This volume provides a critical look at public relations practice, utilizing case studies from public relations, advertising, and marketing to illustrate the deconstruction and analysis of public relations campaigns. Author Thomas J. Mickey uses a cultural studies approach and demonstrates how it can be used as a critical theory for public relations practice, offering real-world examples to support his argument.
Through the interpretive act of deconstruction, this book serves to challenge the myth of public relations as an objective "science," allowing the social importance of public relations to be redefined and encouraging public relations to take a fuller place in the interdisciplinary study of text and knowledge.
Intended for public relations scholars and students in public relations cases/campaigns, public relations criticism, and media studies courses, Deconstructing Public Public Relations Criticism demystifies the act of deconstruction and shows how it can give insight into the theory and practice of public relations.
Thomas Mickey's Deconstructing Public Relations is an underrated classic. I find the book one of the most intellectually stimulating examinations of public relations ever written and I not only make students read it on a regular basis, but recommend it to friends and colleagues who are PR professionals in "the real world."
What Mickey does so well is demonstrate the hidden meanings and implications of public relations campaigns. Further, he encourages PR students and practitioners to reflect deeply on their work and its many diverse meanings. Public relations is a highly nuanced profession and what more people should contemplate is its role in modern society. Mickey provides a lens for this important work.
This book contains some interesting information, but it's exhausting to read most of it. But then again, it's about research by a researcher, which might be the perfect combo to cure insomnia. It would've been more engaging if it had fewer research purpose explanations and more details about how PR messages have been deconstructed and what that information indicates. Some chapters do an excellent job of this, but there are several that do not. On a side note, I am surprised by how poorly it was edited.