Sport Public Relations: An Evolution from Media Relations to Digital Image Management through Co-creational Strategy

This chapter develops the idea that digital and social media have made co-creational relationship-building with stakeholders central to sport public relations practice for two reasons: (i) digital and social media remove message control from organizations and demand an integrated approach to public relations (PR); and (ii) digital and social media enable interactivity and empowerment to sports fans on a scale never experienced before. Beginning with a discussion as to why there is no general theory of PR, the chapter moves to how the rise of digital and social media, accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic, has assisted in propelling a shift in PR research and practice toward a largely co-creational strategy. Specifically, a social theory perspective of image co-creation is suggested as a potential framework for understanding organizational communications and digital relationship-building in an increasingly convergent and immersive technological world emerging in the social internet.