The Suffrage Movement in the Context of the USA As A Sample of “Purple Public Relations”

In this research, the public relations activities of the Suffrage Movement (1848-1920), which created the first feminist wave in the USA, have been examined. The public relations activities used by the feminist movement have been conceptualized as “purple public relations” situating within the theoretical framework of the cultural-economic model of the critical public relations tradition. By doing so, it is aimed to bring a new concept to activist public relations and feminist literature. In the cultural-economic public relations model, the necessity of destroying the dominant narratives that produce injustice in social life and building new sets of meanings through the public relations is emphasized in order to achieve social change more justly. From this perspective, the fine arts branches and feminist meaning constructions in the artistic products produced by the Suffrage Movement as a public relations activity to create new meaning construction have been interpreted using the qualitative research method and text analysis technique. By coding with the arguments of the feminist struggle, the artistic products produced by the Suffrage Movement have profound effects on the formation of a feminist identity, a feminist collective identity and a long-term feminist social movement, along with the achievement of women’s rights in August 1920.