Mats Heide on Berger...

My most recent lecture was a chapter from Mats Heide’s book, a chapter entitled “On Berger – A Social Constructionist Perspective on Public Relations and Crisis Communication”, the main topic of which is crisis communication analyzed from a social constructionist point of view, i.e. from a point of view of Peter Berger.

First of all, it is important to point out that according to Heide, crisis is commonly perceived as a result of some external threats in the surrounding environment, hence it is normally understood as objective and a real thing, which hits and affects organizations at full strength, requiring immediate action (Heide 2009).

It is also important to note that Berger regards sociology as having as its focus an understanding of contemporary society as a large complex of human relationships and that the goal of sociology is to uncover the different levels of meaning hidden from the consciousness of everyday life – to “see through” and “look behind” and to receive a better understanding of what goes on in a particular context in terms of social interaction (Heide 2009). Moreover, Berger states that people’s worldviews are already given in a society’s language (Heide 2009), in other words, meaning that society’s language contains people’s worldviews and opinions. In that sense, the attempt of analyzing crisis management through sociology is quite understandable as it allows to understand people’s demands, wishes and thoughts.

According to Berger, things are not what they seem and that reality has many layers of meaning (Heide 2009), which means that things can be interpreted in a number of different ways and often have a few, sometimes hidden meanings. Hence, in order to be able to objectively understand reality and to develop sociological consciousness, Berger proposes analyzing it while adhering to his four proposed motifs: debunking motif – which essentially is centered around being inquisitive, tenacious and thinking ‘outside the box’; unrespectability motif – which suggests reality should be understood from all social classes perspective rather than just from the perspective of the superior middle class; relativization motif – suggesting that the world should be understood looking at it from the perspective of different cultures with diverse values; and cosmopolitan motif – which says that “sociologists ought to have an open mind and be interested in other cultures and eager to understand new horizons of human meaning” (Heide 2009). It is worth pointing out that the use of these motifs can be extremely helpful as it appears to be a set of guidelines one should use in order to have as objective view on reality as possible.

Summarizing, Public relations unquestionably plays an important role in crisis management. With it, the reality can be assessed objectively, social construction, society’s wishes, demands and expectations can be assessed more easily, which in effect, makes it a lot easier to manage a crisis situation and ensure appropriate level of communication with our dynamic society.

References:

Heide, M. (2009) On Berger – A Social Constructionist Perspective on Public Relations and Crisis Communication. pp. 43-61.