EDI Initiative Speaker --
Dr. Damion Waymer, Senior Associate Dean of the College of Communication & Information Sciences at The University of Alabama, USA
He will be giving a zoom lecture titled Public Relations and Public Memory
Abstract
The public relations practice participates in making, shaping, telling, and interpreting societal memory to influence issue positions and related actions. That claim implies several themes. One, societal memory is a useful concept for understanding the strategic processes of meaning and meaning making, narratives which constitute society. Two, the content of their prevailing memories shapes the choices individuals make separately and collectively. Public relations’ centrality to societal memory remains an underappreciated and underexplored research area. Scholars have explored the role public relations plays in societal memory by examining, for instance, the textuality of art as well as memorials and statues, their erection and erasure. To better understand this process, scholarship needs to examine strategic public relations efforts to “blur” societal memory as a means of creating alternative versions (revisionist history) of lived truth, values, norms, and policies. Throughout this presentation, we will explore how societal memory occurs as a dialectic; some etched version of history (i.e., thesis) comes under question (i.e., antithesis), and through either a process of blurring, erasure, or retention, that etched history is then muddied, expunged, or lives on (i.e., synthesis). Meaning matters in the enactment and critical assessment of public relations’ role in societal agency.
Biography
Damion Waymer is the Senior Associate Dean of the College of Communication & Information Sciences at The University of Alabama, USA. Prior to this role, Waymer served as the Department Chair and Professor of Advertising & Public Relations at The University of Alabama. He earned his BA degree in Corporate Communication from the College of Charleston and MA and PhD degrees from the Brian Lamb School of Communication at Purdue University. He is a skilled administrator and a leading scholar in the areas of public relations, communication education, communication and issues of diversity, issues management, and organizational rhetoric.
Readings
Heath, R. L., & Waymer, D. (2022, in press). Standing their ground: Southern white hegemonic defense of place through camouflaged narrative continuity. Public Relations Review, 1–11.
Waymer, D., & Heath, R. L. (2019). The public relations paradox of erasure: Damnatio memoriae as public relations strategy and tactic. Public Relations Review 45(3), 1–11.
Waymer, D., & Logan, N. (2016). Extending Organizational Memory and Corporate Communications Research via Autoethnography/Autobiography. The Qualitative Report, 21(Article 10, 1457–1474. https://nsuworks.nova.edu/tqr/vol21/iss8/10
Waymer, D. & Street, J. (2015). HBCUs as relics or reminders race remains relevant in a “Post-Racial” society? Exploring and expanding the role of memory in public relations. Public Relations Inquiry, 4(2), 145–162.
Veil, S. R., Sellnow, T. L., & Heald, M. (2011). Memorializing crisis: The Oklahoma City National Memorial as renewal discourse. Journal of Applied Communication Research, 39(2), 164–183.
Zoom Link
