Margot Opdycke Lamme

Winner of The American Journalism Historians Association Book of the Year Award, 2015 This study of American public relations history traces evangelicalism to corporate public relations via reform and the church-based temperance movement. It encompasses a leading evangelical of the Second Great Awakening, Rev. Charles Grandison Finney, and some of his predecessors; early reformers at Oberlin College, where Finney spent the second half of his life; leaders of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union and the Anti-Saloon League of America; and twentieth-century public relations pioneer Ivy Ledbetter Lee, whose work reflecting religious and business evangelism has not yet been examined. Observations about American public relations history icon P. T. Barnum, whose life and work touched on many of the themes presented here, also are included as thematic bookends. As such, this study cuts a narrow channel through a wide swath of literature and a broad sweep of historical time, from the mid-eighteenth century to the first decades of the twentieth century, to examine the deeper and deliberate strategies for effecting change, for persuading a community of adherents or opponents, or even a single soul to embrace that which an advocate intentionally presented in a particular way for a specific outcome—prescriptions, as it turned out, not only for religious conversion but also for public relations initiatives.

Evangelism, Temperance, and Business

Public Relations and Religion in American History

Burton St. John III

Jacquie L'Etang

Over the centuries, scholars have studied how individuals, institutions and groups have used various rhetorical stances to persuade others to pay attention to, believe in, and adopt a course of action. The emergence of public relations as an identifiable and discrete occupation in the early 20th century led scholars to describe this new iteration of persuasion as a unique, more systematized, and technical form of wielding influence, resulting in an overemphasis on practice, frequently couched within an American historical context. This volume responds to such approaches by expanding the framework for understanding public relations history, investigating broad, conceptual questions concerning the ways in which public relations rose as a practice and a field within different cultures and countries at different times in history. With its unique cultural and contextual emphasis, Pathways to Public Relations shifts the paradigm of public relations history away from traditional methodologies and assumptions, and provides a new and unique entry point into this complicated arena.

Histories of Practice and Profession

Pathways to Public Relations

Karen Miller Russell

Este libro rompe con la engañosa dependencia que plantean las interpretaciones lineales del pasado, para ofrecer una visión amplia y a largo plazo del desarrollo y la institucionalización de las estra­tegias y las técnicas de comunicación estratégica, y de las relaciones públicas. En efecto, a falta de una teoría general que describa la aparición y el desarrollo de esta disciplina, los expertos han tendido a organizar tanto estas como sus antecedentes, en períodos de tiem­po que presentan una evolución progresiva desde unos orígenes tempranos —poco sofisticados y no muy sobrados de ética— hasta las campañas actuales, con una visión planificada, estraté­gica y ética. Según Karen Russell y Meg Lamme, tales intentos de periodización han oscurecido nuestra comprensión de las relaciones públicas y su historia. De hecho, los historiadores especializados en la materia han bus­cado con ahínco un punto de partida, y han dado fe de las limita­ciones que ello supone para la comprensión de su desarrollo, en Estados Unidos y el resto del mundo. Para ello, se ha procurado corregir malentendidos acerca de la historia de las relaciones públicas que han (mal) conformado la teoría durante más de veinte años, así como des­cribir y comprender la relación histórica que existe entre estas, los medios de comunicación y los contextos históricos en los que emergieron

Margot Opdycke Lamme

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