Show me the money: how bloggers as stakeholders are challenging theories of relationship building in public relations

Introduction

Conventional, ‘normative’ theories of public relations (PR) have often centred on relationship building, dialogic theory and two-way communication. Despite these theories dominating much of the academic literature, PR practitioners continue to seek control in relationships to produce ‘value outcomes’ and meet measurable objectives for the organisations they work for. With the rise of social media, the so-called ‘new’ influencers are now bloggers, Instagrammers and YouTubers (to name some social media platform users). Given that many social media influencers, as sole operators without regular incomes, now wish to be compensated with payment or in-kind for any work related to brands, this article discusses the implications for ethical practice and PR theory.

Blogging and social media

The shift to social media by consumers was initially greeted as a revolution by PR practitioners and academics alike (see, for example, Mangold and Faulds, 2009; Miller and Lammas, 2010; Scott, 2011). Bloggers, who write blogs (short for weblogs), were seen as increasingly important ‘new influencers’ (Gillin, 2008; Trammell and Keshelashvili, 2005; Woods, 2005). Blogs are defined as websites that are produced by individuals in a diary format and presented in reverse chronological order. Blogs usually include text, photographs, videos and links to other blogs and web pages (Van Heerden et al., 2009).

Blogs as a genre have become increasingly important for consumers and organisations (Sepp et al., 2011). Bloggers, as influencers, are being courted by organisations keen to cut through the clutter and connect with their consumers through an influential third party (Ashley and Leonard, 2009; Macnamara, 2010). Blogs are important for consumers as they are read for entertainment and information and are perceived as trustworthy (Armstrong and McAdams, 2009; Brown et al., 2007). For organisations, blogs and bloggers are important because they can quickly spread information and opinion about organisations and products (Jones et al., 2009). After conducting a thorough literature review of research on bloggers to date, Sepp et al. (2011) concluded that bloggers have a substantial influence on their readers’ behaviours.

Social media – democracy/dialogue or control/commerce?

Within PR, there have been claims that social media has ‘reinvented’ PR and that social media is a democratising influence that allows true dialogue between organisations and publics (see, for example, Kaplan and Haenlein, 2010; Solis and Breakenridge, 2009). Grunig (2009), the father of two-way communication theory in PR, has argued, ‘The new digital media have dialogical, interactive, relational, and global properties that make them perfectly suited for a strategic management paradigm of public relations’ (p. 6). Given that much functionalist PR theory is based on dialogue, relationship management and two-way communication, this article seeks to research the relationship desires of the influencers themselves, in this case, a group of bloggers, and the nature of interactions with PR practitioners through interviews with both bloggers and practitioners. While normative PR theories argue for dialogue between practitioners and their publics, this study has found that bloggers, as influencers, are often seeking payment for their collaboration with brands and practitioners are continuing to look for control. The empirical evidence for this shift comes from the lead author’s own immersion in a study of Australian (female) bloggers and the ‘blogging landscape’ over 3 years from 2012 to 2015 which included interviews with bloggers and PR practitioners as part of a ‘netnography’, online ethnography (Kozinets, 2010); more details will be provided in the ‘Methods’ section.

The ramifications of the change in the media landscape, and the commercialisation of online interactions, on PR theory and practice are examined. It is argued that the mask of relationship building in the social media age needs to be removed and the importance of payment to bloggers needs to be acknowledged for the theories of PR to develop. This article answers Macnamara’s (2010) call for the use of ethnographic methods and interviews to investigate, among other things, the levels of interactivity within social media and the issues of control and ethics within blogs.

Relationships, dialogue and two-way communication

Relationship management, it has been argued, is the central concept for the PR profession (Hon and Grunig, 1999; Hutton, 1999; Ledingham, 2003; Ledingham and Bruning, 1998, 2000). Linked to the concept of a relationship-based approach to communication, the notion of dialogue, as opposed to one-way communication, is espoused by authors from stakeholder/management, marketing and PR disciplines. Grunig and Hunt (1984) developed the dominant communication model of PR, which is divided into classifications of one-way and two-way symmetrical communications. Two-way symmetrical communication is seen by Grunig and Hunt (1984) as the preferred, normative model of communication, where consensus is achieved, and mutual understanding between the organisation and its publics, or stakeholders, is the goal. Also known as excellence theory, two-way communication has come to be seen as the dominant model for PR, but has received its share of critical attention.

