Positioning PR: An analysis of the representation of public relations in Australian political speeches
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In Australia, as in many westernised democracies, each of the political parties fully understands the importance of effective public relations strategies in gaining public acceptance of their policies, with public relations specialists playing a key role in managing and shaping political debates. Nevertheless, the Australian Labor Party (ALP) Government has been repeatedly positioned by the Liberal National Party (LNP or Coalition) as using ‘spin’ and ‘PR stunts’ to promote its policies in relation to a proposed price on carbon pollution. In this study the speeches of the ALP Prime Minister Julia Gillard, and the LNP Opposition leader Tony Abbott, were examined over a three-month period using a new provisional conceptual intentional positioning framework for public relations.
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Positioning PR: An analysis of the representation of public relations in Australian political speeches
- 1. Positioning PR: an analysis of the representation of public relations in Australian political speeches Deborah Wise University of Newcastle Australia Spin doctor (plural spin doctors) “A person employed to gloss over a poor public image (or present it in a better light) in business and politics, especially after unfavourable results have been achieved. A lobbyist: PR person” (http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/doctor)
- 2. Political backdrop • Federal politics dominated by the Australian Labor Party (Government) and the Liberal Party of Australia (Opposition in coalition with the Australian National Party) • Both committed to reducing carbon emissions by 5% by 2020 but no agreement on how • 2007- ALP wins election • 2010- Gillard announces she will not introduce a carbon tax • 2011- Announces her Govt. will introduce a carbon price • 2012- Carbon price commences but little public support
- 3. Research approach • RQ: why have the positioning strategies of the Coalition (Opposition) gained greater traction than the positioning strategies of the Australian Labor Party (Government) in relation to carbon pricing? • Testing of the intentional positioning framework for public relations (James, 2010, 2011) as a method to conduct a positioning discourse analysis (PDA) • 13 speech & video transcripts – Abbott (Opposition) • 9 speech & video transcripts – Gillard (Government) • Finding that public relations was being positioned
- 4. PR in political contexts • Voting is compulsory –need for communication • Increases by both parties in their investment in media relations, public relations, and advertising (Ward, 2007) • Claims that Australia has become a “PR state” (Ward, 2007) • Current ALP Government currently employing approximately 1600 staff “in media, communications, marketing and public affairs roles”(Berkovic, 2012)
- 6. Positioning PR • “Misdirected expenditure on government advertising, spin and obfuscation have resulted in perceptions of public relations as a tool for hiding the truth and misleading the public for the purpose of achieving a particular political agenda” (Glenny, 2008, p. 152). • PR is seen as a misuse of government resources, and this misuse is at their (taxpayers) expense (Young, 2007, p. xxvii). • Politicians are seen as becoming “more professional and calculating” (and possibly more unethical) (Savage and Tiffen, 2007, pp. 81-91) • On going conflict as each party/politician engages in a “mutual puncturing” of one another’s efforts (Savage & Tiffen, 2007)
- 7. Positioning PR • PM's $150m spin doctor brigade • IS GILLARD'S SPIN DOCTOR GETTING TOO MUCH CREDIT? • ATO pays 277 staff spin doctors • Now I wonder why PM's spin doctor wants to have a beer • PM's new spin doctor says he'll walk his talk • SPIN DOCTORS GALORE-AND YOU'RE PAYING FOR THEM • Labor spin doctors waste money on ads while patients suffer • LABOR SPIN DOCTOR ALMOST REPEATS LINE THAT TONY ABBOTT RIPPED 1 BILLION OUT OF HOSPITALS • An inside guide to spin doctors’ wily ways • Taxpayers Fund $150 Million In Federal Spin Doctors • Not all spin doctors use their powers for evil
- 8. Positioning in PR • Positioning in PR contexts focuses on the strategic attempts by an entity to “stake out and occupy a site of intentional representation in the contested space where meanings are constructed, contested and reconstructed” (James, 2010, p.7). • Individuals have rights and duties that are jointly constituted through discourse (James, 2011; Wise & James, in press) • An entity undertaking a PR program must have the right, or construct the right, to discursively take a particular position if the positioning strategy is to succeed (James, 2011; Wise & James, in press)
- 9. Positioning Triangle Abbott Position The Government/Gillard are untrustworthy Discourses/storyl ines to support the position taken Immorality & illegitimacy discourses supported by storylines about the use of “spin” and “PR stunts” Speech acts/ enactment of position taken Address to the Nation Speech to the Australian Steel Convention
- 10. Speech acts/enactment “Why should we trust this government with a new tax when we know where it will all end: with more spending, more waste and more spin” (Address to the Nation, Abbott, July 10, 2011) “Any meeting to address the problems in manufacturing industry that doesn’t address the carbon tax is nothing more than a desperate PR stunt” (Speech to the Australian Steel Convention, Abbott, August 29, 2011).
