Heide on Bergen: Social Costructionism in PR

Reading Mats Heide’s article I had the opportunity to get a clear view point about the social constructionist perspective that Berger (with Luckmann) introduced in social science, connected with PR area, aims to explain the reasons of communications crisis, sustaining the idea that the main cause is an insufficient communicative relation between people and institutions, since school’s age. Act to solve a crisis means analyze all the external facts responsible of its origin and intervening on time. The basement of Heide analysis is traceable in two book of Berger: “The construction of reality” (1966) and “Invitation to sociology” (1963).

Understanding our society is surely an hard work, because all the new changes (social, economical etc..) modifies and alters the structure of human relations, institutions, media, determining everyday a different scenario, and the crisis is one of the perfect example. Heide supports the sociology as the way to understand these transformations, because it’s focused on comprehending people’s mind and if we understand the needs and the wishes of the people, we surely are able to interpret this “global society language”, multiform and quickly changeable, that represent the key of research in crisis communication.

I think it is necessary to define what exactly means “crisis”. I agree with Bergen when he says that organizational crisis is not an anomalous situation, but a particular stage in the never-ending development of an organization. A social constructionist perspective on crisis gives a more holistic understanding, and emphasizes that both crisis and "business as usual" are normal parts of an organization's life cycle. In contemporary research on crisis communication, crisis is a part of organization’s life cycle, a good opportunity for development and learning.

An other good point is about “institutions”: Berger describe them as support, regulation, help, promoter, that direct people’s behavior in a certain way. For Berger, institutions aren’t only the first ones that comes in our mind (like Government, University, Police, Tribunal, Church etc.) but also all the conventions, the beliefs and the unconsciously rule that people create and follow. The example of Paivi during one lecture was about Police figure. Not because there is an agreement created to let us be controlled and protected from Police, means that this “agreement” give them the power: people’s behavior gives them the power and the opportunity to protect us, if most of the people don’t agree it couldn’t exist this institution, even if there is an “agreement”. But also time, money, language, marriage are institutions, cause they define our life and direct our behavior ( 1 hour is composed of 60 seconds because people decided that).

I really appreciate this article of Heide, he explains in a really clear way the point of view of Berger, and he made a careful summary of Berger social perspective. Even if there wasn’t enough criticism in Berger theories, I think it helped us to understand an important aspect of communication’s sides, that’s a good step to become, in the future, expert of PR and communications strategies.

Literature:

Heide, M. On berger: A Social Constructionist Perspective on Public Relations and Crisis Communication, p. 43-61.

A society portrait by Castells and Tampere

Manuel Castells, Catalan sociologist, famous for the network society theory is considered as one of the most important expert on the problems of the contemporary information society. He’s focused on the idea that contemporary social processes are determined by the infrastructure of the net. In this way Castells creates a new sociological paradigm, founded on the primacy of the reticular structure of the interaction (instead of the content) in the communication between social actors.

We could say that Castells translates the teachings of McLuhan in terms of a reformulation of the concepts of general sociology. McLuhan in fact defend principle that "the medium is the message", it means that analyzing the content (informations or meanings) passed by medium, it cannot be isolated from the medium that conveys it.

In the social field we can notice a similar situation: the content of the interaction is dependent on the technological infrastructure (which in our globalized society is precisely the “Network”) that transmits it. From this view, Castells outlines, especially in his monumental text “The New Public Sphere: Global Civil Society, Communication Networks, and Global Governance", a wide range of scenarios, problems, analysis of trends.

I really appreciated the way how Castells analyze our society, he always try to connect people’s behavior with the theories that is supporting, never forgetting that this “Network society” is composed by human beings. For example he never said that information technologies were the responsible of social changes, he correctly supposed that these change processes couldn’t be realized without technologies. I totally agree with this point of view, people make changes, technologies just support the process.

Communication and information have always been key sources of power, domination, and
social change. This is due to the fact that the main battle that plays in society is for the minds
of people. The way of thinking of mass society determines the laws and values ​​on which societies are based. Is the Communication (socialized communication, the one that invests
in public sphere) the base of social production of meaning; conquering the minds of each person
is conducted especially in communication processes. This is even more true in the case of the network society, which is characterized by the spread of communication networks. The continuous
transformation of communication technology in the digital age extends the influence of the media at all the spheres of social life, in a network that is both global and local, generical and customized, according to all the evolving models. Consequently, power relations (relations that represent the foundation for the society) and processes that challenge the institution’s power are increasingly determined from the sphere of communication. In this Social network society, the power that every single person got is a big benefit that we should consider; let’s just think about internet and the possibility of sharing our feelings and thoughts with other people and especially the possibility of learning something from other users is something that in this age sounds normal and obvious but if we compare with the past is an important step for the development of our society.  I think that Castells gives us the right tools and the perfect cultural and political scenes to focus on this topic; uploading on my blog this comment, naturally come in my mind the fascinating and functional way of spreading my thoughts in this form; completely different than a recent past when the society could learn just from institutions, following a kind of controlled development.