Botan (1997) differentiated between monologic communication and dialogic communication, suggesting the latter is both ethically and practically superior to the former. Monologic communication is seen as more manipulative in nature in that other people are viewed as if they are to be exploited (rather than listened to) and the focus is on the communicator’s message and intent – not on the audience’s real needs. Basing his argument in the writings of Habermas (1984) and Johannesen (1996), Botan argued that monologue was essentially about power and seeing the other as a means to an end, including for profit. Following Botan, Ledingham (2003) outlined a general theory of PR as relationship management, identifying 11 dimensions of organisational–public relationships (trust, openness, credibility, emotion, intimacy, similarity, immediacy, agreement, accuracy, common interests and relational history). Since then, PR as relationship management has become a central construct within PR. Based on the understanding that strategic relationship management could be seen as a fundamental goal of PR, Hon and Grunig (1999) have taken things further by developing a scale for measurement of relationships for organisations which included six elements or components of relationships: control mutuality, trust, commitment, satisfaction, exchange relationships and communal relationships. Their aim was to help organisations measure and track relationships in order to determine the value of PR within organisations.

The notion of dialogic theory and the related ‘Grunigian’ theory of two-way, symmetrical communication as the dominant paradigms for PR has received critical attention from Pieczka (2015), among other scholars. Pieczka has argued that there are tensions and contradictions within excellence theory and has undertaken a comprehensive review of criticisms of it while suggesting that action research may be one way of moving forward in the discussion of dialogue. It is acknowledged that as PR matures as a field of study and practice, further critical scholarship is emerging. For example, Valentini (2015) has queried the ‘commonly accepted’ assumption within PR that social media is ‘good’ because it is supposed to help organisations develop dialogue and relationships with publics. Valentini’s perspective is that public relationships scholarship is overly positive on the subject of social media and has called for more understanding and critical reflection on the impact of social media on interpersonal communication and relations. Kennedy and Sommerfeldt (2015) used a postmodern lens to critique the assumption that social media is a tool for relationship building. Social media, they argued, can ‘give unexpected power to unforgiving parties in organisation-public relationships’ (Kennedy and Sommerfeldt, 2015: 38).

The aim of this article is to use empirical evidence to explore whether the dialogue and relationship management theories outlined above have relevance in current practice, with a focus on how one influential group of stakeholders – bloggers – have shaped and will continue to shape the terrain for PR and marketing practice. The study uses existing data from a ‘netnography’ conducted by Archer. Given recent calls for critical examination of how social media is actually used by organisations and stakeholders (as discussed in Kennedy and Sommerfeldt, 2015; Theunissen and Noordin, 2012; Valentini, 2015), this research appears timely.

Methods

The data and resulting reflections in this article are derived from 3 years of ethnographic study between 2012 and 2015, both online and offline, of female (mainly ‘mum’) bloggers in Australia and the marketers and PR practitioners they liaise with. Interviewees were recruited through attendance at two blogging conferences, outreach via Twitter and personal recommendation from other bloggers. A total of 48 interviews were conducted with bloggers and 10 interviews with strategic communications professionals who had professional involvement with bloggers and who self-identified as PR practitioners, business owner/managers and marketers. The bloggers ranged from those who were earning a living from their blogging activities, to those who were earning some money and others who did not earn any money. For the purposes of classification, this study could be termed netnography (Kozinets, 2010) or digital ethnography (Underberg and Zorn, 2013). Semi-structured interviews were conducted using interview questions. However, the interviewer followed the lead of the interviewees and allowed them to develop ideas rather than sticking slavishly to the interview guide.

