From grassroots movement to parliament: Strategic communication and the achievement of public legitimacy. Case Study: PAN (People – Animals – Nature)

Abstract

Strategic communication has progressively claimed a broader role in society, and in fos-tering social capital, civic engagement, and democracy. Thus, activism has received much attention in public relations theory and practice. In the Portuguese case, PAN fits this con-cern in line with the new political parties founded bottom-up by activists’ social opposition movements. In 2015, PAN managed to enter a parliamentary system that had remained in-accessible to new political parties for almost 20 years. This study is based on a qualitative methodology, anchored in the discursive analysis of public relations positioning elements in the original manifesto of the grassroots movement that originated PAN. A tag cloud‐gen-erating software (wordArt.com) was also used to analyze word frequency and identify the main themes of the document. In-depth interviews with PAN policymakers were carried out to analyze how the party communication strategies may have impacted its significant growth. Findings indicate that a strategic approach to communication influenced the transition from a civic movement to a formal parliamentary party. PAN’s manifesto was discur-sively constructed to position the movement as trustworthy with high ethical and moral standards. PAN used the possibilities of social media to build a collective identity, from the grassroots, based on specific narratives.