ABSTRACT
As we live through what journalists and commentators commonly call an “age of disruption,” (with the term appearing in over 100 headlines in English language newspapers in 2018), it is unsurprising that rather than seeking balance and consensus through persuasion, the objective of some post-classical public relations (PR) approaches is to disrupt and to support a process of wider dislocation in society. For example, President Trump's disruptive approach to communications during the 2016 US Presidential election campaign was soon enacted in the form of policy choices that were equally non-conformist and unsettling to the world order. The post-classical style of PR for these times of disruption and post-truth involves use of a mixed communicative repertoire. It is a diverse cocktail of approaches that sometimes combines all four of Grung and Hunt's (1984) typologies of PR practice, of press agentry/publicity, public information, two-way asymmetrical and two-way symmetrical. Online, it is a digital mixology of tools, techniques and trickery that takes advantage of the media logic and functionality of social media in order to achieve maximum influence on audiences. PR campaigns are often run with a determination to prevail at all costs, even if that sometimes includes paying little attention to truthfulness in the content of messages and processes by which they are distributed.
