The Essence of Public Relations: Shaping Perceptions and Information Flow

Every time a company issues a statement after a scandal, a CEO takes the stage at an industry summit, or a nonprofit releases a report highlighting its community impact – that’s public relations at work. PR is one of those disciplines that everyone encounters daily but few can pin down precisely. Is it spin? Is it advertising? Is it just damage control? The answer is none of the above – and understanding what PR actually is, and where it came from, goes a long way in explaining how information flows between organizations and the people who matter to them.

What is public relations? Pinning down the definition 🔗

At its core, public relations (PR) is the practice of managing and directing information from an individual or organization to the public in order to shape perception. Wikipedia’s entry on PR puts it plainly: PR aims to inform and persuade investors, partners, employees, and other stakeholders to maintain a favorable view about the organization, its leadership, products, or political decisions. Importantly, PR differs from advertising because it relies primarily on earned media – coverage obtained without direct payment – rather than paid promotion.

One of the most widely cited formal definitions comes from the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA), which, following a global crowdsourcing initiative in 2011-12, settled on this modern definition: “Public relations is a strategic communication process that builds mutually beneficial relationships between organizations and their publics.” The word “process” was deliberately chosen over “management function” because, as the PRSA noted, it better reflects the dynamic and collaborative nature of PR – rather than a top-down, one-way flow of information.

The Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR) in the United Kingdom approaches the definition differently, placing reputation at its center: PR is about reputation – the result of what you do, what you say, and what others say about you. Meanwhile, scholars Cutlip, Center, and Broom, whose textbook has shaped generations of PR students, define it as the management function that establishes and maintains mutually beneficial relationships between an organization and the publics on whom its success or failure depends.

What ties all these definitions together is a recognition that PR is fundamentally relational and strategic – not just about broadcasting messages, but about listening, understanding, and responding to the people who matter to an organization.

Edward Bernays’s foundational definition 🔗

While modern bodies like PRSA have refined how we define PR, the conceptual groundwork was laid over a century ago. Edward Bernays, widely regarded as one of the field’s founding theorists, offered one of the earliest and most comprehensive definitions: “Public Relations is a management function which tabulates public attitudes, defines the policies, procedures and interests of an organization, and then executes a program of action to earn public understanding and acceptance.”

This definition is significant because it frames PR as a three-step process: first, research (tabulating public attitudes); second, policy alignment (ensuring the organization’s actions are defensible); and third, communication (executing programs that earn understanding). Bernays wasn’t thinking of PR as mere publicity – he saw it as an applied social science that draws on psychology, sociology, and behavioral research to build genuine alignment between an organization and its audiences.

Bernays also authored key texts that shaped the field, including Crystallizing Public Opinion (1923), Propaganda (1928), and The Engineering of Consent (1947). In these works, he argued that understanding what the public wants – and then shaping communication accordingly – is what separates effective PR from mere press agentry. As described in Bernays’s own book on Public Relations, the discipline is “a continuing process of social integration,” not a bag of tricks or one-off stunts.

The pioneers who shaped modern PR 🔗

Ivy Lee: truth as a PR strategy 🔗

Before Bernays theorized PR as a social science, Ivy Lee made a more immediate and practical contribution: he introduced honesty into corporate communication. Social Sci LibreTexts describes Lee as the pioneering “public information counselor” who revolutionized PR with the radical idea of telling the truth. A former journalist, Lee realized that complicated issues could be explained clearly and honestly to the public – and that doing so was both ethical and strategically smart.

His most famous moment came in 1906, during a Pennsylvania Railroad train derailment. Instead of locking the gates and shutting out reporters – the standard corporate response at the time – Lee invited journalists to the crash site at the company’s expense, provided them with verified facts, and issued a proactive press release. This approach, built on transparency rather than concealment, became the template for modern crisis communications.

Lee’s guiding philosophy was captured in his “Declaration of Principles,” in which he promised accuracy, openness, and candor. As PR historian John Stauber notes, Lee preferred to call himself a “publicist” rather than a press agent, distinguishing himself from the sensationalist tradition of figures like P.T. Barnum. He believed the best way for any organization to earn public goodwill was simply to deserve it – through responsible behavior and honest reporting.

Edward Bernays: PR as science 🔗

Where Lee brought ethics, Bernays brought science. A nephew of Sigmund Freud, Bernays was deeply influenced by psychoanalytic theory. According to Wikipedia’s history of PR, Bernays saw the field as an applied social science that uses psychology, sociology, and other disciplines to understand and influence the thinking and behavior of the public. He didn’t just want to send messages – he wanted to understand the underlying desires, fears, and impulses that make messages land.

His campaigns were legendary in their scope. In 1929, he helped Lucky Strike cigarettes gain acceptance among women by reframing smoking as a symbol of independence – a campaign that showed just how powerfully PR could reshape social norms. Bernays was also the first to coin the term “public relations counsel,” positioning the PR professional not as a mere publicist but as a strategic advisor to management. His model – research the public, understand their attitudes, then shape your communication – remains at the heart of how PR is practiced today.