The interviewees’ blog sites were analysed following the interviews. Blog content was downloaded into word documents at regular intervals and coded thematically. The researcher regularly reviewed the blogs. Therefore, data were triangulated, with multiple sources of evidence used (Daymon and Holloway, 2002). Ethical approval was sought and obtained for all aspects of the study. The interviews and the content from the blogs were imported into the qualitative software tool, NVivo, for coding. Thematic analysis was used to identify themes following a grounded theory approach (Glaser, 1978).

As outlined, the study sought to discover the nature of interactions between PR practitioners and bloggers. The dominant PR theories are examined critically using the empirical evidence of the study as a basis. Note that all interviewees are given pseudonyms for the purposes of reporting.

Findings

The following section discusses the key findings relevant to the research objectives. First, many of the bloggers wanted to be compensated with cash or product (or both) for writing about brands through product reviews or sponsored posts. Bloggers were aware that being offered inducements to write about brands implied an obligation on their part. On the practitioner side, ‘control’ over content written by bloggers was seen as a key issue, and the commercialisation of the blogosphere was recognised.

What bloggers want – show me the money

For a significant proportion of the bloggers interviewed, money had become a motivator and the bloggers wished to be remunerated for their writing for mentions of brands. Other motivations, such as community and connection, therapy, having a voice, helping people and developing skills, were also found to be of importance. For some bloggers who developed skills while blogging and became influencers, the desire to explore paid opportunities presented by blogging developed as the bloggers’ experience and influence grew. Turning the blog into a money-earner (known as monetising the blog) or pursuing career opportunities related to blogging was not always conscious decisions at the start of the bloggers’ journeys. For most, an evolution occurred:

It definitely has changed since blogging became – certainly in the last 18 months – it’s started getting serious and you can start making money from it. I wanted to be a part of that – particularly as I had been doing it for so long and I felt like I had earnt this right to be a player and I wanted to do it. (Bridget)

I think the time that I started was the time that a lot of people started as well, and also yeah, it just started to become popular as well, so it just seemed like a good time to start. It was totally unconscious because I didn’t know that there was even an industry. (Kim)

Making money from the blog was seen as also offering the flexibility of working from home and being able to ‘be there’ for the family:

Hopefully my motivation now – once the blog sort of grew and I did start to generate some income from it – it’s now become more, it’s my means of staying at home with my girls … in some ways there’s a lot more flexibility to it so it’s easier to work around their need for their timetables and still sort of add a little bit of income to my family’s, you know, kitty. (Cherie)

While most bloggers did not put making money as their main motivator, for others it was explicitly stated, as the following quotes show:

I’m going to be very honest where a lot of people will say it’s just for my enjoyment but for me it’s to find a career. (Gina)

So, I’ve avoided it, but when it comes down to it I need to put food on the table. A PhD salary is just not going to do it for me, so I’m starting to embrace the whole sell out thing. I’m thinking of doing a … buyer’s guide for Christmas. (Jacinta)

It should be noted that a minority of bloggers had consciously decided that ‘monetising the blog’ was not for them. Some used the blog as a way of helping others and in an advocacy role as previously discussed. A common theme was also that many of the bloggers were happy to blog for a worthwhile cause or charity they believed in without expecting any payment. Others used the blog to promote their business or their own personal ‘brand’. However, for most bloggers interviewed, making at least some money from the blog was seen as a benefit, even if other factors were mentioned as key motivators.

The quotes from the bloggers below illustrate the thoughts of those who did not want to monetise because, often, it would take away their enjoyment of writing. It was seen as ‘too hard’ or conflicting with their joy of writing and/or connecting. During the course of the research, a prominent blogger actively decided to stop trying to make money from sponsored posts, although she continued to take banner advertising, because of her desire to write her own content free from brand influence:

I started to look at monetising it … So I did do a few things – I started to do a gift guide. But, in the end I realised I didn’t enjoy that side of it at all – and it took all the fun out of blogging for me. (Karla)

Well, you see, I personally haven’t because I haven’t made any effort whatsoever to go chase that stuff. I have been one of that small group of personal/parents bloggers who have not set out to make money. (Shona)

