ABSTRACT
Relationships serve as the connecting tissue between two or more participants or even groups of people. Since the 1920s, when professional publicists reframed publicity as public relations, all types of organizations have sought to cultivate good relations with the public. The paradox becomes more acute when considering the fact that public relations has little or no power to manage or control whether the other party considers the relationship mutual or the other party’s desire to continue the relationship. A paradox of digital and social media is that organizations gather a tremendous amount of data regarding key publics and then crunch that data to learn about individual preferences, interests, and needs. Interpersonal and public relationships remain important to public relations but, as higher-level abstractions, they act as a GPS system for achieving strategic goals.
