Public Relations As Activism

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POSTMODERN ETHICS AS A FOUNDATION FOR PUBLIC RELATIONS ACTIVISM

Ethics does not have an essence, its ‘essence,’ so to speak, is precisely not to have an essence, to unsettle essences. Its ‘identity’ is precisely not to have an identity, to undo identities. Its ‘being’ is not to be but to be better than being. Ethics is precisely ethics by disturbing the complacency of being (or of non-being, being's correlate).

(Emmanuel Levinas, 1985, p. 77)

Public relations is arguably the communication discipline that is most obsessed with ethics. One likely reason is the nature of public relations practice. Practitioners as boundary spanners are dual representatives. On the one hand, they have to represent the interests of the communicative entity to ...