Institutionalizing public relations in China: A sociological analysis of the Chinese Premier's Press Conference☆
Highlights
► Public relations is institutionalized according to the changes in the larger environment. ► The institutionalization of PR practices in China has varied in its structure, settings and contents. ► The Chinese Premier's Press Conference has become a venue for top-down publicity for the powers that be. ► The form and content of its PR communications are mostly predictable.
Introduction
Public relations has been conceived and advocated as one effective way of strategic management practiced by organizations. Many scholars and researchers have identified the theoretical and practical importance of the institutionalization of PR in a standard form that is valuable for the organizations it serves (Chen, 2009, Coombs and Holladay, 2008, Grunig, 2006, Wakefield, 2008). However, when both institutionalization and public relations are considered as organizational methods and resources for achieving some collective goals, the institutionalization of PR is bound to be more than just a problem of management. The larger socio-political context has to be brought into the equation.
Public relations does not exist in a vacuum. It interacts with other institutions and practices in the society that produces them and as a result maintains the social system they coproduce (Ihlen, Ruler, & Fredriksson, 2009). From a sociological point of view, the systemic ways that social thought is promoted and action is executed in a rule-like fashion with regard to the processes, obligations or actualities concerned mean that any institutionalization clearly has different meanings for different organizations (Meyer & Rowan, 1977). Epistemologically, for a better understanding of the structure and processes of public relations, it is hence important to examine the origins and changes in the institutionalization of public relations in a specific cultural context. This is particularly significant when governments are involved.
At the state level, one important phenomenon of the institutionalization of PR in many countries around the world is the establishment of press conferences for the state leaders. In the United States, for example, presidential press conferences started in the 1930s, in tune with the evolution of the presidency as an institution (Cornwell, 1960), although they could be traced to 1913, when Woodrow Wilson became President. Since then, the White House press conference has become a mainstay of public communication between the government and the American people, especially when it has been broadcast live. Such practice has gradually diffused to other countries, both democratic and authoritarian. Sixty years after such US presidential press conferences began, in 1993, China began to institutionalize its premier's press conferences as well. The Chinese Premier's Press Conference (CPPC) has followed the formats of these press conferences in the US. However, its operation proceeds on a different trajectory that serves the government, not the public.
The purpose of this study is, first, to examine the evolution of the CPPC as a case to ascertain how governmental public relations practices are institutionalized in China; and second, to explore why they are conducted the way they have been. The focus is not on the occasional PR practices of the central government, but rather on the systemic arrangement that turns them into an institution. In other words, against the backdrop of the CPPC over time, the study closely looks at the fundamental elements of an institution, including its structural features, the indicators of stability and its impact on individual actors (Peters, 1999), as well as its implications for PR practices in China.
Section snippets
Institutionalization of PR from a sociological perspective
Following the managerial perspective of theories of the state, this study views the government as an organization that is run by political elites to manage and mobilize the internal resources and extend their realm of control within the geo-political boundaries (Alford & Friedland, 1985). As such, the study locates the CPPC in the larger governmental context to address the interplay between institutionalization and public relations, on the one hand, and explores the usages of PR in different
The institutional context in China
In his study of China's state legitimacy, Teiwes (1984) argued that Weber's typologies “can be clearly distinguished” in the authority patterns of the Communist Party of China (p. 46). He classified the crucial charismatic type of the Chinese leadership into four categories: revolutionary, synthetic or personality cult, performance-based, and nationalist. He considered the latter two categories as having “tenuous links” to charisma (Teiwes, 1984, p. 52). In China, task performance in the state
Methods
The case study approach is aimed not at empirical generality, but at conceptual generality, which is “the real strength of a case study” (Lee, C. C., 2010, p. 145). Conceptually, the CPPC case is ideal and crucial for answering the question of how and why the state in China adopts and institutionalizes government public relations. First, the most important political press conference in the country1 is held only once a year and
Institutionalizing the CPPC structure
Though the form of the political press conference can be traced to the beginning of the 20th century in China, the number of political press conferences was quite limited before the 1980s (Zhao, 2007). Since China embarked on its economic reform and external openness in the early 1980s, the situation has changed significantly, as more political press conferences have been needed to showcase the accountability of the government to the Chinese people. They have also been needed to project a
Conclusion
The findings from the case study of the CPPC indicate that the governmental publicity practices in China will continue to govern the evolution of PR as an institution. It stands to reason that this not only meets the need for the transformation of state legitimacy toward a performance base, but also makes these practices much more controllable, especially in the area of media management.
The evolution of the CPPC shows that the measures of the Chinese government in formalizing and managing the
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This research was supported by a research expense grant from the Department of Media and Communication at the City University of Hong Kong.