- 11. Social force of speech acts • In public political discourse the social force of discursive acts includes meanings “conjured among third party publics, whom the contending parties wish to win over in a power game of discursive influence” (Montiel & Guzman, 2010, p. 96). • Social force of positioning PR was to legitimise Abbott and the Opposition while delegitimising the Government and Gillard • The success of this discursive positioning was contingent on the pre- existing attitudes that individuals may have about PR
- 12. Positioning PR • The key determiner of the success (or not) of a particular speech act, is the position of the speaker to perform the act (Searle & Vanderveken, 1985). • Unless an individual has constructed the right to self position, or is attributed that right by others, the positioning will ultimately fail (Wise & James, in press). • Abbott constructed the right to position the Government & PR as immoral/illegitimate because it called upon wider societal discourses about the inherent unethicalness of public relations as a professional field and the Prime Minister’s ‘big lie’
- 13. Repositioning PR • Willis: relationships need to be contextualised for particular contexts –discourse analysis using positioning framework is potentially useful in explicating contextual discursive constructs • Holladay: Positioning approach is also useful in terms of potentially providing a framework for mapping turning points in relationships • Bourne: elites shape cognitive maps and discourses (Abbott’s discourses about PR) • Dimitrov: Journalism discourse of PR prevails over PR discourses of PR - this is why PR needs PR • PR needs to reposition PR i.e. rights and duties of positioning theory
Editor's Notes
- State and Federal politics in Australia is dominated by two major parties - the Australian Labor Party (ALP), and the Liberal Party of Australia. At the Federal level the Liberal Party has formed a coalition with the Australian National Party and is commonly referred to as The Coalition.
- Australia is unusual in that voting is compulsory this means that government communication is especially important in terms of providing information for voters to make informed political choices Time-poor politicians the need to perpetually campaign and plan “for the next election campaign the need to stave off an often-critical mass media mutual dependency between journalists who rely on politicians for newsworthy stories, and politicians who rely on journalists for publicity for their policies Has all led to substantial increases by both of the major political parties in their investment in media relations, public relations, and advertising. For these reasons each of the major political parties fully acknowledge the importance of effective public relations strategies in gaining public acceptance of their policies, with public relations practices playing an important role in terms of managing and shaping political debates Recent figures indicate that the federal government currently employs approximately 1600 staff “in media, communications, marketing and public affairs roles” (
- See here for details http://www.theaustralian.com.au/media/pms-150m-spin-doctor-brigade/story-e6frg996-1226448739077 $150 million a year on “an army of spin doctors” The Australian Taxation Office, Defence and departments of Human Services, Immigration and Health employ more media and communications staff than any other departments or agencies. And a further 60 media advisers are dedicated to federal ministers and parliamentary secretaries These figures do not include the media and communications staff that refused to reveal how many spin doctors it employed The Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet is the only department with no media, communications, marketing or public affairs staff.
