Bill Sledzig, tillförordnad professor och lärare vid skolan för journalistik och masskommunikation vid Kent State University i Ohio, USA, tar ofta upp frågan om vad PR är och inte är och slår fast att det inte är marknadsföring, i sin blogg ToughSledding. Den 20 juli 2008 försökte han sig på att definiera PR-begreppet utan att nämna ordet "marketing".
Encyclopedia of public relations (2nd edition). sid. 697. ISBN 978-1-4522-7623-6. OCLC855731848. https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/855731848. Läst 9 juli 2020. ”"[...]the frequent dif-
ficulty of differentiating public relations from
propaganda in that it is associated with the manipulation of political and corporate information to affect the way in which news is presented. [...] Propaganda has been associated with
mass communication, mass persuasion, mind
control, and mass brainwashing. It has a history of being used to promote an [...] way of life that benefits some to the disadvantage of others.
Modern practitioners of public relations
and academics focus on the concepts of symbolic manipulation, cognitive manipulation, scientific mass persuasion, and asymmetry as defining attributes that separate propaganda and unethical
public relations from ethical and responsible
approaches to the profession.
Many scholars grappled with a definition of the
word propaganda.
[...]The social psychologist
Leonard W. Doob summarized these definitional
difficulties in 1989 by suggesting that “a clear-cut
definition of propaganda is neither possible nor
desirable” (p. 375).
Garth Jowett and Victoria O’Donnell have cre-
ated a definition that focuses on propaganda as a
communication process, more specifically on the
purpose of the process: “Propaganda is the deliber-
ate, systematic attempt to shape perceptions, manip-
ulate cognitions, and direct behavior to achieve a
response that furthers the desired intent of the propagandist” (1999, p. 6). This definition stresses that
propaganda is “willful, intentional, and premeditated” (1999, p. 6). Although it clearly establishes
propaganda as a neutral technique, it also comes close to a definition of public relations held by some of its practitioners and many of its critics, thus emphasizing the difficulty in establishing a clearer differentiation between the two practices.
"”
