Strategic Silence

Roumen Dimitrov is Senior Lecturer of Public Relations and Advertising at the School of the Arts and Media, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia. Roumen has conducted various international research projects such as for the European Commission, United States Agency for International Development and UNESCO.

Table of Contents

Foreword

Acknowledgments

I INTRODUCTION

II WHY IS PR SILENT ABOUT SILENCE?






The Western bias against silence





Logocentrism in the European tradition



Binomial separation of silence



Problematizing and naturalizing



Socialized in public relations



How do we measure silence?




Silence does not sell





Seller’s market of PR labour, byer’s market of PR product



Silence does not violate the senses



Silence does not click-bite




Silent symbiosis





Getting attention or directing attention?



The dominance of journalism silences over PR silences



Core and periphery



The message is the story



The messenger is the story



The media is the story

III STRATEGY AND SILENCE: MICHEL FOUCAULT, JEAN BAUDRILLARD, PIERRE BOURDIEU, STUART HALL, NORMAN FAIRCLOUGH AND JÜRGEN HABERMAS




Strategy as discursive practice





Discursive practice



Strategy in silence, silence in strategy



Silence and secret



Strategy and practice




Instrumental and communicative action





Action and practice



Serious and authentic



Practical mastery



Instrumentality and finality

IV INDIRECT COMMUNICATION




Silence and invisibility





The sayable and the seeable



Presence and absence



Image and representation



Mediated invisibility and power




Communication and silence





Silencing communication



Communicative silence



Structural silence



Double articulation




The ladder of indirect communication





Strategy and silence



Communication and non-communication



Public and private communication



Discursive and non-discursive



Direct and indirect discourse



Explicit and implicit




Indirect discourse





Speech acts



Silence as indirect discourse




Explicit and implicit silence





Explicit silence



Implicit silence



Framing the mix

V STRATEGIC SILENCES




Strategic silences: A definition





Intentional, directed at audiences



Communicative



Discursive



In situation of communication



Degrees of indirectness



Actionable listening




Content provision





Stealth marketing



PR – from wholesaler to retailer?



Consumer advocacy



Content creation and relationships building




Silence as negation





Apophatic silence



Silence discourses



Small voice and small target



The spell of uncompromised reality



The apophatic turn




Complicit silence





Weapons of the weak



Embarrassment as strategy




Silence as disengagement





Non-engagement and disengagement



Engagement and resistance



Disengagement as explicit silence



Presuppositions in implicit silence



Frame as omission




Strategic ambiguity





Iconicity and ambiguity



Polyvalence and openness



Retail or grand design communication?



Ambiguation and disambiguation




Silence as attention diversion





Taking out the trash



Firebraking



Stoking the fire




Off the record communication





On and off the record



No comment and off the record



Trust and affinity



Off the record has rules

VI SILENCE BEYOND STRATEGY




Silence as system





System and strategy



Theme and opinion



The art of being boring




Silence as skillset





The credibility to say No



Sweat equity



Noise curation



Attribution and accreditation



VII CONCLUSIONS

References

Personal interviews

Index