Frontline public relations practitioners. Trustbuilding through multicultural competence and dialogue

This chapter describes and analyzes the public relations strategies and practices of a public organization, a local rescue services, in the process of establishing credibility and building trust in multicultural areas. The trust-building efforts are a response to several years of social unrest, communicative clashes and hostile treatment between operative firemen and residents in certain areas. The study focuses in particular the interpersonal level, meaning the work, practices and competencies of the front line public relations practitioners. Those are the ones put in charge of the building of trust and relations through their so called multicultural competence. The collected material consists of 33 interviews with staff from the rescue services, the study of official strategic documents and observations of the daily work of the link-workers. Theoretically, the rhetorical concept of ethos is used to understand different dimensions in the building of trust and credibility. In interviews, the multicultural competence tends to be framed in terms of specific knowledge of different cultures and societies. The observations, on the other hand, shows that flexibility, inventiveness and a pronounced good-will may be just as important in the communicative encounters. While it is clear that the link-workers are very skilled communicators, it is questionable if their competence should be labeled “multicultural”. It is argued that a step away from a competence defined in cultural terms would be appropriate.