conclusion

Gareth Thompson is a Senior Lecturer at London College of Communication, University of the Arts London. He has worked in public relations in the corporate, finance and technology sectors for over 20 years, as well as teaching the subject in London and at the French business school, ESCEM, in Poitiers.