The new publicity: From reflexive to reflective mediatisation

•Emergence of public relations was largely fuelled by the mediatisation of society.•Traditional media relations produce traditional publicity.•Reflective mediatisation: non-core-media organisations are mediatising themselves.•In relative balance, public relations is gaining and journalism is losing.•The general public as a space of public deliberation and representation of a society will probably disappear. In the second half of the 20th century, more than 150 studies explored relations between public relations and the mass media and they found that between 20 and 80% of the journalistic media content was influenced by some sort of ‘information subsidies’ provided by public relations. In the past 30 years, the number of journalists per 100,000 Americans dropped from .36 to .25. At the same time, the number of public relations practitioners per 100,000 Americans rose from .45 to .90. Now there are five public relations practitioners per one journalist. From providers of information subsidies, public relations is transforming into media producer and distributor, and creator of news and stories. The paper suggests that new mediated realities of public relations go beyond traditional publicity.