ABSTRACT
Public relations defines itself as a strategic management function, which means how it wants to perceive itself and how it wants others to see it. The difference between frontstage and backstage is the foundation of impression management processes at the level of individuals, and of reputation management at the level of organizations. A sociologist, Erving Goffman describes these actions as the creation of 'working consensus' with social actors deciding how to present themselves among each other and to the world at large. In 2006, Falconi estimates that between 2.3 and 4.5 million people work in public relations worldwide, with 83,000 in the UK and 400,000 in the United States. Organizational and societal observers are generally blind to the essential functions performed by public relations in organizations and societies worldwide. Post-truth and post-factual worlds can only exist in communication, and no matter how much professional societies try to dissociate the practice from these neologisms.