Decisions to interact – yes, no or maybe

Bloggers were often aware that being paid to write about a product or service through sponsorship from brands brought with it responsibilities. They also were aware that being invited to events (often with a free meal with other bloggers) which showcased brands was fun but brought an expectation of some form of writing in return. One blogger discussed being invited to Shanghai by a large soft drink manufacturer for an all-expenses-paid trip, while another discussed attending an interstate, all-expenses-paid trip for a breakfast cereal manufacturer. The attention and free experiences were clearly enjoyed by many of the bloggers, especially when they were new to blogging. Some of the bloggers had sought specific, one-off sponsorship (e.g. to attend a blogging conference here or in the United States) and recognised that to ‘service’ the sponsorship required writing posts about the brand.

Bloggers discussed the expectations of brand representatives, often described as ‘PR people’ by the bloggers, and the issues this raised. For some bloggers, the decision to write about a product (for payment) was related to whether or not they used or would use the product or felt it was useful to others. However, bloggers recognised they had written about brands that they didn’t necessarily believe in. There was a general belief from the bloggers that ‘PR people’ should research the blogger and offer appropriate products. Bloggers whose children were older laughed about being sent baby products to review, while there was a discussion about one blogger who had been an alcoholic being asked to blog about wine.

What PR practitioners want – control and influence

From the practitioner side, the questions of control and influence were dominant themes. From most of the respondents, there was a desire for control of their client’s or organisation’s message. Some expressed the view that clients were fearful of the bloggers and had to be educated, as the following comment illustrates:

Some of them [clients] are just, you know, are really scared. What we always find is, after we’ve done the campaign … because it’s such a different experience to mainstream media coverage, because it’s so immediate, you can see whether it was successful or not very quickly. (Alice)

An owner operator said that paying money – a commercial transaction between the blogger and the brand – did lead to more control:

I think that there’s a lack of control and usually people are paying money to get what they want. I think there are a very noisy group of very big bloggers who are insistent on nobody doing anything for free. (Saskia)

For one agent, it was felt that there was more control over content for brands in working with bloggers (because of a paid commercial arrangement) rather than relying on publicity through traditional media. Therefore, it can be seen that the concept of control was linked to payment to bloggers. Ultimately, for ‘Leanne’ it was felt that the way for brands and organisations to have complete control over their message was to enter into a commercial arrangement with bloggers.

Leanne explained how difficult it was to control media coverage in traditional PR because other newsier events could take precedence:

The annoying part of working in PR, and I know, is that you put on this amazing launch and so on, because I’ve done it countless times …

But then maybe three diggers get killed in Afghanistan … and that’s it, your story’s gone.

Whereas at least when you work with bloggers you can actually book it in and you know what’s coming out. You get back a sense of control and you’re able to manage it better. (Leanne)

Here, Leanne was referring to traditional media relations where gaining coverage in news or other commercial media outlets depended on what other news was around on any given day. However, some of those interviewed were still uncomfortable with payment to bloggers or felt their clients would not want to pay:

I think probably the biggest thing that comes up in working with bloggers is whether or not they should be paid for the time or the space. And quite a lot of the time my clients are paying me to promote their product, their service, and so they’re not interested in paying any more than they’re already paying me, and so they see paying for space on a blog or paying for a guest post or something like that the same as if I’d said to them, ‘Do you want to put an ad in this newspaper?’ They consider that in the same category. (Julie)

There was concern that blogger-brand agencies were commercialising the relationship, as the following quote from a PR consultant shows:

The agencies, I’m in two minds about them because, again, they commercialise everything, even the conversations, and I’m a little suspicious about that. (Alice)

The differing viewpoints on payment within the communications industry show that some practitioners are still grappling with how to ‘manage relationships’ with influencers and whether money should be part of the relationship while others have accepted that it is the ‘new normal’.

Discussion and conclusion

It has been argued that ‘at the increasingly powerful and evolving centre of a public relations cultural battlefield is social media’ (Vardeman-Winter and Place, 2015: 349). Nowhere is this more evident than in the evolving, largely unregulated relationships between bloggers and PR practitioners. While academics are attempting to make sense of the relationships, often offering practitioners normative guidelines and falling back on theories such as two-way symmetry and dialogue, practitioners are generally taking a pragmatic approach.

