Abstract
This paper draws on empirical material to examine the shifting role of public relations (PR) in media culture through the lens of secrecy. I explore how PR is shaping new manifestations of secrecy and analyse the impact on democratic culture. This study considers Simmel’s (1906: 423) insights that ‘secrecy is a universal sociological form’ that can be contrasted with ‘publicity’ - the making public of information or interests. An analysis of secrecy reveals the deeper structures and principles at work in any one society at any one time. The significance of secrecy extends beyond that which is hidden because secrecy is actively constitutive of social relations: it structures relationships between individuals and groups (creating elites), coordinates social reciprocity, and is implicated in the operations of power (Simmel 1906). Secrecy is productive as it creates an ‘extension of life’: ‘secrecy secures, so to speak, the possibility of a second world alongside of the obvious world, and the latter is most strenuously affected by the former’ (Simmel 1906: 462). This second world is both concealed and acts to conceal. This paper analyses how PR is a key player in generating this second world - or shadow world - of the media sphere and in managing its relationship with the ‘obvious world’. If, as Simmel (1906) argues, practices of secrecy actively create and reshape social relations, close analysis of PR as one of today’s most powerful vectors of secrecy is urgently required to understand the management of information and its impact on democratic culture.
Presenters
Anne CroninProfessor, Sociology Department, Lancaster University, Lancashire, United Kingdom
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
PUBLIC RELATIONS,SECRECY,DEMOCRACY,INFORMATION, NEWS
