Public Relations and Participatory Culture

The identification and engagement of supportive publics or fan publics to being a part of an organization’s communication efforts and activities has very recently emerged as a key agenda among public relations scholars and practitioners. While discussions on fandom and fan activism can be found extensively in the social sciences (e.g., Lee, 2011; Parry, Jones & Wann, 2014; Millward & Poulton, 2014), public relations as a field is yet to address fans as a public of interest. A few efforts have been made to build the connections between relationship management research (e.g., Bruning, Dials, & Shirka, 2008), public relations, and fandom (e.g. L’Etang, 2006; Dimitrov, 2008), yet these efforts remain few and far between.