Call for papers - BledCom 2009
Lake Bled, Slovenia, 3-4 July 2009
Culture and Public Relations
Vision and Mission of BledCom
The primary mission of the international symposia that have been organized over the past 15 years under the aegis of BledCom, is to provide a venue for public relations scholars and practitioners from around the world to exchange ideas and perspectives about public relations practice in all its forms such as corporate communication, public affairs, reputation management, issues and crisis management, etc. Building from this history, BledCom seeks to help establish a state-of-the-art body of knowledge of the field with each annual symposium attempting to widen the horizons of the field by attracting current and new perspectives and sate-of-the-art research from public relations and related disciplines.
Toward this end, every BledCom symposium seeks to offer a venue for practitioners and scholars to share their conceptual perspectives, empirical findings (adopting any/all methodologies), or case studies related to the field. As an international symposium, BledCom welcomes participation of scholars (including doctoral students) and practitioners from every region of the world so that we can help improve the public relations profession and theory-building to cope with a world that is globalizing rapidly.
BledCom 2009 Call for Papers
The theme for Bledcom 2009 is Culture and Public Relations. Culture is fundamental to every human activity. Certainly communication, which is the primary activity of public relations practitioners, is greatly influenced by culture and thereby culture affects public relations as well. However, research on the nexus between culture and public relations has been sparse, at best, mostly conducted over the past decade and a half. Certainly the current body of knowledge does not do justice to the critical relationship between culture and public relations. Globalization has forced public relations practitioners to operate increasingly in unfamiliar cultural settings, which is another critical reason for exploring this topic fully sooner rather than later.
We see at least three broad areas of analyzing the linkage between culture and public relations from which many subthemes can be developed for further analysis and research. First, culture is an antecedent and environment for public relations practice where societal and corporate cultures provide environments to which public relations has to be aligned. Second, public relations itself can be viewed as a culture where one assesses what is unique about the public relations industry across different regions of the world and how lessons learned in one region can be assimilated into practice in another. Finally, one can also assess the impact (both intended and unintended) of public relations on societal and corporate culture. This is where one also needs to assess how the political, media, and legal cultures are affected by public relations activities. Because of the interplay between culture and other socio-cultural variables such as political economy and the mass media, etc., we define culture much more broadly going beyond the term as studied by anthropologists and ethnographers.
We do hope, and welcome, much more diversity in perspectives and debate on this topic. We intend to develop a book based on the excellent papers presented at the conference.
Please note that only complete papers not exceeding 25 pages (up to 33 lines per page) will be considered. Papers are to be written in MS Word for Windows or MS Word for Mac. Papers must contain a title page with author identification, but there should be no reference to the author’s identity elsewhere in the paper to enable blind peer review of the manuscript. Paper must also contain a short abstract.
All manuscripts must be sent to the following e-mail: bledcom@pristop.si until December 31st 2008.
Besides the manuscript your e-mail must contain:
- your name, surname, organisation, its address and your position there,
- contact phone and fax number,
- contact address,
- contact e-mail address,
- short abstract of your manuscript,
- permission for Pristop d.o.o. to reproduce and/or publish you manuscript on the BledCom website,
- short CV and
- photograph in high resolution, appropriate for print.
