Abstract
There are increasing claims and, in some quarters, celebration of a ‘sociocultural turn’ in public relations that has allegedly shifted the locus of scholarship and practice from US-originating functionalist and organization-centric models to more socially and culturally orientated approaches. However, this article presents a critical analysis of PR education and scholarship in Australasia which shows that, despite a claimed ‘sociocultural turn’ and a number of emergent postmodern models identified by contemporary scholars around the world, Excellence Theory, including its various constituent theories, remains a dominant paradigm of PR in Australia and many South East Asian countries. The ontological and epistemological characteristics of PR in Australasia, and the influences that have created and sustained them, as well as the progress of alternative postmodern and critical conceptualizations, are explored in this article based on two stages of research. In the first, a broad exploratory study was undertaken using ethnography and elements of autoethnography to provide reflective insights into the nature of and influences on PR scholarship and practice in the region. In the second stage, the findings of this exploratory analysis were tested and further contextualized with empirical data from structured textual analysis of the PR texts and reference books most commonly used today.
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