Discussion, Dialogue, Discourse| Elegy for Mediated Dialogue: Shiva the Destroyer and Reclaiming Our First Principles

Abstract

The field of public relations has embraced dialogic theory as a valuable theoretical framework for almost two decades. More recently, scholars have used dialogue as a framework to study the mediated communication via the Internet and social media. However, many studies of mediated dialogue, have concluded that the communicator/organization failed, or that a social media tool such as Twitter had failed to deliver on its “potential” for dialogue. In this essay we argue that what has passed as dialogic scholarship has largely been dialogue in name only, lacking in almost every facet of dialogic communication, and at the best having “dialogic potential.” We conduct an elegy or critique of dialogic theory providing suggestions for moving forward.