Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Ch. 1 The Promise of Prosperity: Transplanting the 'New Realities'

Ch. 2 Communicating the 'Practical Faith': The Historical Neoliberal and PR Nexus

Ch. 3 'We Need a New Narrative': Neoliberalism and PR Language Practice

Ch. 4 Happiness, Plastic Truth, and the Story of Climate

Ch. 5 'Borderlands': PR and the Broken Moorings of Language

Ch. 6 Airborne: PR, Plasticity and Pandemic Politics

References

Index

About the Author

Kristin Demetrious is an Associate Professor of Communication at Deakin University in Victoria, Australia. Kristin's research investigates power in public relations and its language practices through a number of social sites such as activism and gender using a socio-cultural lens to explore how it can create and control forms of identity and shape public debates that set policy directions.

Reviews

Highly recommended. Demetrious packs an immense amount of knowledge and thought-provoking analysis into her latest text, in which she addresses the political nature of public relations and its dissemination of neoliberalism. Public Relations and Neoliberalism will fare well as a required or highly recommended read for those studying and/or interested in working in public relations.
*American Library Association Choice*

Kristin Demetrious puts center-stage the role of public relations as a key actor in the construction of neoliberal dominance. Her broad sweep of neoliberal formations, from the founding of the Mont Pelerin Society in 1947, through to the contemporary political moment, provides a fascinating background for understanding the intersection of public relations and this pervasive ideology, particularly in the global North and West of the world. Crucially, she demonstrates the importance of specific language practices and discursive interventions, created through public relations work, in the normalization of neoliberalism as a generalized context for our social, political, and economic lives. This is an important and unique contribution to critical public relations scholarship, revealing the power of the profession in contemporary society.
*Professor Lee Edwards, London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE)*

Kristin Demetrious is one of the few academics who, for years, has been offering us one of the most accurate views of what public relations is instead of what it should be. This book is not only her most exciting work, but also represents a turning point in the theoretical building of public relations linked to the practice of the profession. Demetrious buries critical theory and goes one step further, offering one of the first post-critical approaches to public relations to expand our understanding of the processes of domination, in which its practice plays a crucial role.
*Professor Jordi Xifra, Professor at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona*

This is a timely and well needed book for PR scholarship. In revisiting the development and history of neoliberal thought, Demetrious addresses the core of PR's mixed loyalties and ethical challenges. In doing so, Demetrious highlights and questions the many assumptions and practices taken for granted in PR: the dedication to serving clients and business, the focus on market and growth, and the concern with control (of message, narrative, image) rather than participation, inclusion, or collaboration. A very good read indeed!
*Professor Ana Adi, Quadriga University of Applied Sciences, Berlin, Germany*

For decades, critical public relations scholarship has been tinkering around the edges of its 'thick entwinement' with neoliberalism. In this book, Demetrious delivers a gloves-off polemic that examines the pervasive role of public relations in the neoliberal world, driving forward confronting, often provocative discussions about language, power, hegemony, and inequality. She faces two seismic issues of our time-climate change and the human rights of refugees and asylum seekers-challenging those in public relations to take ownership for their part. This book has a crucial place in interdisciplinary learning-from communication to economics to politics-unpacking the role played by powerful industries which use communication to create dominant and life-changing versions of social and political reality.
*Jane Johnston, Director of Communication Studies, University of Queensland*

Demetrious shows the symbiotic relationship between public relations and the neoliberal project. Opposing civil society and a deliberative public sphere, PR firms and neoliberal institutions have created a discourse based in manipulative narratives that simplify and impoverish public debate. This effort serves to limit the social imaginary and our ability to shape collective action. Her analysis points the way toward moving beyond our current distorted public dialogue.
*Robert Brulle, Brown University*

Kristin Demetrious has written a brilliant, disturbing, and highly readable treatise on the role that public relations language plays in championing the neo-liberal free market capitalist agenda and how, in doing so, it has limited our collective imagination and ability to think and debate about alternative ways of being and organizing society. I urge anyone with an interest in communication, politics and, indeed, our fragile future, to read this book.
*C. Kay Weaver, University of Colorado, Boulder*

This book is a tour de force. Building on her previous work, Demetrious brings us a beautifully written study of the pernicious and pervasive contribution public relations has made to shaping the world riven by inequality and teetering on the brink of ecological disaster. Her approach is perhaps best described as a Foucauldian history of public communication as the key site of neoliberal discourse. She tracks her prey patiently, skillfully and with great insight across a range of political events, business and communicative practices. A must read for students of public relations and public communication.
*Dr. Magda Pieczka, Reader, Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh*

Kristin Demetrious explores her thesis through a broad scope analysis of neoliberalism; human-induced climate change; human rights of relocation to nation-states; and the very notion of public debate itself. This major text tackles public relations from discursive and humanitarian perspectives that challenge the status quo and stretches our imaginations as to where public relations studies may go in the future..
*Jacquie L'Etang, Honorary Professor, University of Stirling, Scotland and Co-editor of Public Relations Inquiry*

Highly recommended. Demetrious packs an immense amount of knowledge and thought-provoking analysis into her latest text, in which she addresses the political nature of public relations and its dissemination of neoliberalism. Public Relations and Neoliberalism will fare well as a required or highly recommended read for those studying and/or interested in working in public relations.
*, American Library AssociationChoice*