University researcher steers the innovative future of PR
28 October 2016
Waikato University Professor David McKie is striving to liberate and reform the field of public relations (PR). He hopes to change the way public relations practitioners, scholars and professional organisations perceive the practice, but it hasn’t been an easy journey.
“Public relations is concerned with protecting reputation yet it has a terrible reputation in itself. It’s ironic,” says Professor McKie, who is a professor of management communication in Waikato's Management School.
The academic activist says there has always been a lack of self-criticism in PR on both an individual and collective level. “The industry has not examined its own practice and theories very critically. Without more robust self-criticism and self-questioning of its frameworks of power, PR will retain its poor reputation,” he says.
The lack of criticism in PR was one of the motivators for Professor McKie to co-author The Routledge Handbook of Critical Public Relations. The groundbreaking text includes critical perspectives on a vast range of PR topics, from 40 international authors.
Dr Robert E Brown, a professor of communications and public relations at Salem State University in the United States, has described it as "nothing less than transfomative; I know of no scholarly book that has equaled this book's potential to rebrand public relations in the eyes of the world."
The next step for Professor McKie is to investigate PR historiography. “To change the future, we need to look at the past. Historically PR innovation came from activists, and activists were a dynamo of innovation,” he says.
Professor McKie is now working on a new book, Public Relations History: Reworking Pasts and Reclaiming Futures, with Professor Jordi Xifra from Pompeu Fabra University in Spain.
The book will review the history of public relations from an international perspective and examine PR's implicit claims to be objective and free of ideological bias. It will undoubtedly arouse debate for PR scholars, educators and students alike.
“Conversations constitute reality and reconfiguring PR means changing its conversations,” he says.
Over the years, Professor McKie has been driving debates and discussions around PR by co-authoring eight books and more than 100 book chapters and journal articles.
He presents and organises various conferences, serves on editorial boards, mentors students, and lectures on leadership and strategic communication papers at Waikato Management School.
Professor McKie is active in the practical PR world too. He has consulted for public and private organisations in Australasia, Asia, Europe and the US, including leading companies such as Zespri and Telecom New Zealand.
The Routledge Handbook of Critical Public Relations is co-authored by Jacquie L'Etang, David McKie, Nancy Snow and Jordi Xifra.