ABSTRACT
Michel Foucault’s work provides an intellectual toolbox for theorizing the role of public relations in constructing and transforming societal discourses and practices. It poses considerable challenges for those who would seek simply to valorize or condemn the practice of public relations. Instead, the use of Foucault’s work highlights some of the deeply problematic, contradictory, and even questionable aspects of this complex profession by placing meaning production, power effects, truth claims, and knowledge systems at the center of our thinking and investigations. A Foucauldian discourse perspective accentuates the production of meanings, the strategies of power, and the propagation of knowledge (Foucault, 1978) at play within public relations and provides a promising foundation for a critical theory of public relations.
