CtrlC CtrlV Rhetoric

When one looks at Lider’s ranking list of public relations agencies compiled according to the revenues reported to Fina, which we publish in the new issue, the forecasts that the time for the PR industry is just beginning to sound almost fairy-tale-like.

The first glance can obviously be deceiving. Reports from global professional organizations dealing with communications and public relations mostly indicate that last year PR services grew faster, stronger, and better than other sectors. The trend is positive on a global level for this year as well; instead of layoffs, new job opportunities are smiling at communicators, many within company managements. The work of PR professionals is flourishing worldwide as jobs in digital waters, crisis management, and even in so-called ‘Public Affairs’ are booming. Sooner or later, such a trend will be reflected, pardon, ‘copy-pasted’ onto the domestic market.

Expected Croatianization
Domestic PR professionals love anglicisms. Even through their semi-private semi-business communication, they reveal that they are constantly in touch with global trends. They know, for example, where the current ‘battlefield’ is, they are aware of the burden of the popularity of ‘community managers’, they have long adopted that ‘less is more’, and that the market dictates the rule ‘more views, less news’. They also know that ‘public affairs’, a term that Slovenians translate as ‘javne zadeve’, and Serbs are trying to introduce into their communication as ‘javne poslove’, will only grow in the coming years and that the moment has likely arrived when it will need to be not only applied but also ‘Croatianized’. After all, this is expected in the European Union.
Undoubtedly, PR professionals will agree on what to call ‘public affairs’ when advising various directors and managers on why this area is important. However, the lack of terminology is concerning when it is known that professors, experts in communication studies, must explain to students, thus future communication specialists, what ‘public affairs’ actually are in terms of public relations.

Selective Googling
The era when professors at universities used ‘CtrlC-CtrlV’ rhetoric has probably passed, where, for example, they copied data from research that was ten years old from one paper to another. An oversight would then occur. For instance, a professional paper would be enriched with data from research by ‘colleague researchers’, written in the masculine gender, while actually citing the work of a female researcher. The mistake likely happened because they were so busy that they could not ‘Google’ whose name was actually behind the surname of the researcher. Today, when so much information screams from the internet, whether accurate or inaccurate, it is still worth the effort to select the correct answer that is offered to the public. Or does someone think differently? One should hope that the time of professors’, journalists’, and PR ‘sloppiness’ is passing. Although, in the forest of skillfully or clumsily used English expressions, the Latin adage ‘errare humanum est’ will continue to comfort the public.