Under the direction of Linda Hon, Ph.D., UFCJC Public Relations professor, this quarterly journal considers critical questions facing practitioners who use strategic communication to drive social change and the growing academic discipline of public interest communications.

The Journal is managed by Lauren Griffin, Ph.D., director of external research for frank and manager of the Journal of Public Interest Communications, and edited by Brigitta Brunner, Ph.D., Public Relations professor in the Auburn University School of Communication and Journalism.  

Featured Invited Essays

Ann Christiano, UFCJC Frank Karel chair in Public Interest Communications, provides the foreword telling the story of her journey to this unique position established by Frank and Betsy Karel. Frank Karel, B.S. Journalism 1961, was a groundbreaking leader in public interest communications. Karel spent his 30-year career using communication for social change at the Robert Wood Johnson and Rockefeller Foundations. Christiano makes a compelling case for institutionalizing public interest communications by building a professional community, developing university curricula and fostering scholarship.

Scholarship from Jasper Fessmann, a Ph.D. candidate at UFCJC, is the first to explicitly argue for public interest communications as a separate discipline from public relations. He uses principles from the philosophy of science to argue for irreconcilable differences between public interest communications and public relations.

Edward Downes, Ph.D., associate professor of Public Relations at Boston University, draws on Fessmann’s piece to discuss 10 considerations at the heart of the concepts public interest and social good. He argues that civilizations do agree on many fundamental values around which public interest communications can thrive. In his discussion, he calls for more collaboration between academia and practice.

In her article, incoming Editor of JPIC Brigitta Brunner, Ph.D., argues that public relations can be considered public interest communications if it can be elevated through a focus on ethics and professionalism in service of the public. She provides a powerful vision of the field where public relations is driven more by the dynamics of democracy than capitalism. In this view, public relations serves the public interest by fostering dialogue, civil debate and ethical communication.    

Viviane Seyranian, Ph.D., professor in the Psychology Department at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, provides an overview of social psychology theories that are relevant to public interest communications campaigns. Her unique contribution is applying these theories specifically to the social change context and teasing out how variables such as majority or minority status affect persuasion.

Kathy Fitzpatrick, J.D., professor of Public Relations in the School of Communication at American University, provides an overview of diplomacy. She traces how public diplomacy has become more social, with emphasis on diplomatic power characterized by relationship building and engagement. She provides a convincing typology of the ways in which public diplomacy serves the public interest. She concludes with a well-argued research agenda for scholars who are interested in studying public diplomacy through the lens of public interest communications.

Kristin Demetrious, Ph.D., associate professor of Communication at Deakin University, uses a critical perspective to discuss how the corporate public relations strategy and tactics that received so much disdain during the 20th century may still be prevalent in the new digital era of the 21st century. Using innovative social media analysis, she deconstructs how political power, wrapped up as storytelling, was revealed in the Advanced Energy for Life global awareness-raising campaign designed to convince consumers that coal can be a clean technology that lifts people out of poverty.