NATO's strategic communication as international public relations: The PR practitioner and the challenge of culture in the case of Kosovo

The role of supranational organizations is changing as they are becoming more involved in, responding to, and finding solutions for, many different events occurring in our world. This article discusses one such organization, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and its public relations strategies during its military campaign in Kosovo in 1999. The circuit of culture model provides the basis for a discussion of the public relations practitioner as cultural intermediary, and aligns the model with the method of critical discourse analysis to examine the public relations strategies used by NATO during this campaign. The article contends that the charismatic skill of the NATO spokesperson played an important role in establishing the organization as a humanitarian military powerhouse through discursive positioning of the organization acting in the interests of the international community. By doing so and, at the same time, NATO legitimized its own continuation as a viable supranational organization for the 21st century.

► Alignment of circuit of culture model with critical discourse analysis method.
► PR practitioner as cultural intermediary transcends national boundaries.
► Discursive positioning for legitimization of supranational organization.