Many countries around the world have recently made some unexpected political decisions, which were widely commented on by international media. The United States of America has elected a president who is a businessman and a former TV show host and who, before his own campaign, had very little to do with politics. Shortly before that, the citizens of Great Britain rejected their European Union (EU) membership. It was a decision made in a referendum, therefore enabled by a democratic process and yet surprising for many, who think of democracy as the least conflict‐prone or least controversial of political systems. Until now, the United Kingdom has been struggling with the aftermath of this decision, since apparently many voters didn’t necessarily understand what they were voting for or against (as indicated by the next day’s most popular Google search in the UK: “What exactly is the EU?”) (Beres, 2016). Another surprising election result within the EU family found many international commentators confused. In 2016, Poland, the fourth largest country in Europe and the only EU member virtually untouched by the 2008 crisis, as well as one of the steadiest and fastest growing of the new European democracies, elected its new leader based on his promise to “rebuild the country from its current ruin” (Kulish, 2012; Duval Smith, 2015).

It is important to remember that all of these events were preceded by public relations campaigns. How are these campaigns managed? How does the inside and outside of political relations function? How does theory relate to practice in the political arena of public relations? An answer to these and similar questions is the focus of this chapter. When we think about public relations, we often think of corporations managing their relationships with different publics. However, public relations plays just as big a role in politics as it does in business. To name just a few, countries such as Russia, Zimbabwe, or Ecuador had or still have leaders at their helm who changed or denied constitutional rules of term limits to stay in power for years. While remaining controversial figures on the international scene, they continued to maintain sufficient support in their home countries and have stated repeatedly that they remain in power due to the will of their people.

This chapter will shed some light on how the practice of public relations impacts politics and how the theory and practice of public relations interacts in these, and many other areas of our public lives.

Public relations has experienced a lot of growth and change since its inception, both as a profession and as an academic discipline. However, as a relatively new field in academic research, it is still in the developmental stages of theory building – defining the field, conceptualizing its focal concepts, and finding the best way to distinguish itself from other fields – while not missing out on potential for interdisciplinary exchange. It is important to be aware of the accomplishments made in other disciplines with overlapping topics in order to avoid redundancy and yet enrich those existing concepts within a public relations perspective. The purpose of this chapter is to introduce two such concepts and explain how they relate to public relations. The first is political communication and the second is government relations. Both concepts will first be defined and later on both will be examined in reference to the field of public relations. Particular emphasis will be placed on how they both contribute to political public relations, a new field emerging from public relations research, focused on strategic efforts of political actors to advance their goals. Finally, relevant public relations theories will be presented and connected to these topics. The chapter will conclude with presenting some important questions that remain unanswered by scholarship so far, and a reading list pointing toward more detailed considerations of the topics mentioned here.

Defining the Concepts: What Are Political Communication and Government Relations?

How and Why Are Political Communication and Government Relations of Concern to Public Relations?

How are political communication and government relations of concern to the field of public relations? To effectively answer this question, it is important to define public relations. There are two major ways in which this area is delineated and conceptualized. One tradition strongly rooted in the industry and professional application places the inception of public relations practice at the beginning of twentieth century (PRSA, 2017). This approach considers people and events preceding the 1900s as important antecedents to what is seen as the proper development of public relations as a profession (Cutlip, 2013). Many undergraduate texts when discussing PR history subscribe to that timeline, considering P. T. Barnum, Ivy Lee, and Edward Bernays pioneers of the “proper” discipline of public relations, and texts following this tradition tend to be corporate‐focused and centered on the United States (Kelleher, 2018; Lattimore et al., 2011; Wilcox, Ault, & Agee, 2006). The Public Relations Society of America defines public relations as a “strategic communication process that builds mutually beneficial relationships between organizations and their publics.” (PRSA, 2017).

Another approach, supported by theorists like Lamme and Russell (2009), emphasizes practice over profession and identifies elements of public relations practices as early as in the writings of Saint Paul. This orientation searches for public relations examples beyond the United States, and rather than naming a time of the inception of the profession seeks to uncover multiple examples of practice throughout history (Myers, 2014). Russell and Lamme (2016), in their intent to broaden the historical records of public relations, identified strategic intent and human agency as two key elements present in public relations actions. Based on these criteria, they identified events in four different arenas: religious, political, business, and education nonprofit and reform. Examples of such actions include Saint Paul serving as an intermediary for the budding Catholic faith in the first century (Brown, 2003); Pope Pius VI founding Polyglot Press in the sixteenth century as the Vatican’s first publishing house (Kunczik, 1997); Cardinal Richelieu appointing a “minister for information and propaganda” in the seventeenth century (Kunczik, 1997, p. 159); a fundraising campaign for Harvard College in 1641 (Cutlip, 2013); the Spartans minimizing defeats and maximizing victories in their battles with Athenians (Kunczik, 1997), and many more examples of events, campaigns, and strategic communicative actions taking place long before any formal establishment of the public relations profession (Lamme & Russell, 2009; Russell & Lamme, 2016)

