PR in Entertainment: A Wider View of Culture in Public Relations

Running head: PR IN ENTERTAINMENT
PR in Entertainment
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Author Note

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PR IN ENTERTAINMENT
A Wider View of Culture in Public Relations
According to critics, culture is the quintessential element of public relations practice at
the crux of which lie the essential components of culture like civilization and society (Austin
&Pinkleton, 2015). As it is, culture is a group of elements shared by a set of people belonging to
particular strata of society. Culture is comprised of individuals’ ideas, behavioral patterns,
attached values, morals and customs tied intrinsically to the emotional and intellectual knots of
an individual. Culture is always in a state of flux as it is continuously affected and re-shaped by
globalization and its technological and financial aspects. As a result of globalization, culture of
one country is transient, continuously evolving in order to accumulate new elements. As history
indicates, Africa has played host to 50 nations and consequently 1,000 languages and sheltered a
vast array of culture (Crane, Kawashima & Kawasaki, 2017). The same is applicable for United
States which has witnessed ever-emerging patterns of culture due to the arrival and departure of
immigrants that had sparked a social and cultural change over the years. The mainstream culture
is an amalgamation of the newly witnessed set of cultural norms and behaviors. Culture is
responsible to construct and re-construct an individual’s verbal and non-verbal set of
communication, individualism and a person’s collective experiences. PR which is a direct result
of globalization has been responsible for bringing the different sets of culture and its closer and
has given birth to intercultural communication. Lack of communication between two different
countries can be a direct result of cultural barriers, however, apart from the usage of technology
and resources, a company should imbibe within itself the nuances and norms of culture
associated with different countries (Apple, 2017). It will eradicate the possibilities of
miscommunication and increase its share of profit. Similarly in case of PR, the managers of
globalized companies should cope up with the cultural differences of another country in order to

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PR IN ENTERTAINMENT
increase participation in PR. The individual differences should be merged and evolve into to
accumulate cultural differences of a set of countries to impart an innovative edge to business.
Afterall, culture can alter our ways of perceiving the actions of the other and help an individual
to sense the world differently. Public relations is essentially embedded within the cultural context
from where the practitioner is working (Stroope, 2011). In Latin America, PR is governed by
their set of cultural beliefs and dynamics. Today, it is widely argued that the origins of public
relations is in U.S. and is essentially an American phenomenon.
In a nutshell, public relation is widely dependent on communication which is again
influenced by cultural variability and the same should be put to use into the interpersonal
relationships and communication. For the lack of an universally defined sense of the world
culture, the organizational culture of several American organization are comprised of dominant
culture and subcultures or countercultures (ArmentroutBrazee& Mattson, 2017). The latter is
nothing but a reconstructed version of the dominant culture which needs to be embraced within
the organizational culture.
Studies have shown that during the early 1980s and 1990s, theorists have proved culture
as a fundamental influencing factor of public relations. Previously scholars assumed that an
individual was allowed to make decisions or organizational changes without paying any
consideration to his/her culture which is accentuated further with the usage of web-conferencing,
cellular phones and video sharing on online portals (Kangas et al., 2017). The globalized firms
can reduce the marks left by the set of dominant culture by adopting universal codes of conduct.
However, there are a number of firms that are comparatively not well-equipped with
globalization and practices. As a result, they are pressurized to respond to the needs of their own
communities in order to expand their business. PR in U.S is massively influenced by cultural