ABSTRACT
This chapter puts forward an argument for a ‘digital turn’ in public relations, as part of a new understanding of how public relations historiography and practice is progressing. Echoing other turns in PR history, such as the postmodern turn (Benecke and Oksiutycz 2015, Holtzhausen 2002, Mickey 1997), the chapter reflects on academic study of how digital media has changed PR, including consideration of the active consumer and the impact of digital activism. The dialogical nature of digital communications appears to have raised social consciousness among consumers, thereby elevating their role within the process of critique and evaluation of organisational reputation (Prindle 2011). Consumers have always had the ability to boycott products or services and thereby ‘exit’ from brand relationships (Hirschman 1970:9), but now they have a far greater ability to influence others directly through the use of ‘voice’ enabled by the rise of new digital media. Whilst traditional media was premised on a structure of one-to-many broadcasting, consumers now connect horizontally through peer-to-peer networking, blogging, and social media in a dialogical, rhizomatic (Hardt and Negri 2001) form of communication. As a result, the lone consumer has been empowered to respond immediately to broadcast messages and in this way has turned into the citizen marketer who has the power to create either widespread excitement or to disrupt a company’s reputation without needing the assistance of traditional media (McConnell and Huba 2007). Sophisticated internet-based PR campaigns now regularly encourage posting on video sharing and social media sites, and such activities have impacted traditional views of communication models and theories (Wright and Hinson 2008).
