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Public relations (PR) research has given little space to the opinions, innovations and experiences of those working in marginalised or ‘dirty’ roles or occupations. To ensure that the worlds of these ‘others’ are represented this chapter explores the lives and work of women working in PR and communication roles in the ‘adult’ industry (worth an estimated $15 billion worldwide). Tibbals notes that ‘the voices and experiences of women working in the adult film industry are often overlooked’ (2013, p. 21) and dismissing a highly profitable but ‘dirty’ sector is to overlook and denigrate the people who work in it and the experiences and knowledge created therein. To explore my research questions I gathered informal interview data from women working in PR and combined this with published literature which recorded the lives of women who carried out PR and communications roles in the adult industry. My research demonstrates that high quality PR work is carried out within the adult industry and that the industry attracts women from diverse backgrounds, many of whom progress quickly within a meritorious environment. Nonetheless, these women often feel difficulty in explaining or justifying their work to family and friends and have strategies to avoid discussing their work to those outside the industry. They also have to work within a media environment where adult industry issues are not well or correctly reported.

Public relations research into career advancement has been frequently criticised for its focus on gender discrimination and the prevailing dominance of American academics, while widely ignoring the perception of “industry insiders”. This paper aims to provide new insight into PR career progression.

The paper considers alternative aspects to PR career progression, as emphasised by general management and continuous professional development literature, with a close examination of the UK's public relations industry and its practitioners' perceptions of career advancement impacting factors.

The results gained were used to develop a Five‐step PR Career Progression Model, which may act as a useful starting point for further research into career advancement factors and the move towards a widely accepted set of career progression benchmarks for the UK's public relations industry.

Overall, this paper encourages both PR academics and practitioners to work closely together on future research projects into career advancement in order to maximise the potential of the industry as a whole and improve career chances for individual practitioners.

The purpose of this paper is to find out whether public relations (PR) students feel ready and adequately prepared for their future jobs and how they cope with the reputational and ethical issues of the public relations industry, also during the pandemic.

Survey research among public relations students in Poland was conducted twice, in 2019 and 2021, to explore their opinions on the applicability of public relations studies, career prospects for PR students in the industry and their approach to perennial reputational problems of PR. The 2021 survey also looked into challenges for the public relations education created by the pandemic, including lack of students' direct interactions with teachers and prevalence of online instruction methods.

The study shows that most public relations students feel confident about their career choices and appreciate their level of preparedness at PR schools for real-life assignments in the public relations industry. In addition, students are aware of the ethical and reputational issues of their chosen trade, and they tend to advocate for the field among friends and families and even rectify widespread misconceptions about PR. The role of public relations during the COVID-19 pandemic – according to respondents – has grown significantly, thus creating new, exciting opportunities for public relations professionals, though not necessarily for PR students or graduates.

This paper contributes to research on public relations education, its effectiveness, widely discussed reputational and ethical issues plaguing the field, relationships of educators and students with the PR industry and the role of PR students as advocates for their trade.

This paper aimed to research attitudes of women working in the Croatian public relations (PR) industry regarding office culture (networking, banter, dress codes, etc.).

This paper uses Bourdieu's habitus theory and analyses the experiences of women working in the Croatian PR industry with a focus on office culture. The study is based on 21 in-depth interviews with women working in the Croatian PR industry. Thematic analysis has been used to analyse data.

Although female employees (76.84%) dominate the PR industry in Croatia, the so-called masculine patterns still prevail in the PR sector. Results show that women are often exposed to gender discrimination but at the same time, they also perpetuate gender-based prejudices.

Employees in the PR industry should consider working on their own gender stereotypes that impact their patterns of behaviour. Relinquishment of the ideas of patriarchal essentialism would consequently change career progression opportunities, and it would particularly improve networking among women, which could lead to career advancement opportunities.

Structural changes are needed in society to avoid women perpetuating inequality through masculine behaviour and unrealistic expectations that many women cannot meet.

To the best of the author's knowledge, this paper is the first paper that explores gender-biased office culture in the Croatian PR industry. In doing so, the paper also applies Bourdieu's habitus theory, thus contributing to studying cultural masculinities from a Croatian perspective. The paper also introduces the concept of gender-biased behaviour.

The PR industry has become an important actor in society and in the democratic process. The purpose of this article is to examine the opinion state of this phenomenon. More precisely the question is: what trust do people have in the PR industry and PR professionals?

The question of trust for the PR and advertising industry has for some years been part of the Swedish annual national survey of public opinion with 3,000 respondents.

The paper finds that the trust for PR agents as well as marketing agents is very low. Only some few percent of the population express (good) trust in these occupational groups, while over half of the population express bad/low trust. However, information (in‐house) officers show that the figures are somewhat better. The survey also asks about people's views about the use of communication consultants by different types of organizations: the practice is accepted for the business sector, but not for political parties and trade unions.

The low trust must be a problem for the PR occupation and its actors, and the question is whether they are willing to improve, for example, their methods, ethical behaviour and transparency.

This question of trust and confidence for PR in society is rarely studied, and the Swedish study needs to be complemented by studies in other countries.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how lecturers in public relations (PR) in Ghana are preparing students to be effective practitioners. The study also aims to extend understanding of PR education to an emerging democracy in response to calls for examining how future practitioners are shaped in different contexts.

The paper adopted a qualitative open-ended key informant in-depth interview approach with 12 purposively sampled PR lectures in accredited higher education institutions in Ghana.

