Public relations realities: Materiality and the communicative constitution of organizations, publics, and their relationships

Dominant approaches to theorizing public relations have focused on how the practice, as a management function, can benefit corporate outcomes that align with neoliberal, capitalist ends. In contrast, critical scholars have sought to resist these notions by acknowledging how public relations can function to reinforce existing power structures and seeking to reimagine public relations as a cocreational space that can promote democratic participation. To continue to advance critical public relations scholarship, in this paper we introduce the communicative constitution of organizations perspective, with a specific conceptual focus on materiality, as a path forward for the discipline to continue to resist neoliberal logics. In turn, we offer three possible scholarly avenues for critical public relations researchers to pursue to advance critical scholarship in the discipline through the application of a constitutive approach to materiality. Specifically, we focus on advancing critical scholarship related to: (1) publics, (2) crisis communication, and (3) advocacy and activism.