Public relations – Negative, positive or something in between? : A comparative study of young and elder peoples attitudes about public relations.

The public relations business has grown from almost nothing to a large international industry the last decades. Throughout the history the industry has struggled with a lot of critique and public relations has become a negative symbol for manipulation of information. Because of this negative view of the industry and the medial change taking place, the purpose of this study is to investigate how two different generations think about public relations. More accurate, the study will through a qualitative interview study explore how young people from a highschool in Luleå and elder people from Luleå township thinks about pubic relations, and most imortant why they have this particular view. By creating four focus groups, two with men and two with women, this also enables a comparative study between the gender. The focus groups were later analyzed and compared to two selected groups of theories on public relations, the theories were positive and critical theories compound in two categories. Critical theories was Habermas on the public sphere (2003), Weaver, Motion och Roper on democratic issues (2006), Jahansoozi on trancparency and dialogue (2006) and Davis also on democratic issues (2007). The positive or normative theories was Grunig (1992) and Cutlip (2000) on a over all positive perspective. In the study all the focus groups tended to, more or less, have a critical view on public relations. The elder men were by far most critical and argued abour risks, problems and public relations as a tool for lying. On the other hand the younger men were the most liberal and positive to public relations, meaning that along with the risks, public relations creates a lot of good opportunities such as publicity and attention. The other two focus groups with women were somewhere in between. The younger women were, as the younger men, a lot more positive than the elder ones.