Emotional labour and the pursuit of personal branding: Public relations practitioners’ use of social media

Draft only - sent to journal, awaiting response ...comments welcome!

The impact of social media on public relations practice has attracted the attention of both academics and organisations due to its potential to open up new opportunities for communication while simultaneously changing the way that organisations disseminate information and respond to their stakeholders.  Focussing on recent interviews with public relations practitioners, this paper looks at one particular aspect of the public relations role – the involvement in conversations online via social media by practitioners on behalf of an organisation - and considers how far this relationship, where a practitioner is both acting simultaneously as a professional worker and a private individual, can be analysed in terms of ‘emotional labour’ (Hochschild, 1983). Referring to  literature addressing the issue of  emotion in public relations, service and new media roles,  this paper argues that the pleasure that public relations practitioners derive from online work, the freedom it gives them to build their own personal brand, and the enjoyment their derive from being able to work at home can serve to further  hide their exploitation and reaffirm  existing gender roles within the profession.