مقاله سال ۲۰۱۶

The ‘sharing economy’ has been called an “idea that will change the world” (Time, 17 March 2011), constantly rising (The Economist, 7 March 2013) to become a “significant segment of [. . .] future economic activity” (New York Times, Economix Blog, 3 March 2014) that is ‘unstoppable’ (Forbes, 13 January 2013). The latter is certainly true for the popular debate, the management discourse and the media attention dedicated to it. There is however, perhaps surprisingly, a nearly complete dearth of intellectual contributions from the communication academy to the discourse about the ‘sharing economy’. More attention is overdue. The public relations industry in particular can be said to undergo intermediating change as a result of the ‘sharing economy’: Its core assets retain their value, but there is pressure on some of its core activities. The purpose of this paper is therefore to propose a reconceptualization of public relations and to describe the implications of the ‘sharing economy’ for its current practice.