Based on the authors’ current research, for most bloggers, the relationship with PR practitioners is less about dialogue and more about being given compensation/payment for any mention of a brand or organisation. For the PR practitioners, dialogue and two-way symmetry have to take a back seat to ascertaining the best means to get positive coverage for their organisation or client. For some practitioners, this has meant using money to gain control.

An article from (major international PR consultancy) Edelman’s website, titled Paid Media – A Change of Heart (and quoted in Bowen’s (2013) article on social media ethics) is a telling indication of the commercial imperative for PR professionals to respond to the ‘unmatched opportunity’ of paid comment by bloggers. Edelman (2013) writes,

I have been one of the hard-liners opposing any blurring of the lines between advertising and PR. I am now prepared to change my position. I still believe that we have a primary task of proposing stories to journalists and bloggers. But there is a vital emerging business to be done in content creation for brands … Those of us in PR have to change the game. Let’s recognize that the digital platform for mainstream and hybrid media is an unmatched opportunity to offer hundreds of visual images, a different mentality about contributing comments, a high propensity to share quality material and a short-form mode for absorption of information.

Underlying this comment from Edelman is recognition that bloggers often expect payment to write about brands and that for PR people to stay relevant they have to consider this new dynamic and change their approach to payment for content. Edelman, as a company, has responded to these changes with an editorial policy on payment (see http://www.edelman.com/p/6-a-m/sponsored-content-an-ethical-framework/). Edelman’s acknowledgement that payment is now a necessary part of gaining a seat at the influencer table is, in some ways, an honest acknowledgement by practitioners to changes in the media landscape. Interestingly, the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC), in its guidelines related to payment for ‘editorial’, describes it as ‘Native Advertising’ and ignores the PR profession completely. The Public Relations Society of America has updated its ethical framework (relatively recently in September 2015). However, in Australia, at the time of writing, there has been no release of social media guidelines for ethical practice by the Public Relations Institute of Australia (PRIA). The PRIA’s social media policy at the time of writing is only relevant to its own postings on social media (see http://www.pria.com.au/newsadvocacy/prias-social-media-policy).

PR professionals are ‘forging onward into uncharted territory, driven by trial and error, informal discourses and emerging industry practices to create new forms of social media regulation and etiquette’ (Vardeman-Winter and Place, 2015: 319). While press agentry is seen at the bottom of Grunig’s (1984) model, and the most primitive form of PR in his view, for a large part of PR’s recent history, working with the media as a press agent was an important part of a practitioner’s role. PR workers’ ability to influence the influencers on behalf of organisations has been framed as relationship management, and payment for editorial content or other influence has generally been seen as unethical. The contemporary media landscape, where payment for editorial on blogs and other social media platforms has become the norm, requires that theories related to dialogue and relationship management need to be reviewed.

Relationships between PR practitioners and journalists were often (and still are) the focus for PR academics and practitioners when discussing a normative approach to dialogue and relationship building. In fact, there have been more than 200 studies on the relationship between journalists and PR practitioners (Macnamara, 2014). Historically, in the recent past, and still today, PR practitioners’ interactions with journalists and mainstream media were seen as about building relationships, certainly, but with one clear objective – to gain positive coverage for an organisation. Within PR texts, payment to journalists for direct story placement is portrayed as unethical (see, for example, Parsons, 2008). Furthermore, the Public Relations Society of America, for example, mentions payment or excessive gifts as being unethical in its Code of Ethics. However, there has existed a parallel universe (only touched on in US and Australian textbooks and skimmed over in university degrees) where payment for editorial, advertorial and ‘junkets’ (free travel and gifts) has increased the likelihood of media coverage for a client. For example, in the undergraduate text, This Is PR (Newsom et al., 2004), under the title ‘Money Matters’, it is acknowledged that free accommodation and other benefits are often expected by journalists. The changed media landscape has put the spotlight on and increased the visibility of covertly placed ‘advertorials’ as they have migrated from print, radio and television to social media.

