Whose cultural values ? Exploring public relations ’ approaches to understanding audiences

Abstract

As global public relations practice gains momentum, the need to understand and work with culturally diverse internal and external audiences becomes more critical. Global public relations practice requires a reconsideration of audience segmentation frameworks in light of highly mobile, diasporic and multicultural communities. Assuming that global public relations audiences behave based on a singular set of national values is problematic. By interrogating existing audience segmentation frameworks based on the presence or absence of cultural values, this paper examines how multicultural audiences were considered in the development of Australian public relations campaigns.