The transparent corporation and organized community

Abstract

The aim of this special issue of Public Relations Review is to raise questions for further discussion and research about how technology is changing the industry of public information dissemination and persuasion, and how the public changes its mind about events, social issues, high profile images, and information itself. Unprecedented access to information through consumer and citizen Net-works has created the “transparency” in corporate life that has overturned conventional ideas about ownership in organizations, reshaping popular images of Big Business carved by partisan politics. Corporate Social Responsibility, also called “stakeholder capitalism”, suggests that prosperous business owes something back to the community from which it draws its profits. The widespread use of pseudo-polls by policy advocates in public relations campaigns and the media ownership of polls have undermined public confidence in the credibility of the phrase “what the public thinks”. While technology diminishes the ability of corporations, politicians, and governments, to control or define a public image, the individual enjoys unprecedented access to information and a newfound advantage in the sphere of public influence. The currents and undercurrents of the life cycle of public information, disbelief, persuasion and doubt pose profound questions for public relations inquiry, on an ethical as well as technical level.