Based on the empirical evidence from this study, PR practitioners, if they want to enter into ‘dialogue’ and relationship building with key influencer stakeholders, are often having to use money as a sweetener to the deal. Bloggers have many motivations to blog, including community and connection, but often expect to be paid if they are to write on behalf of a brand. Therefore, any PR theories relevant to relationship building and dialogue need to recognise the commercial nature of relationships with some stakeholders, in particular bloggers and other online influencers, who have loyal followers. The media landscape, with the rise of commercial digital influencers taking eyeballs away from ‘traditional’ media, has forever altered PR practice or at least exposed exchange between parties as a complex practice. While traditional ‘advertising’, in contrast to PR, was seen as a way of paying a third party for influence of target publics and was framed as persuasive, PR theory has, for the most part, pretended that payment should not be part of the relationship equation. Dialogue and relationships are important, but money is, too.

Of course, journalists historically have been paid to write by their employers, so often do not expect payment from outside sources. The female bloggers who were interviewed, as members of what could be called the ‘pink-collar’ precariat class, situated on a grey-shaded scale between hobbyist and professional, are part of a shift in the media landscape and are challenging the status quo for PR practitioners by expecting to be compensated for their labour on behalf of organisations. Large PR firms such as Edelman have had to ‘rethink’ payment to influencers in order to continue to be relevant. Meanwhile, blogger agencies (often run by former communications practitioners) have now emerged to help the more influential bloggers get the compensation they believe they deserve. The findings from this research have been echoed in Singapore, where an ethnography of commercial (social media) influencers by Crystal Abidin showed similar concerns from the (mostly female) bloggers and other social media influencers she studied (Abidin and Ots, 2015).

In Australia and New Zealand, the blogosphere is still largely an unregulated space. In the United States, however, there are now FTC laws prohibiting undisclosed payments for blog and other online comment (see Patterson, 2009). Recent guidelines from the US FTC on ‘native advertising’ (paid content masquerading as editorial), released in December 2015, is evidence of the FTC’s concern that this practice has only increased in recent times. However, while it should follow that the practice of accepting payment without disclosure has stopped in the United States, recent research has shown it has not changed most bloggers’ practice of disclosure (see Walden et al., 2015). In an illustrative case in March 2016, it was reported that an American fashion firm was accused by the FTC of failing to disclose payment of Instagram influencers (see Fashion firm rebuked over Instagram ads by US watchdog, 2016).

The rise of the pink-collar precariat bloggers, the focus of this study, whose writing, photography and other forms of media production on their blogs are influencing women’s purchasing, health and other serious decisions means that PR should critically examine its role as the boundary spanner for organisations seeking to influence these influencers. Bloggers are only wishing to enter into dialogue (let alone an on-going relationship) with practitioners if there is a benefit for themselves or their readers or, if working with not-for-profit organisations, in some cases for society or the greater good. As the empirical evidence has suggested, the benefits often include money, prestige or a way of increasing readership. The authors argue that for PR to grow and mature as a profession, it needs to face not only the ghosts of its recent theoretical and practical past but also the complex realities of its present. Theories which gloss over commercial realities, while noble in formulation, are doomed to fail in application when the stakeholders which they purport to be about are developing new forms of ‘relationship management’ – a relationship in which they do not wish to be managed but in which they play a significant part. Dialogue theory, as understood in PR, does not currently take into account the commercial nature of the public sphere for influencer stakeholders. Valentini (2015) has contended that more critical reflection and research are needed into social media as it is used by PR professionals and publics. This article has shown that those using social media for their own purposes, in this case bloggers, may only want to invite practitioners to be part of the conversation, and take up real estate space on their blog, if a commercial transaction takes place. Kennedy and Sommerfeldt (2015) suggested that social media can give unexpected power to unforgiving parties. The research has shown that bloggers may be ‘more forgiving’, or at least listen more closely, if money is involved. As bloggers carve out new identities in the online space and help to reshape the media marketplace, so, too, must PR practitioners and theorists rethink their approaches to relationships and dialogue – both online and offline, which now are both essential and symbiotic parts of the communication in whole.