Both of these approaches emphasize different elements of public relations concepts, but both echo the same actions as examples of public relations efforts, regardless of what the name of the effort might have been at that time (I. Lee, 1925).

Keeping this perspective in mind, government relations is considered by some to be one type of public relations practice (Curtin & Gaither, 2007; Freitag & Stokes, 2009). In political systems where it is the government, and not public opinion or professional associations, that dictates most legal rules and business regulations, organizations and businesses can sometimes prioritize government relations over relations with their respective target publics. Examples of countries where government relations can make up a primary field of public relations practice are China, Russia, and many countries where democratic systems are challenged or dysfunctional. Strong ties between business and government force the businesses in those countries to adjust their PR strategies toward those who make up the rules (Remington, 2016; Lieberthal, Li, & Keping, 2014). Even in countries where public opinion is considered less important in the political system, government relations are still an important factor of public relations practice.

In a different way than government relations, political communication is also tied to public relations practice. While government relations can be considered a branch of public relations practice, political communication can encompass public relations strategies but as a discipline encompass a larger spectrum of behaviors. Interpersonal, informal conversation between two friends can be considered political communication if its topic is political, but it cannot be considered public relations. However, any time a political actor engages in actions that display all the characteristics of PR practice and pertain to the political arena, these actions are an example of political public relations. That term grew to signify any case in which a type of communication deemed political overlaps with actions deemed as driven by public relations. Strömbäck and Kiousis (2011, 2013), pioneers in theoretical and conceptual development of the field, define political public relations as “the management process by which an organization or individual actor for political purposes, through purposeful communication and action, seeks to influence and establish, build, and maintain beneficial relationships and reputations with its key publics to help support its mission and achieve its goals” (Strömbäck & Kiousis, 2011, p. 8). As both government relations and political communication deal with society, government, and a variety of organizational political actors, their subjects of interest often overlap. Both disciplines also often research media effects and the role of media in political processes. There is already an existing group of theories that can be applied to both fields, but scarcely any that would mirror the unique character of political public relations as a separate discipline.

How, When, and Why Is Theory Applied to Political Communication and Government Relations?

The majority of theories used in relation to political communication and government relations are media effects theories. Most of these are also applicable to the campaigning process, which is uniquely a political public relations effort and is worth mentioning as heavily media‐dependent, now happening mostly through the media, both digital and social, as well as traditional (Bennett & Iyengar, 2008). Two major themes in theoretical consideration differ in their approaches to social and digital media. The key question brought up by these two perspectives concerns the influence of digital media on the human communication process as it is practiced in public relations. Themes differ in seeing social media as accelerating versus as fundamentally altering the process. One approach rooted in the agenda‐setting tradition includes agenda setting, framing, and agenda building. This theoretical approach treats social media as part of the media landscape and seeks to expand the traditional view of the role of media while maintaining theoretical assumptions behind agenda setting as the construction of issue salience both made by and mirrored in public opinion.

The other approach seeks to provide new theories specific to digital media to explain the participation of publics and their voices in co‐creating issue salience. This theme includes digital advocacy theories and some new political communication theories. Digital advocacy and its role in modern social movements is an example of an area in public relations where changes brought by social media warrant new theoretical contributions. (For a summary, see the theory chart in Table 16.1.)

To analyze the role of social media in mobilizing social movements, Hon (2015) used the grassroots campaign of protests and media attention created after unarmed teenager Trayvon Martin was shot in Florida by George Zimmerman, a man who was later acquitted using the “stand your ground” law. Many people all over the country found Zimmerman’s acquittal problematic as they believed the murder happened due to racial bias, rather than being motivated by Zimmerman’s concern for his safety, which he cited in his defense. The country‐wide protest actions were organized, spurred on, and coordinated using largely social media. When digital media qualities are utilized to their full extent, they create what Earl and Kimport (2011) call leveraged affordances. That means the uses and actions are made qualitatively easier by digital technologies compared to all prior technologies. In the case of social movements, leveraged affordances can change the way participants join, stay active, and lead (for example, eliminating the need for central leadership, and allowing for flash activism), and that, in turn, results in model‐level changes in social movements theory.

