By Pertti Hurme
International Journal of Corporate
Communication
Abstract: This article describes the changes in the media and how
companies and organizations operate. These changes have big impacts in public
relations practices and education. New PR tools are described, identified and
guidelines are given. In the
future, there wont be two kinds of PR practitioners anymore. Instead PR
practitioners are expected to integrate all means of communication in their
professional qualifications.
Introduction
The development of information
and technology goes hand in hand with communication. Ross and Middleberg (1999) state that information and
communication technologies are revolutionizing the practice of public relations.
They believe that if PR practitioners don’t use Internet communication as a PR
strategy in this era they may damage their clients and employer. This article
describes recent changes in the media landscape where companies and
organizations operate. These changes have great impact on the basic practice of
PR and education.
Organizational Media Landscape Changing
There have been many innovations
in information and communication technology in the last few decades. A crucial factor in the success of
these innovations depends in the speed they are adopted by organizations. It
took radio 30-40 years to have 50 million listeners, and TV more than 10 years,
while the World Wide Web (WWW) the number of users in 3-4 years. It seems like
Mobile Internet will be adopted even faster.
WWW started in the mid 1990’s and
now it’s widely used in organizations in the form of intranets (internal to
organizations) and extranets (clients and partners have access to specific
areas of the intranet) in addition to the public Internet. Mobile Internet will
increase fast and change the organizational media landscape quickly. Therefore,
the gain in network mobile communications will be important in all kinds of
organizations.
Impacts of Communication Technologies on Public Relations
PR practitioners have 2 tasks;
one involves message production and sending out these messages to
public/clients/stakeholders in multiple channels, and the second task planning
and executing the communication strategies.
The use of new communications
technologies has added dialogue between and within organizations. You have the
one-to-one dialogue; which is email between 2 persons, or many-to-many involves
a large number of dialogues in a discussion group or chat room… etc. Organizations have to deal with Web
Dialogues, which are very difficult to control.
Mass communication is fading and
shifting to dialogical and interactional communication. PR practitioners need
to be smarter than the Internet users. The Internet’s speed, interactivity and
crossing nations borders make it attractive to the public relations
practitioners as a communication tool. The new information and communication
technologies have potential for interactivity.
Mobile technologies show plenty
of promise in interactivity. 2 types of interactivity:
1) Quasi-interactivity:
one way communication (eg: subscribing to organization’s news releases and
sending feedback to the organization)
2) Two-way,
truly: interactive communication (eg: exchanging email messages with a PR
person)
Both forms of interactivities are
useful. Networked communication still
needs to me monitored if the audience is large. Through the internet PR
practitioners can reach their clients and stakeholders directly bypassing the
gatekeepers, but also engage in dialogue with them directly.
New Technologies, New Practices for PR Practitioners
4 functions are distinguished in
the practice of public relations: analysis, plan, action and evaluation. In PR
practice the perceptions and opinions of important publics are evaluated. Conventional
methods include analyses of print media and analyses of publics. New analysis
have emerged: web pages and electronic publications can be examined, survey
questionnaires can be online, Usenet discussions and chat rooms can be
monitored to track current and potentially troublesome issues, logs of
organizations websites can be analyzed and number of hits monitored.
By monitoring the Internet, PR
practitioners learn what their clients, stakeholder and the public are saying.
By monitoring and getting feedback you get to know how to improve your
strategies and messages.
Evaluation works simultaneously
with other functions. Ongoing evaluation of both analyses, plans and action are vitally important. In
modern organizations these functions cant be divided. These functions follow
these guidelines:
* Consider
clients/audiences
* Online
means up to date
* Get
in the right lane on the information highway
* Align
yourself with people in similar industries
* Synergy
and integration are important
* Give
the clients, the stakeholders and the media what they want the way they want it
Conclusion
In organizational public
relations, print media will stay strong, but the new information and
communication technologies will increase. Nowadays keywords of PR practitioners
are interactivity, dialogue, dynamism, and involvement. In the future ‘Web PR age’, there wont be two kinds
of PR practitioners; those who use traditional PR tools and those who practice
online communication. These two will be integrated together to one tool.
Organizations now need to rethink their strategies and tactics. They need to look at PR in a different
way, interactive and networked.
PR practitioners have to have
good skills in information and communication technologies. Their outlook has to
be wide and they are expected to be experts on group and team communications as
well as organizational behavior while there is a constant change in information
and communication technologies. They have to understand how people use media,
how they produce messages, and how the borderline between the reception and production
have become blurred due from the new information and communication
technologies. PR practitioners have to integrate all communications to be part
of their professional qualifications.
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