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Baudrillardian examination of municipalities as public relations and marketing firms

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Date Issued:
2010
Summary:
Local governments are adopting both the rhetoric and practices of market-based governance interventions. Imported into these cities are public relations and marketing tactics to sell cities to internal and external audiences alike. Public communication in these cities went from a public information focus hinging on a just-the-facts approach to a public relations and marketing focus on selling and image generation to please customers. Acute attention to image generation leads to the metaphor of municipalities presented in this research - as public relations and marketing firms. Private sector public relations (PR) and marketing firms gain results for their clients, usually in the form of consumer consumption. A city acting as a public relations and marketing firm puts priority on the image-generation potentials of nearly all its governance functions to sell a commodity to customers. To illustrate this, a six-point model was devised of PR and marketing tactics used in cities operating as public relations and marketing firms: branding, media relations, in-house publications, use of volunteers and outside organizations as PR tools, aesthetic and affective appeal, and sustainability and going green. A city using all six is a fully realized PR and marketing firm, as it adopts, adapts and executes the tactics in meaningful ways. An over-reliance on image-generation (PR and marketing) versus substance (information) pushes public organizations through Baudrillard's four phases of the image. The image of the city becomes dissociated with reality, and the government operates in a simulation of itself. This research uses Qualitative Media Analysis (Altheide, 1996) supplemented by a discourse analysis method created for this research - Baudrillardian Discourse Analysis.
Title: A Baudrillardian examination of municipalities as public relations and marketing firms.
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Name(s): Zavattaro, Staci M.
College for Design and Social Inquiry
School of Public Administration
Type of Resource: text
Genre: Electronic Thesis Or Dissertation
Issuance: monographic
Date Issued: 2010
Publisher: Florida Atlantic University
Physical Form: electronic
Extent: xvi, 383 p. : ill. (some col.)
Language(s): English
Summary: Local governments are adopting both the rhetoric and practices of market-based governance interventions. Imported into these cities are public relations and marketing tactics to sell cities to internal and external audiences alike. Public communication in these cities went from a public information focus hinging on a just-the-facts approach to a public relations and marketing focus on selling and image generation to please customers. Acute attention to image generation leads to the metaphor of municipalities presented in this research - as public relations and marketing firms. Private sector public relations (PR) and marketing firms gain results for their clients, usually in the form of consumer consumption. A city acting as a public relations and marketing firm puts priority on the image-generation potentials of nearly all its governance functions to sell a commodity to customers. To illustrate this, a six-point model was devised of PR and marketing tactics used in cities operating as public relations and marketing firms: branding, media relations, in-house publications, use of volunteers and outside organizations as PR tools, aesthetic and affective appeal, and sustainability and going green. A city using all six is a fully realized PR and marketing firm, as it adopts, adapts and executes the tactics in meaningful ways. An over-reliance on image-generation (PR and marketing) versus substance (information) pushes public organizations through Baudrillard's four phases of the image. The image of the city becomes dissociated with reality, and the government operates in a simulation of itself. This research uses Qualitative Media Analysis (Altheide, 1996) supplemented by a discourse analysis method created for this research - Baudrillardian Discourse Analysis.
Summary: Baudrillardian Discourse Analysis examines market-based, consumer-driven, postmodern language found in public organizations because of the governance changes mentioned earlier. Implications for public administration include: developing a model of organizations for other scholars to examine; introducing a discourse analysis method; and showing realizations of postmodern critiques and impacts of market models on cities.
Identifier: 610570718 (oclc), 1927610 (digitool), FADT1927610 (IID), fau:2959 (fedora)
Note(s): by Staci M. Zavattaro.
Thesis (Ph.D.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2010.
Includes bibliography.
Electronic reproduction. Boca Raton, Fla., 2010. Mode of access: World Wide Web.
Subject(s): Baudrillard, Jean, 1929-2007
City and town life -- Social aspects
Sociology, Urban
Place marketing
Held by: FBoU FAUER
Persistent Link to This Record: http://purl.flvc.org/FAU/1927610
Use and Reproduction: http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/
Host Institution: FAU