Agonistic thinking has contributed significantly to enhancing democratic responsibility in public relations (PR) research over the past decade. However, extant agonistic PR research has predominantly focused on how to expand the repertoire of classical PR by embracing dissent, articulation, and empowerment to overcome the current post-democratic condition, i.e., a state in which democracy is increasingly perceived as a façade-like spectacle. Having far less research consideration is the recent surge of non-conformist, absolute, and uncivil communication that drives democratic backsliding, recently coined as ‘post-classical PR’ by Gareth Thompson. This surge poses new challenges not only for agonistic PR scholarship, but for agonistic reasoning in general. While agonistic reasoning decidedly embraces conflict as constitutive to democracy, it proves to be conspicuously silent when it comes to the question of how to determine and tackle communication that escalates conflict to erode democracy. To meet this omission, this conceptual article aims at two things: First, it introduces and elaborates on three key ‘erosive strategies’ of post-classical PR that mimic and weaponize agonistic rhetoric and in doing so normalize democratic backsliding: ‘dissociative depletion,’ ‘insistent exclusivity,’ and ‘dislocating democratic signifiers.’ Second, given this insight, we posit that the demanding dual democratic responsibility of agonistic PR lies in navigating two threats simultaneously: on the one hand, countering the post-democratic implications of classical PR; and on the other hand, developing resilience against post-classical PR driving democratic backsliding. • Proposes and extended reflection of communicative power in agonistic public relations. • Explains democracy-erosive communication strategies escalating conflict. • Identifies hijacking, weaponization, and normalization as core strategic features. • Calls for dual democratic responsibility of agonistic public relations. • Specifies this responsibility in tackling post-democracy and democratic backsliding.
Rundell et al. (Wed,) studied this question.