After reading Castells articles, surely interesting but misunderstandable in some aspect with a not really clear vocabulary, I could clarify my ideas reading Kaja Tampere’s article, and at the same time find again the self-esteem in my English language skills!

I think it’s really important how she defines the utility of a good company’s communication in our controversial society, where of course technologies are helping the daily life to don’t lose time or to be much more accurate and clear but creating a bigger scenery of users, customers, institutions etc…  from her examples comes up that words as “trustworthiness” and “credibility” should be transmitted  on the minds of the customers to get good results in this Network Society really complicated.

At the end I really suggest to the future students to read first the article of Kaja Tampere, then Castells, it could be much more easy to get all the points of both authors.

 

Literature:

Castells, M. (2008) The New Public Sphere: Global Civil Society, Communication Networks, and Global Governance. The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 2008 616. pp. 78-93.

Castells, M. (2007) Communication, Power and Counter-power in the Network Society. International Journal of Communication 1 (2007), pp. 238-266.

Castells, M. (2000) The Contours of the Network Society. The Journal of Futures Studies, Strategic Thinking and Policy, 02 (02), pp. 151-157. Camford Publishing Ltd

Tampere, K. (2011) A walk in the public relations field: Theoretical discussions from a social media and network society perspective. Central European Journal of Communication 1 (2011), pp. 49-61.

                                                       

First essay about Corneliessen's article

During all my Italian academic path I was always wondering to myself if in a future job’s career and in the practical daily works that I’ll encounter, I could use all the theories that I have read, all the information that teachers were trying to explain, all the knowledge accumulated  in year of studying. The answer was all the time different, sometimes worrying,  sometimes encouraging, surely depending on the feedback that I got from each subject, teacher, situation. This general question, that may appear a normal student’s crisis (maybe close to the exam session or an important deadline) or just in time of decisions (after high school or BA degree), is connected in my personal point of view with the topic introduced by Joep P. Cornelissen in his article about the use of the academic knowledge in practical situation. As Cornelissen said, already in sociology have been advanced some models to connect academic theories in practical situations, but I can bet that in all of our mind this need of answers unconsciously came in! 

By the way, reading the words of Cornelissen we can focus in three main models that the author considers the base of the discuss. The first one is the Instrumental model, mostly followed by E.J. Robinson; it seems for me a kind of strict scientific method, really distant from an human approach of the topic, much more connected with other type of sciences than PR and Communication’s areas, concentrated in people, situations, messages, far from a rigid scientific system proposed with this model. Maybe I could agree with it if he had a connection to the real life, valuing more possibilities and open ways;  analyzing that model it seems that there isn’t a world around us, that we live in a kind of parallel space made of theories, data, numbers and where people are just a decoration.

The second approach called Conceptual model sounds more comprehensive, distant from the law’s image of the previous one. It tries to give the right tools and information aims to find solutions analyzing problems . By the way I have some doubts about the real efficacy of it, cause it doesn’t explain how these information should be used to arrive to a conclusion, it seems that practitioners are a passive identity in this kind of process. The underlying intentions intention of this model could deceive the reader who shouldn’t get fascinated by the first explanations.

The last model is the Translation model, is the one that differs more from the others and that could appear anarchic or confused, but in my opinion is the one that give more space to the skill of practitioners that after have been studying all the theories they could use its in a opening way that surely will consider the human aspects missed in the others models. In this model the role the practitioner is fundamental, as his ability to analyze all the cases, never forgetting any single side of the research (human and scientific) on the way to edit a great truthful and unique work.

I really appreciate the article of Corneliessen, it made me a lot of question but in some passages wasn’t very clear. I think attaching to the article some examples of researches that were following these models could help the student to understand better what the author is trying to explain. But that’s just the begin, I’m sure we’ll have the possibility to get a lot of perfect example to have a clear idea about it.

Marco Certa