PR’s roots as research subject in communication studies lie within its recognition as a source of journalism. This may explain why PR is still reduced to ist role as an external communicator of organizations. In this article, I will suggest – on a system-theoretical basis – to regard business self-governance, i.e. the influence on the company’s policies, as equiivalent to external self-governance, i.e. the self-presentation capacity of PR. Furthermore, I will suggest understanding PR as difference management of external governance and business self-governance; while the context governance will always be the preferred aspect.

Context: With their response to questions concerning the reality of PR, the realistic and the constructivist paradigms either fall into epistemological traps or do not even tackle some of the relevant questions. Problem: An epistemological approach to the reality of PR must particularly answer three questions. Firstly, there is the question of how or why PR descriptions fail. If PR as a communication of self-description is attributed a considerable trustworthiness disadvantage compared to journalistic external descriptions, for example, this implies a second question: How does PR however manage to make people (occasionally) believe in its descriptions? Finally, PR stage-manages events and messages and thus publishes fictions. This leads to the third question: How can these observations of trends such as fictionalization be explained in a plausible manner? Method: Answers provided by the realistic, constructivist and non-dualistic perspectives to these central questions are identified in order to elaborate on specific problems and advantages of the perspective. Results: The trustworthiness of PR characterizations may be used to explain, from a non-dualistic perspective with regard to PR reality, why PR fails or how it may be successful. Additionally, developments such as fictionalization and theatricalization may be described more unambiguously. Implications: New answers from the non-dualistic perspective to old questions of PR research reveal that a non-dualistic project is adaptable and could work with numerous findings of PR research, even though a slight re-interpretation would surely be necessary in parts.

Key words: Public Relations, strategic communication, realism, constructivism, truth, trustworthiness

Strategic communication plays are in ‘between’ and their messages have a paradox character. The paper identifies these paradoxes using the example of truth. On the one hand, a basic doubt in the possibilities of recognizing and in absolute concepts such as truth is a condition for entering a strategic communication play. On the other hand, truth is implicitly or explicitly alleged in these situations. And, finally, strategic communication plays can – despite the ‘great doubt’ – have in medium term at least such an effect that descriptions are recognized as truth. The paper describes the epistemological questions from a non-dualistic perspective (Mitterer 1992, 2001). Thereto, the concept of the strategic communication play is developed with the help of the play term used by Bateson (1956, 1985) and of the frame analysis (Goffman 1980).

Key words: play, non-dualism, strategic communication