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An Ethnographic Communication Analysis of Indian Political Public Relations Practitioners

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Thesis(2.69 MB)

Date

2024

Authors

Rasquinha, Mark

Supervisor

Sissons, Helen
Theunissen, Petra

Item type

Thesis

Degree name

Doctor of Philosophy

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Publisher

Auckland University of Technology

Abstract

This thesis is about how political organisations use professional culture to exert control over practitioners in the practice of political public relations (PPR) in India. PPR plays a crucial role in shaping public opinion and influencing political decision-making. It is a complex and dynamic field, shaped by the country's diverse population, complex political system, and rapidly changing media landscape. Moreover, with the rise of digital communication and social media platforms, political public relations in India has evolved to include digital communication strategies such as social media campaigns, online videos, and influencer marketing to reach a wider audience and target specific demographics. This has made the practice of PPR more dynamic and ever-changing, as political parties and leaders rely on PPR practitioners to adapt to new technologies and communication channels to influence public opinion. While research on the adaptation of new technologies and communication channels has increased in the last decade, little is known about how professional culture influences the practice and the practitioners of PPR. This interpretivist study analyses the micro level of PPR practice by employing vide ethnographic methods. It focuses on investigating how aspects of power such as formal authority, informal authority and discursive power shape the behaviours of professional practitioners and the practice of PPR in India. This thesis approaches PPR as a specialised field of public relations and sheds light on the professional lived experiences of political public relations practitioners (PPRPs) by using a critical approach to examine professional culture within a socio-political and cultural context. The study gathered 56 hours of video ethnographic data, combined with interviews with ten PPRPs, four journalists and six corporate PPRPs. Through the application of critical discourse studies, conversation analysis, and the analysis of non-verbal cues, the routines of PPR practitioners were analysed to reveal that PPR practice in India is persuasive and closely associated with the practice of propaganda. This thesis shows how power embedded in the organisation culture of a political party’s public relations department is used to control the individual level of PPR practitioners and shape the products of their practice. More specifically, the thesis demonstrates how entitled power is exerted by managers and senior members of a department to regulate lower-level practitioners and the content they produce. Thereby it shows how authority is used by the political organisation’s structure to control PPR practice and enforce the organisation’s narrative on specific issues. Another aspect of professional PPR culture examined in this thesis is collegiality, where power is equal. This thesis shows how collegiality creates situations through which everyday professional practices that are central to the production of messages by a PPR department are regularised. These regularised practices provide clear guidelines to practitioners who produce political content. Regularised practices involve in-house style sheets which help the organisation control the messages of the PPR department. Lastly, this thesis shows how the knowledge and skills required to produce PPR messages, helps political parties ensure that PPRPs represent the interests of the organisation at the cost of their communities. Although the primary responsibility of PPRPs is to represent the organisation and its interests to the public, rather than representing the community, public relations scholars have often called on practitioners to be advocates for the communities they represent. However, attempts by PPR practitioners to represent communities can create tension between the interests of the community and the interests of the organisation. These findings contribute to an international body of knowledge in the areas of PPR, public relations, public policy and critical studies concerning the use PPR in democratic processes.

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http://hdl.handle.net/10292/18337

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