Introduction to the Special Issue on Promotional Communications and Inequality of Voice

Abstract

Advertising, Marketing, Public Relations and contemporary News:  in these potentially powerful forms of cultural communication whose voices do we hear and which of these voices command most attention? This special edition of the Journal of Promotional Communication offers some tentative answers to these important societal questions. Thus in this issue the subject of voice and both its re-presentation and representation are addressed and rightly afforded critical importance within the realms of media communication and culture. As Couldry (2010) argues, voice is fundamental as a process by which individuals can give their accounts, but vitally, he also refers to the idea of voice as a value too. That is to say we can understand much about broader societal values through nuanced appreciations of types of voices heard and the levels of being heard. In this special issue we are most interested and concerned with the voices we do not hear and those we hear framed in a manner that reduces their authority.