In the political realm, Blumler (2015) presents an overview of political communication theories which consider the influence of digital media as altering the political communication process. Among them are the hyperlinked society by Turow and Tsui (2008), the logic of connective action (Bennet & Segerberg, 2012), the theory of spillover effects (Pfetsch, Adam, & Bennett, 2013), and the concept of a hybrid media system (Chadwick, 2013). In the case of the hyperlinked society, Turow and Tsui (2008) pose that mediated digital technology enables previously marginalized groups to network and find better representation in social dialogue. The logic of connective action emphasizes new media affordances and a proliferation of single‐issue cause groups impossible before digital media (Bennet & Segerberg, 2012). In the theory of spillover effects, agenda building’s potential of online communication is examined as spilling over into the traditional media agenda and influencing public opinion as well as policy outcomes (Pfetsch et al., 2013). Finally, Chadwick’s (2013) proposed theory of a hybrid media system urges scholars to abandon the dual perception of media as new and old and instead look at the interaction of traditional and digital media as one system. This brings some changes at the theoretical level, such as the information cycle replacing the news cycle, the interaction of new and traditional journalistic sources, and changed power relations between elites and non‐elites. For a comprehensive review and new trends in political communication, see Blumler (2015) or Esser and Strömbäck (2014).

When discussing political public relations, it is more appropriate to analyze the first group of theories, ones that consider digital media part of a media landscape that alters, rather than fundamentally changes, the political communication process. The focus in these theories is put more on the strategic nature of efforts of actors rather than on the media type used in these efforts. The second group, while important in adding depth to considerations of the relationship between media and society, does not focus on strategic efforts, but rather shifts weight to new ways of communicating regarding political issues. This second group of theories does not differentiate between purposeful and inadvertent effects; therefore, while it is important to briefly mention it for a complete picture, this approach is beyond the scope of this chapter.

Two conclusions emerge from these considerations: first, that both government relations and political communication have visible and necessary ties to public relations; and second, that applying these two in a public relations framework needs a theoretical context within which both can find their place and contribute to a more coherent understanding of how government relations and political communication can both add to what we now understand to be political public relations. Political public relations is a welcome expansion of the traditional understanding of public relations as usually conducted by organizations. Most public relations definitions include organizations as actors (Kelleher, 2018; Lattimore et al., 2011; Wilcox et al., 2006). While this is often the case, organizations are definitely not the only subjects using strategic communication to form relationships. Just as in the case of government relations when organizations are seeking to build, maintain, and influence their relationship with legislative bodies, political actors are also seeking to do the same. Governments, countries, city councils, and individual politicians all use strategic communication to establish relationships with media, with the media’s respective publics, and with each other.

Examples of Theory Used within Political Communication and Government Relations

The theories considered most applicable to the nature of political public relations include agenda building and agenda setting, stakeholder theory, and a variety of persuasion perspectives including framing and priming.

Agenda building is considered a fitting theoretical framework for political public relations because it demonstrates how actors use strategic communication to achieve goals that extend beyond just emphasizing certain events in their materials designed for the media. Agenda building is often described in its relation to agenda setting. Agenda setting, originally put forward by McCombs and Shaw (1972), implies that events, issues, and people that are considered important by public opinion are shaped by being presented as important by the media. It doesn’t imply that the media try to push an opinion on their recipients, but it definitely points toward media shaping the range of subjects discussed. To use the words of Bernard Cohen (1963), one of the fathers of agenda setting theory: “Media might not be successful in telling us what to think, but they are successful in telling us what to think about.”

Agenda building also considers media and their interaction with issues, people, and events (from now on called objects). But unlike agenda setting, this theory seeks to answer the question of who or what sets the agenda for the media to follow. In relation to agenda setting, agenda building takes one step back in the process of issues becoming salient in the minds of the publics. In the case of political public relations, actors using strategic communication to achieve their goals are attempting to shape public opinion by capturing the media’s attention and promoting their preferred perspective (Cheng, Golan, & Kiousis, 2016; Kiousis et al., 2015; Parmelee, 2014; Schweickart, Neil, Kim, & Kiousis, 2016). It is important to note that this strategic approach is not limited to media agendas. The same intentional actions can be applied to shape other types of agendas such as that of a legislature or public opinion. What makes these efforts different from agenda setting is that they are purposeful rather than inadvertent such as in the case of journalists impacting public opinion.