PR education in Ghana is shaped by the local socio-political and economic context and influenced by western approaches. The opportunity to teach PR at the diploma level (prior to a bachelor’s level) provides another layer of PR training. Extensive use of social media in Ghana suggests that more focus should be placed on teaching about the strategic use of these technologies in industry. In the face of real challenges, under-resourced lecturers find ways to appropriate and provide students with skills needed for industry.

The use of a qualitative data gathering method suggests that this study should be considered an introduction into PR education in Ghana, which requires further investigation with generalizable samples.

This study profiles PR education in Ghana. It also responds to calls to examine the preparation of future practitioners in different context beyond the western world.

Public relations is variously defined: those within the PR sector tend to view their activities as having strategic and corporate impact, while many marketers classify PR as little more than a tactical ingredient of the promotional mix. This contrast is important, given marketers are heavy users of PR activity. This confusion has hindered the development of the PR profession and added to the blurring of exactly what constitutes PR. Contributes to this discussion by identifying the core constituents of public relations and the underlying driving forces. Through a holistic approach, examines “PR‐ness” at three different levels. Survey data were gathered from public relations consultancies in the UK. Exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis were used to examine the responses of 297 public relations consultancies in England. As a result, the many driving forces within the PR domain have been identified and grouped into nine measurement scales of “PR‐ness”. These findings provide PR practitioners with a set of issues to address in order to progress the perceived professionalism of their activities and they offer a framework for assessing subsequent progress in this respect.

The purpose of this paper was to explore social interactions, banter and the office culture in the public relations (PR) industry in England with the use of the difference approach and Bourdieu’s habitus theory. The paper explores whether PR organisations act as masculine habitus.

Qualitative interviews were conducted with 26 women practitioners, and thematic analysis was used to analyse data. Women were asked questions on social interactions, banter and the office culture, as well as questions on exclusion, from business decisions and having to work harder to succeed.

Findings show that two main themes dominate in responses from interviewees, “de-patriarchalisation” of PR with no personal appearance requirements and no business exclusions because of gender, and “gendered organisations” where interviewees reported dismissive stereotypes of women who work in PR, networking as a job requirement and differences between male-dominated and female-dominated offices, which includes differences between social interactions and banter among men and women.

Results indicate that women feel there are differences in social interactions and banter between men and women. Interviewees also report masculine domination as and harmful stereotypes of public PR professionals, most of whom are women. Organisations who have PR departments, as well as those who hire PR agencies to do the work externally, should design policies on the office culture to ensure equality and respectful work environment for everyone.

In line with the difference approach, women report differences in social interactions and banter between them and men, thus signalling that social differences influence the office culture and work interactions, which tend to be gendered. Findings also indicate that organisations are functioning as a masculine world where women struggle to fit in and obtain recognition. Consciousness-raising is needed in the industry because many women do not recognise oppression in the form of social interactions, and its effect on the position of women or the fact that the most feminized industry is being trivialised by the men on top.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is the first paper analysing interactions in PR offices using the difference approach and Bourdieu’s habitus theory.

This chapter explores the extent to which female public relations (PR) practitioners perform professionalism in the workplace by interrogating and examining their professional behaviours. Using an ethnographic approach, where the researcher is immersed in the field, it uncovers the lived experiences and behavioural responses of women working in PR agency environments in the United Kingdom and enables a rich description of professional behaviours to emerge.

Fawkes argues that research into roles in PR ‘has tended to assess roles using management rather than sociological theory’ (2014, p. 2). That is not to say that all PR research adopts the same paradigmatic stance. Several scholars have encouraged the development of a research agenda rooted in social theory. Holtzhausen called for a move away from what she termed the ‘modernist approach to organizations’ (2002, p. 251), which focuses on management discourse, and encouraged instead a focus on the postmodern concept of discourse, where meaning is constructed and conveyed through social and institutional practices.

In seeking to discover the ‘lived experience’ of female practitioners, this chapter locates professionalism in the context of their behaviours and enables individuals to articulate their understandings of the relationship between performance and professionalism. Using Goffman's (1959) work on social encounters as performances in conjunction with Foucauldian discourse and Feminist theory, this chapter explores the three stages of performing professionalism – preparation, performance and reception – through the eyes of women working in PR agencies in the United Kingdom to explore their lived experience and determine how gender affects their performance of professional behaviour.

The PRCA December 2020 census tells us that, in the United Kingdom, the public relations (PR) industry continues to be predominantly female, with 68% of respondents ticking that box. It also highlights a ‘gender pay gap’ of 21%, an increase of 7% from March 2020 and states that ‘this can be explained by the fact that the respondents … are largely in senior roles which tend to be more male dominated’ (PRCA, 2020), thus demonstrating a leadership gap as well as a pay one. Both of the leading PR professional membership bodies in the United Kingdom – the PRCA and CIPR – acknowledge the gender pay and leadership gaps, made starker in an industry dominated by women, and have committed to tackle the disparity.

In this chapter, I build on Liz Yeomans' (2020) work, in which she suggests ‘new avenues for researching neoliberalism and postfeminism in PR’ (p. 44) to examine the ‘apparently progressive moves’ (Yeomans', 2020) by women's networking organisations. I analyse website texts from two women-only PR networking organisations – Women in PR and Global Women in PR – to explore the ways in which they construct their function, purpose and role, and to examine their position vis-à-vis the contemporary postfeminist media culture (Gill, 2007). The research takes a feminist, discourse analytic approach and sheds light on the reality of women in PR as constructed by organisations whose stated goal is to: ‘improve equality and diversity across the industry by increasing the number and diversity of women in leadership roles’ (Women in PR, 2022).