Public relations

Public Relations is the internal and external communication (use of symbols and symbolic acts) necessary to inform or influence specific publics using writing, marketing, advertising, publicity, promotions, and special events. Public relations specialists protect their clients, keeping them in or out of the spotlight, whichever is necessary.

One of the major works of reference in public relations is the book titled Propaganda, by Edward Bernays, written in the 1920s. Bernays was proud of the word "propaganda", and just like public relations theorists in the 2000s, felt that members of the ordinary public had to be manipulated in order for them to think in ways which would benefit either governments or authoritarian organisations with centralised economies, commonly known as corporations. One of Bernays' great successes was in redirecting women's rights activists into becoming major cigarette smokers. The women were fooled into thinking that this was an assertion of independence, and the tobacco companies have ever since been grateful for the more or less doubling of the smoking population.

In today's democracies, the danger of ordinary people thinking for themselves or implementing alternative economic models is increasingly great, so public relations is increasingly necessary in order to keep people concentrated on buying consumer products from the major corporations and socially and politically isolated from one another.

Public relations is sometimes also referred to as the manufacturing of consent, following the phrase coined by Herman and Chomsky (see Manufacturing Consent).