Traditionally, international public relations studies have assumed that a foreign organization, namely a foreign government, is the primary influence on how its home country is portrayed to audiences abroad. This study challenges such assumption of independence by revealing how foreign organizations are connected in ways previous works have not considered. Using Foreign Agents Registration Act data, we reveal the direct and indirect connections that form when foreign organizations hire U.S. agencies to produce their international public relations work. Our network analysis of foreign organizations from Latin American and their U.S. agents documents the network structures that emerge for each country and identifies the types of organizations that are positioned advantageously in the networks. We use these findings to theorize how foreign organizations’ connections and their key positions in networks may influence the production of international public relations efforts for their home country. We at a macro-level, public relations effects depend on the structure of the networks, the overlapping sites where communication content is produced, and who is positioned as key players in the production networks.

传统上，国际公共关系研究假设外国组织，即外国政府，是对其本国如何向国外观众描绘的主要影响。这项研究通过揭示外国组织如何以以前的工作未曾考虑的方式联系起来，对这种独立性的假设提出了挑战。利用《外国代理人注册法》的数据，我们揭示了外国组织雇用美国代理机构开展其国际公共关系工作时形成的直接和间接联系。我们对来自拉丁美洲及其美国代理商的外国组织的网络分析记录了每个国家/地区出现的网络结构，并确定了在网络中处于有利位置的组织类型。我们使用这些发现来理论化外国组织的关系及其在网络中的关键地位如何影响其本国的国际公共关系工作的产生。在宏观层面上，我们的公共关系影响取决于网络的结构，制作通信内容的重叠站点以及谁在生产网络中扮演关键角色。