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Last week’s content introduced us to the concepts of “hashtag publics” and “cancel culture”, both of which will be expanded upon in this week’s material addressing the role of corporate communication and the formation and power of participatory culture. Public relations plays a role in constituting (both proactively and reactively) fandoms.
Public relations has been defined as an organizational “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. 5). This is a broad definition that emphasizes the role of communication as relationship-building, suturing audience-publics and organizations together because of shared interests.
First, let’s identify some key concepts for this week:
(1) hashtag publics; (2) counter publics; (3) fanagement and fantagonism
“In a world of increasing and cacophonous complexity, hashtags are singular moments that coalesce into something new: threads of meaning that work to weave new abstractions into the world” (Rambukkana, 2015, p. 32).
Counterpublics …
Once upon a time (before digital and social media in particular), public relations operated via a largely broadcast model of communications. One model for reaching out to audiences was known as the situational theory of publics; this proposes that there are four distinct types of publics that can be identified for any organization or issue based on their levels of awareness, ability to increase participation, and their level of involvement. Based on these variables, individuals can be considered latent, aware, or active publics. Before we even get to these people and their varying degrees of involvement, we have those publics who are not impacted by an issue or organization are labeled as “nonpublics”. Then, “latent” publics are frequently considered to be those who may be affected by an issue or organization but are either unaware that it impacts them or have constraints that fully prevent their involvement with the issue or organization. Next, we climb the hierarchy of engagement and encounter “aware” publics know about an issue or organization and its impact on themselves, but generally have obstacles that prevent greater involvement. “Active” publics, on the other hand, not only know about the issue or organization and its effects on themselves, but they also actively work to remove obstacles that get them involved with that issue or organization. All of this assumes, however, that individuals require communication campaigns and messages from organizations to learn about issues (see Waters, 2016, p. 184). This is radically altered in a networked, social environment where people can both get and produce their own information, “doing their own research” so to speak, by watching YouTube videos, reading and engaging with comments and discussion boards on platforms like Reddit, sharing their opinions via Instagram reels, Snapchat stories,