Another characteristic of agenda building is that in analyzing objects that can be made important (or as researchers call them: salient), the theory goes beyond just objects but also looks at the object pairs, their mutual connections and the ways in which they are discussed (frames and tone). News is not created in a vacuum. In a flurry of media materials presented to journalists and press agencies by governments, nonprofits, politicians, nongovernmental organizations, press secretaries, etc., beyond the issues themselves, there is always tone (positive, negative, mixed, or neutral) and frame (way of talking about a particular object), and finally, sometimes certain objects continuously appear together in a narrative, or are always presented as opposites. An example of an object pair can be Iraq being mentioned together with weapons of mass destruction in the media rhetoric surrounding George W. Bush’s reelection campaign (Kiousis, 2005). An example of objects presented as opposites can be Republicans and Democrats always presented as opposite sides of the political spectrum. When referring to these two parties working together the word used more often is bipartisan, but when mentioned by name the parties are more often presented as opposites.

In other words, objects are not only presented in a certain light, and with a particular tone, but also in relation to each other. Those three types of salience are called levels in agenda building theory. And so the first level means that the object (person, issue, or event) is made salient in the message we are examining. The second level considers the tone, frame, and/or attributes of the object. In other words, whether the object is discussed in a positive, negative, neutral, or mixed (both positive and negative) tone, what context is dominant in the message (frame), and what characteristics are consistently assigned to this object (attributes). Attributes are further divided into affective and substantive. Substantive attributes refer to characteristics of an object such as candidates’ qualifications or biographical information of a CEO. Affective attributes refer to how the object is described overall: favorably, unfavorably, or in a neutral way (Kiousis, Mitrook, Wu, & Seltzer, 2006; McCombs, Lopez‐Escobar, & Llamas, 2000). Finally, if these objects, attributes, pairs of both, or combinations are appearing in the same configurations (co‐occur consistently), we are talking about a third level of agenda building theory (Guo, Vu, & McCombs, 2012; Zoch & Molleda, 2006). Many studies examine and explore agenda‐building properties in the areas of politics, sports, social movements, and public diplomacy. Before agenda building became strongly tied to agenda setting, Cobb and Elder (1971) were using the term agenda setting to describe how some issues find their way to the agenda of the public and media because they belong to groups with more resources and connections, while other issues potentially equally deserving of representation are never made salient due to tight and restricted access to the “pressure system” or to the agenda marketplace.

Often seen as a continuation of agenda setting and agenda building (particularly at the second level) is priming. Priming, among other persuasion perspectives, suggests to audiences that the performance of politicians and governments should be evaluated using particular standards, or benchmark events (Scheufele & Tewksbury, 2006; Weaver, 2007). An example of such priming in American politics is evaluating the president in his first hundred days based on unemployment rates and economic growth (Liptak, 2017), even though it takes much longer for the president to have any actual influence on these numbers. He certainly can’t influence these numbers in a significant way within the first three months in office. This priming mechanism causes the mass public to judge the president, at least in the beginning, largely based on the accomplishments or failures of his predecessor. An interesting quality of priming is that it can be both strategic and inadvertent and, therefore, belong to both agenda setting and agenda building theory. Priming is not the only persuasion mechanism important to notice when discussing these theoretical perspectives.

Framing is different from both priming and agenda setting because it does not rely on the accessibility of a construct in the minds of the public (Weaver, 2007). Instead, framing operates on the assumption that the way in which the concept is presented in the media influences the ways in which the public understands and evaluates this concept. Framing an issue means presenting it in reference to preexisting cognitive schemas in order to make complex constructs simpler and to emphasize key elements of a complicated structure. Framing is a process involving “inclusion and exclusion as well as emphasis” (Hallahan, 1999, p. 207). Journalists use framing as a necessary tool to present sophisticated topics in ways that will be better understood by their publics. However, since journalists use frames they think will be helpful to their audiences, sometimes framing and priming go hand in hand, particularly in the case of partisan media (N. Lee, McLeod, & Shah, 2008; Slothuus & De Vreese, 2010).

Among other theoretical perspectives which lend themselves to unique characteristics of political public relations, stakeholder theory is particularly relevant. Put forward by Edward Freeman in 1984, it emphasizes the strategic nature of communication and acknowledges that successful public relations efforts require managing relationships with multiple publics simultaneously. The key assumption of this theoretical perspective is that by forging successful relationships with multiple groups of stakeholders, rather than focusing on stockowners, organizations minimize uncertainty and acquire valuable resources (Freeman, 1994). Political public relations focuses on efforts reaching beyond the organizational realm, and therefore multiple stakeholder groups, with often conflicting needs, play a key role in that process (Tindall & Holtzhausen, 2012). By acknowledging challenges related to identifying stakeholders and introducing the need for compromise between the needs of multiple publics, Freeman opened the door to what later became corporate social responsibility. He reinforced claims made by contingency theory that public relations actions happen on a continuum that results from a strategic and precise change of perspective between stakeholders’ needs and an organization’s engagement level.

