ABSTRACT

This chapter introduces the premise on which this book is based, that is, emotional labour represents a large proportion of the practice of public relations, and it could be considered as a defining feature of professionalism. While emotional labour is common to many occupations that require face-to-face or voice-to-voice contact, it is highly relevant to the work of PR practitioners, especially women, who are employed at the lower and middle levels in PR firms, where the client’s demands influence the level of service provided. Unlike other business consultancy services, however, public relations firms have other demands requiring emotion work: those of handling the media, and increasingly, social media influencers. These relationships are mediated within the agency setting, which itself has ‘feeling rules’ or socio-emotional norms for the practitioner to negotiate. In this chapter I argue that although technological developments are changing the nature of PR work, the need to manage relationships will not go away, even if these are mediated online, prompting the requirement for different forms of emotional labour. Finally, while researchers have begun to address the socio-cultural aspects of public relations work by examining the experiences of practitioners to explore power, race, and cultural difference, few have directly addressed the emotional dimension of public relations work. Therefore, this book contributes to a knowledge gap in PR scholarship.