On Berger: A Social Constructionist Perspective on Public Relations and Crisis Communication.

On Berger: A Social Constructionist Perspective on Public Relations and Crisis Communication.

This article by Mats Heide is mainly about the American sociologist Peter K. Berger and his view about social interactions and social reality. According to Berger society is a “complex of human relations, and consequently organizations are also complexes of human relations.”(Heide).

When I think about Public Relations I have not thought about crisis communication, but after reading this article I realize that this is also a very important topic for PR. I think crisis became much more important in the last years. Heide wrote that it is “a consequence of late modernity [that we] live in a risk society”. I agree with him that we are “all aware of the risk society, not a least through mass media`s” (Heide).  I would also say that the risk society is a result from modern technology. Don’t you have the feeling that every year there is more crises? In 2010 there was the earthquake in New Zealand and Haiti, Chile, China; lava emission in Island; forest fire in Russia, flood in Pakistan and Australia. These were only the natural catastrophes. I cannot remember there happened so much when I was younger. But as I said, I think it is a consequence of modern technology, we are much better informed. For example the “climate change” can be reported because we have developed better measure instruments and we have more knowledge about all the related things. And it is also a result of the “organization member`s perception and sense making processes” as Heide said. We are looking for a crisis that is why we measure the ice on the North Pole etc.

According to Heide, Berger said that the “language is important in the production of social structures, which are formed by social processes” (Heide). I also think that language is very important, without it we would have much more problems to interact socially with each other. But Berger takes the language too important. He said that the language is “Not chosen by ourselves but forced upon us during our initial socialization” (Heide). I don’t agree with that because I do think animals also have a kind of social life. They normally don’t eat each other (in the same biological race), they raise their children, they can follow a leader etc. But animals do not have language. So I don’t think that we were “forced” to learn a language, I think it was our own will that we thought it would be more easy to use language to communicate.

 A important concept of Berger is institution, according to him it is a “complex of social actions that regulate and rule people`s behavior in different situations” (Heide). One example of a institution is a marriage; I agree that it has special rules and these rules have to be followed, then we get awarded or if we don’t follow the rules, for example cheating on the wife/husband we get sanctioned, for example the divorce.

I agree with Berger that the “environment in which humans act is complex and ever changing […]” (Heide). This is also why habitualization is as important as Berger said, in my opinion. The world Is changing so fast we would never have time and capacity to learn everything from the beginning. We even were not that far in modern technology and other knowledge if we could use the habits from earlier generations. I think habitualization becomes much faster, because of the “influences by traveling, media consumption […]”(Heide). I also think that these factors lead to more diverse and faster changing personalities; maybe this is a reason why the need for virtual communities as assistances in crises of meaning get more popular, because you can find information for everyone and everything on the internet.

Heide said that it is not easy to find criticism of Berger (Heide). I think this is true because Berger does not have a very radical or critical meaning.

I liked this article because it was an understandable overview about social construction. It also become clear why it is not just one sender and one receiver who gets the message, we are influenced in many ways and we even sometimes do not know who/what did influence us. I think Kuhn is right when he says: “The more theory forbids the better”. Even the more new model of many different receivers and senders at the same time is just one explanation of a very unknown phenomena.

Literature:

Heide, M. On Berger: A Social Constructionist Perspective on Public Relations and Crisis Communication .