Political communication and government relations are both contributing to the theoretical and practical development of political public relations. Political public relations is a welcome addition to public relations research and practice as it focuses on new aspects of public relations potential in previously underresearched areas and functions. Many theoretical perspectives discussed in this chapter are continuing to grow and to gain wider applications thanks to being applied in political public relations. Finally, understanding the process of applying these theories in the real world of political strategies and campaigns aids better understanding of global and local changes that are dependent on the political process and on the media.

Major Topics/Questions Needing to Be Addressed by Public Relations Theorists Working in Government Relations and Political Communication

Among the main topics, future trends, or questions in need of being addressed by public relations theorists working in government relations and political communication is the ability to differentiate among three trends: agenda building, the role of new media, and transnational comparisons. Agenda building, particularly with digital media and its potential to alter the agenda‐building processes, is still a rarely researched subject in public relations. Also, the second and third levels of agenda building and factors determining its effectiveness are open for investigation. When it comes to new media, one particularly interesting aspect of political public relations and digital media are the alternative ways of news consumption and their influence on how political actors produce and promote public relations content. Finally, political public relations represents a large and underdeveloped platform for comparisons among nations with regard to their practices. Three such areas where international comparisons of public relations practices are still largely underresearched are alternative media systems (government owned or controlled media, censored systems, systems in political transition), relations between government public relations efforts and publics’ engagement in obtaining alternative sources of news, as well as transnational comparisons regarding political public relations tactics and intended and achieved results in different cultural environments.

Suggested Cases to Explore to Demonstrate Theory at Work in Government Relations and Political Communication

Strategic communication and the use of social media in crisis communication using agenda building theory on issue salience can be seen through a case involving football and tree poison (Waters, 2012). The football rivalry between two of the largest Alabama universities resulted in an act of ecological terrorism. Two old, symbolic, historical trees cherished as part of university culture were poisoned with a fatal amount of herbicide. Both the university that was the subject of the attack and the one in whose name the attack was carried out faced a lot of issue and reputation management, as well as fending off potential crisis. This strategic management of multiple stakeholder groups and media coverage is a great example of agenda building, priming, and strategic communication management at work.

A case about a little girl in need of a transplant and her (small) PR team’s strategic efforts brings government relations into focus (Kruvand, 2014). A little girl waiting for a lung transplant is down on the list because her age (12) puts her on the adult transplant list rather than the children’s list. Worrying that her daughter might not survive the wait, the mother, a former PR professional, enlists the help of a few of her closest friends, also PR executives. Together they launch a campaign that results in placing the issue prominently on the public agenda, and further in changing the official rules regarding organ transplants for children. This case is a fascinating example of political public relations, agenda building, and social media leveraged affordances in not only interacting with public opinion but also in influencing political regulations.

Finally, for a glimpse into managing stakeholder relationships through strategic communication in a potential crisis situation, look into Amazon’s dispute with Hachette Book Group and Authors United (Dimar, Kuchar, & Ragas, 2016).

Discussion Questions

1. 1 Should public relations theory build upon an “open system” of interdisciplinary collaboration but strive to develop theories specific to the field, or should agenda setting, agenda building, etc., be established as theories that exceed one field in their explanatory power and can explain processes happening in public relations as well as government relations and political communication?
2. 2 How do recent events in world politics (the rise of nationalist parties in the European Union, Donald Trump’s election in the United States, events happening in Venezuela or Ecuador) change theoretical explanations of government and media interaction with public opinion?
3. 3 To what degree are social media able to challenge an elitist view of agenda building and enable previously excluded groups access to the “pressure system”?
4. 4 Are there any ethical considerations that should be taken into account when conducting political PR? Professionals, governments, nonprofit organizations, and all other actors that engage in intentional agenda building are often seen as separate from professional PR associations and corporate PR professionals. Should that be the case or should they adhere to ethical standards universal for the profession?
5. 5 In the era of fake news, and social media being a source of news for two thirds of American adults according to Pew Research (Matsa & Shearer, 2018), what changes are most prominent in the process of influencing public opinion through media?