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Framing Public Relations: Media Portrayals and Journalistic Perceptions in New Zealand. A Qualitative Study Using Framing and Attribution Theories

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Date

2026

Authors

Bedi, Daljit Singh

Supervisor

Nairn, Angelique
Theunissen, Petra

Item type

Thesis

Degree name

Doctor of Philosophy

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Publisher

Auckland University of Technology

Abstract

Public relations plays an important role in how organisations engage with the outside world, yet it often receives negative media coverage that portrays it as a manipulative tool. Such a perception of public relations may overshadow its potential to promote communication and trust between organisations and their audiences. Through the lenses of attribution theory and framing theory, this study investigates how New Zealand news media contribute to these portrayals. It emphasises that the news media’s portrayal of public relations is influenced by journalists’ personal prejudices and professional ethics. By exploring this relationship, the study highlights the discursive link between journalists’ perceptions of public relations and its portrayal in the news media. This study explores a research gap by examining how journalists in New Zealand’s news media perceive and portray public relations. The distinctiveness of this area in New Zealand’s cultural and media landscape has often been overlooked in global research. Public relations and journalism interact uniquely in the country’s bicultural context, limited professional networks, and evolving digital landscape. Concurrently, the convergence of public relations, marketing, journalism, and organisational publishing brought about by the digital transition has heightened tensions between the two fields, undermining journalists’ gatekeeping authority and raising doubts about practitioners’ tactics. Three research questions guide this study: RQ1. How is public relations portrayed in New Zealand news media coverage? RQ2. How do New Zealand news media journalists perceive public relations and its practitioners? RQ3. What are the sources of New Zealand news media journalists’ perceptions of public relations and its practitioners? This study combines the analysis of news stories from well-known New Zealand national news media outlets with semi-structured interviews with journalists from those outlets. The goal is to understand journalists’ perceptions of public relations, the challenges it presents, the factors that influence their perceptions, and how all these shape its portrayal in the news media. Public relations is often referred to by journalists as spin or a disaster, which implies that its practitioners may be unethical. According to social identity theory, this perspective emphasises journalism’s independence and accountability while also underscoring the distinction between in-groups (journalists) and out-groups (public relations practitioners). Attribution processes reinforce this divide by portraying public relations behaviours as internally motivated and controllable, thereby legitimising ongoing scepticism and negative portrayals in the media. Often, the public relations team is blamed for issues, even when the actual problems arise from deeper organisational decisions. During a crisis, journalists have the power to shape public opinion by suggesting that public relations practitioners control the narrative, which can create the perception that they prioritise storytelling over substance. The study shows that these negative or mixed perceptions are not random but arise from a broader system of shared newsroom practices, cognitive schemas, institutionalised professional norms, and organisational constraints. Persistently unfavourable opinions about public relations stem from journalism’s organisational constraints, such as strict deadlines, reliance on reliable sources, budgetary strains, and a workplace culture that encourages mistrust of practitioners. Over time, this scepticism becomes ingrained in deeply held beliefs, which in turn strengthen and perpetuate the very depictions that journalists encounter in the news. This research combines framing and attribution theories to demonstrate how journalists’ internal attributional reasoning interacts with external media frames, thereby affecting the portrayal of public relations in the media. This interaction accounts for both the enduring unfavourable perceptions and the symbolic reinforcement of power imbalances and professional boundaries between journalists and practitioners. The results provide a theoretically informed and contextually relevant understanding of the portrayal of public relations in the New Zealand news media, emphasising its effects on professional credibility and the developing connection between the two domains in a swiftly shifting communication landscape.

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http://hdl.handle.net/10292/21357

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