公共关系对公众的想象

Imagination about the Public in Public Relations

公共关系诞生于20世纪之初,专司协调组织与公众之间的意见分歧和利益冲突,因此对公关而言,公众是其理论和实践的双重母题。本文梳理了百年公关历史进路中组织公众观的变迁。这些主流公众观包括知情—驯化的公众、顽固—能动的公众、作为"上帝""中心"的顾客或消费者公众、作为利益相关者的公众、作为对话和价值共创者的公众。每一种公众观皆有其所见的主体图景和边界,并与组织对自我与外部世界的想象紧密关联。本文在批判这些公众观的基础上,勾划了互联网时代的新公众观。

Public relations(PR)was born in the early twentieth century.It has been specializing in mediating and coordinating the conflicts of interest between organizations and the public.Therefore,public is the double motif for PR in both theoretical and practical perspectives.This paper reviewed PR history and cleared up the organizational views of the public during the past 100 years,which reflected the organization's values and attitudes towards the public.The conceptual traditions went through a long-term evolutionary process,including the informed-disciplined public,the stubbornactive public,the paramount customer public,the stakeholder public,and the value co-creating and dialogist public.Each view of the public has its identity settings and boundaries,and is also closely related to the organization's imagination of itself and the outside world.Based on the criticism of the most influential theoretical traditions,this paper is aimed to develop and present a new view of the public for PR in the context of the Internet and digital era.