It’s worth noting that some PR historians caution against crowning any single individual as “the father of PR.” AT&T, for example, had its first publicity department in 1886, well before either Lee or Bernays were active. The consensus among scholars is that “PR has many parents,” and that Lee and Bernays were among the most prominent figures in formalizing and theorizing a practice that was already evolving organically across corporations and government.

What PR actually involves: the range of activities 🔗

PR is far more than press releases and media interviews. Penn State’s introduction to PR outlines common activities as speaking at conferences, seeking industry awards, working with the press, communicating with employees, and distributing press releases. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics adds that PR specialists design communications campaigns, write speeches for company leaders, manage social media, handle crisis communications, and act as organizational spokespersons.

At a structural level, PR encompasses several distinct domains. Media relations involves building relationships with journalists to earn fair and accurate coverage. Employee communications or internal communications ensures that the people inside an organization are informed and aligned – a factor often underestimated, since employees are among an organization’s most powerful ambassadors. Government or public affairs involves engaging with policymakers to shape legislation and regulation. Crisis communication involves managing and containing reputational damage when things go wrong. And investor relations keeps shareholders and financial stakeholders informed about the organization’s performance and direction.

The Inc. Encyclopedia makes an important distinction that clarifies what PR is not: while advertising aims to generate sales, PR aims to generate goodwill. Its core goal is to reduce the gap between how an organization sees itself and how the outside world perceives it. That gap – between internal identity and external image – is exactly where PR lives and operates.

PR and the flow of information: a two-way street 🔗

One of the most important conceptual shifts in the history of PR has been the move from one-way communication to two-way dialogue. Early PR was largely about broadcasting – pushing messages outward and hoping they stuck. Bernays himself pioneered what scholars James Grunig and Todd Hunt later called the two-way asymmetric model, in which research is used to understand public opinion, but the goal is still to persuade rather than to genuinely respond.

The more evolved model – the two-way symmetric model – goes a step further. Texas A&M’s Open Educational Resources describe it as the most ethical approach to PR: one in which organizations are genuinely open to changing their own policies and practices based on what they learn from their publics. This model is widely used in investor relations, nonprofit communications, and internal HR communications, precisely because it builds trust rather than just managing impressions.

In August 1978, the World Assembly of Public Relations Associations defined the field as the art and social science of analyzing trends, predicting their consequences, advising organizational leaders, and implementing planned programs of action that serve both the organization and the public interest. That last clause – serving both the organization and the public interest – is critical. It is what separates PR from propaganda, and what has driven decades of debate about the profession’s ethical obligations.

Why PR still matters today 🔗

In an era of social media, 24-hour news cycles, and instant public backlash, the relevance of PR has only grown. The Institute of Public Relations notes that the internet has transformed how PR is practiced: in addition to traditional tools like press releases and media briefings, modern PR now incorporates blogs, social media, podcasts, SEO, and content marketing. The fundamental goal, however, remains unchanged – building and protecting the relationship between an organization and the people who matter to it.

Reputation, as the CIPR emphasizes, can be a company’s most valuable asset – the thing that differentiates it in a competitive market and gives it resilience in a crisis. Whether a government agency is explaining a new policy, a startup is launching a product, or a university is responding to a controversy, the tools may differ but the underlying discipline is the same: understand your publics, communicate honestly, and build relationships that last.

What do you think? Given that Bernays used his deep understanding of human psychology to shape mass opinion – sometimes in ways that benefited industries more than the public – where does the line fall between legitimate public relations and manipulation? And as social media increasingly allows organizations to bypass traditional journalism and speak directly to their audiences, how does that shift the ethical responsibilities of a PR professional?

References

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_relations
2. https://www.prsa.org/about/all-about-pr
3. https://prsay.prsa.org/2011/11/29/cipr-joins-public-relations-defined-initiative/
4. https://journalism.fandom.com/wiki/Public_relations
5. https://books.google.com/books/about/Public_Relations.html?id=0NpSb5nmn5sC
6. https://socialsci.libretexts.org/Courses/Southern_Illinois_University_Edwardsville/Social_Media_for_Public_Relations/01:_Origins_of_PR_and_PR_Principles/1.03:_The_History_and_Development_of_Modern_PR
7. https://uen.pressbooks.pub/stratcomm/chapter/chapter-2-history-how-we-got-here-where-ideas-come-from-2/
8. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_public_relations
9. https://psu.pb.unizin.org/comm370/chapter/chapter-3-the-world-of-public-relations/
10. https://www.bls.gov/ooh/media-and-communication/public-relations-specialists.htm
11. https://www.inc.com/encyclopedia/public-relations.html
12. https://odp.library.tamu.edu/mediacommunication2e/chapter/public-relations-basics/
13. https://www.ipr.org.uk/public-relations-through-time.html