The emergence of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies and systems in recent years has led to consideration of the role of the human in public relations. It is asserted that machine learning will enable more and more routine tasks to be automated, whilst practitioners will concentrate on strategic matters, such as building relationships.
Yet, this distinction between tactical and strategic, technician and management reflects a traditional 20th century, mechanistic way of thinking. The organisation is conceptualised in hierarchical, interconnected terms. Public relations is viewed as boundary-spanning, facilitating internal and external relationships, communicating outwards and inwards, and seeking greater influence through upwardly mobile career development.
In this PR Conversations conversational post, I discuss with PR academic and PhD candidate at Leeds Beckett University, Miriam Pelusi, whether we should be looking towards biology rather than mechanics to better examine the future role of public relations.
Miriam Pelusi: Interpretivist social scientists may use natural science as a reference. Applying biology to public relations helps to conduct qualitative research in an organic and natural way. I am using, as an ethnographer, a naturalistic approach for generating new knowledge. I study dialogue as a natural process through observations, conversations, and reflections in a real-life context or microcosm. In ethnography, a microcosm is the equivalent of a natural ecosystem in biology.
Intellectual work can be captured as a natural biological process.
Miriam Pelusi @PRConversations
To illustrate this point, I draw an analogy between the brain and the rhizome. In the human brain, a synapse is a point of contact between neurons. In a rhizome, a node is a place where a root meets another root, so that a plant can stem. Neurons are interconnected by synapses, as roots are interconnected by nodes. These interconnections allow a plant to grow, and the researcher’s thinking to deepen.
Rhizomatic learning illustrates how to create new neuropathways in the human brain. The shape of the rhizome has intrigued me during the conceptualisation of my thesis. When I attempt to think deeply, I apply the deep roots of rhizomatic learning so that I can scratch beneath the surface. It looks like the ideas that I generate in my brain are like roots and shoots in a rhizome.
Heather Yaxley: My understanding of the rhizome concept comes from applying the work of Deleuze and Guattari to career strategies in public relations, which was the focus of my doctoral research. In botanical terms, the rhizome is a root-like plant that spreads in all directions at once. If we take clover as an example, on the surface what appear to be distinct plants are connected below the ground.
The entire assemblage, the rhizome, could be thought of as mapping relationships within and without an organisation.
Heather Yaxley @PRConversations
Indeed, the organisation ceases to be the central pivot of such relationships and instead most likely operates somewhere in the midst of a constantly moving, mutating and connecting root ball.
Applying the concept further, Deleuze and Guattari (1987) contend that a rhizome “necessarily changes in nature as it expands its connections”. We can see this as a metaphor for the heterogeneity and multiplicity of relationships that affect or are affected by the operations of contemporary organisations.
Miriam Pelusi: Eco uses this botanic metaphor philosophically, for educational purposes. I came across the rhizome metaphor whilst studying on the Communication Sciences degree programme established by Eco at the University of Bologna in Italy.
The Italian intellectual applies Deleuze and Guattari’s conceptualisation of rhizome to knowledge. In this particular instance, Eco uses an association of ideas in interpretivist semiotic. Abductive reasoning is key in Eco’s intellectual work. This type of reasoning is evident when intellectuals assume that a connection exists in a set of observations which seem incomplete or counterintuitive. Semioticians use analytical thinking to deconstruct and interpret texts.
For Eco (1984), the encyclopaedia, meaning knowledge, has an open rhizomatic structure. In an encyclopaedia, like in a rhizome, there are nuclei which are interconnected. These interconnections create a framework: a supportive structure around which knowledge can be generated.
With reference to the rhizome, Eco (1986) foresaw the modern idea of digital encyclopaedia. Users navigate the web through hyperlinks, allowing a non-linear research process.
Hyperconnectivity allows knowledge to be organised around a rhizomatic structure.
Miriam Pelusi @PRConversations
Heather Yaxley: Miriam, this insight is fascinating and hugely relevant for some work I’m undertaking currently that connects back to relationships and also technology. I have been looking at the concept of a complete knowledge graph (drawing on graph theory) to develop an approach to agile professional development plans. I proposed a set of career building blocks as a dynamic, multidimensional model with nodes and interconnecting edges.
The complete knowledge graph acts as a database of information – like an encyclopaedia – that would be relevant for an individual’s career development. Extending this further I have looked at layers of knowledge within the specialism of risk, issues and crisis communication management for a chapter in the 6th edition of The Public Relations Handbook (edited by Alison Theaker, 2020).
I have connected an ecological knowledge architecture (as suggested by Bowman and Hendry, 2019) to a metamodernist application of competence and competencies as well as the global capability framework (developed by Gregory and Fawkes).
The linkage is a liquidity of knowledge movement that comes from an agile reflective workflow. This draws on the four elements of the spiral of knowledge creation (Nonaka and Kateuchi, 1991).
Using this workflow collaboratively (within teams and other communities of practice) makes available to others what may initially be personal knowledge gained from application of an existing body of knowledge (internalisation), and critical evaluation of this knowledge (combination). That involves creating rhizomatic connections through knowledge sharing (socialisation) which in turn can be codified (by professional bodies and academic researchers) as new knowledge in the form of implicit models (externalisation).
I believe your points about Eco’s ideas around interpretivist semiotics and use of analytical thinking could be invaluable in terms of a professional knowledge graph and workflow that helps close the gap between academia and practice.
This would certainly offer a useful application of the deep roots of rhizomatic learning to relationship strategies in public relations for organisations as well as for knowledge management and development within the profession.
Heather Yaxley @PRConversations
If you have any thoughts on this conversational post, please add to the discussion in the comments. You can also connect with:
- Miriam Peluxi via LinkedIn or Twitter: @MiriamPelusi
- Dr. Heather Yaxley via LinkedIn or Twitter: @Greenbanana.
Note: This conversation has been rhizomatic in its nature – starting almost two years ago and developing through an occassional exchange of thoughts.
