From "Miss Public Relations" To "Perfect Relations":The Mirror And Reality Of Chinese Female Public Relations Practitioners

In 1989,"Miss Public Relations" brought public relations into the eyes of the Chinese public.So far,China’s public relations industry has gone through more than 30 years of development,from budding to maturity.In 2020,a TV series "Perfect Relations" once again showed the public relations industry to the Chinese public and became a hot topic.After 30 years,what kind of changes have the two PR dramas made to the image of female PR practitioners?Are they consistent with the current female PR practitioners?This research is based on this.Based on the theory of public relations feminism,this article is also an exploratory study of the professional role of Chinese female public relations practitioners and attempts to make up for the shortcomings in the domestic research area.This paper uses a hybrid research method of visual semiotic analysis,text analysis and in-depth interviews to compare the role of female public relations in television dramas with the self-perception of female public relations practitioners.Based on the basic framework of Roland Barth’s visual semiotics,establish four dimensions of clothing modeling,behavior,language,and character background to analyze how the coder constructs a female public relations practitioner’s mirror image,and at the same time compare the female public relations roles in the two TV shows.Discuss the changes in the image of female PR practitioners in television presentations over the past 30 years.At the same time,this research hopes to make up for the interpretative limitations of single-text research through qualitative data of in-depth interviews with 30 female PR practitioners.Based on the previous theoretical framework of western female public relations theory,to understand the realistic description of Chinese female PR practitioners.And reflect on the existing theories and explore whether they are also applicable to the PR practice situation in China.For example,examining whether there are also professional development difficulties faced by western female PR practitioners such as "velvet slums","glass ceilings",and "prince syndrome".The study found that the roles of female PR practitioners represented in TV dramas do not completely match the reality.There is a deviation between mirroring and reality,which is reflected in the role of the "vase" of female PR practitioners 30 years ago and 30 years After the presentation of the gorgeous "workplace elite".In addition,interviewees also said that in the presentation of the public relations industry,TV dramas also showed too many contradictions,and even lost the bottom line of authenticity.On the reflection on the theory of public relations feminism,this research found that interviewees generally believe that gender has a small impact on the development of public relations careers,and contemporary women have entered the top management roles.The proportion of characters is on the rise.However,consistent with the findings of Western researchers,pregnancy and corporate culture are still the two major factors that affect the career development of female PR practitioners.