- Glenny (2008) observes that in Australia “misdirected expenditure on government advertising, spin and obfuscation have resulted in perceptions of public relations as a tool for hiding the truth and misleading the public for the purpose of achieving a particular political agenda” Public relations tactics are seen as a misuse of government resources, and this misuse is seen as being at their (taxpayers’) expense Politicians are also tainted by their close association with public relations - the broad view being that politicians have become “more professional and calculating” (and possibly more unethical) because of this relationship
- Suspicions about the role of public relations within the Australian political sphere are often reinforced by media reports that state, for example, that the Australian Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, has a “$150m spin doctor brigade” and that this “army of spin doctors” are employed solely “to sell the Gillard government's policies to voters” As Elspeth Tilley has argued, claims such as these are commonplace in the Australian (and New Zealand) media and play into the idea that stereotypical consumers of mass culture are more likely to think of PR ethics as an oxymoron” (Brown, 2003, p. 496).
- This paper tests the positioning framework for public relations and tests its applicability as a framework to guide a positioning discourse analysis. James definition of positioning in public relations contexts focuses on the strategic attempts by an entity to “stake out and occupy a site of intentional representation in the contested space where meanings are constructed, contested and reconstructed” (2010, p.7). positioning theory also stresses that individuals have rights and duties that are jointly constituted through discourse and is related to public relations in that an entity undertaking a public relations program must have the right, or construct the right, to discursively take a particular position if the positioning strategy is to succeed
- The positioning triangle domain is where the actual and the desired position(s) of an entity and its stakeholders; the speech acts used to enact a desired outcome; and the discourses and narratives or storylines used to support and achieve the position declared in the speech acts/actions, must all align. Importantly, the triangle must maintain dynamic stability meaning that if one vertex of the triangle changes then the other vertices must also realign if positioning is to succeed
- The third vertex of the positioning triangle is speech acts/action (James, 2011). Searle (1979) suggests there are a limited number of basic things that individuals do with language: “we tell people how things are” (assertives); “we try to get them to do things” (directives), “we commit ourselves to doing things” (commissives); “we express our feelings and attitudes” (expressives) “and we bring about changes through our utterances” (declarations) (p.29). We also often, we do more than one of these at once in the same utterance” (Searle , 1979, p. 29). In both of these instances Abbott is making assertions about the government and also about PR What is also interesting is that the first of these assertions was enacted in a televised “address to the nation” with a potential audience of more than 22 million people The 2nd assertion- to the Australian Steel Convention- would have had a smaller and more select audience but nevertheless Australia’s steel industry is substantial in size and generates about 0.1% of Australia's GDP and more than 11 billion per annum in profits.
- in this context the intentional use of the term ‘spin’ and “PR stunts” at these venues and to these audiences had the social force of delegitimising the position of the government (because of their apparent use of public relations) while at the same time legitimising the position of the Opposition (as apparently not doing the same) because when we position others we also position ourselves These speech acts were also contingent on the pre- existing negative attitudes that individuals may have had about PR
- Also key to the success (or not) of a particular speech act, is the position of the speaker to perform the act (Searle & Vanderveken, 1985). From a public relations perspective this last point is critical because it means that unless an individual has either constructed the right to self position, or is attributed that right by others within a social episode, the positioning will ultimately fail (Wise & James, in press). Abbott constructed the right to position PR as immoral/illegitimate because it called upon wider societal discourses about the inherent unethicalness of public relations as a professional field and thus raises concerns for the ongoing professional identity of the field as a whole.
- IIAMCR story about “spin” instead of PR on slide Paul Willis: relationships need to be contextualised for particular contexts –discourse analysis using positioning framework useful in explicating contextual discursive constructs Sherry Holladay- there is often a turning point that changes relationships & taking positioning approach is potentially useful in terms of providing a framework for mapping turning points in relationships Clea Bourne – drawing on Bourdieu- argued elites are actively shaping our cognitive maps and discourses – for example Abbott’s positioning of PR Roumen Dimitrov: Journalism discourse of PR prevails over PR discourses of PR - this is why PR needs PR PR needs to reposition