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Public Relations Institute Of New Zealand Essay

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The Public Relations Institute of New Zealand (PRiNZ) describes Public Relations as this:

“PR should be defined as deliberate, planned and sustained effort to establish and maintain mutual understanding and excellent communication between an organisation and its publics.“

In order to wholly understand the reasoning of this elaborate definition it is best refined into three sections. This essay hereby endeavours to critically examine the PRiNZ definition of Public Relations against various models of both Public Relations communication and the ethics employed when exhibiting them. Examples from contemporary New Zealand will clarify critical assessment.

The first part of the definition describes a “deliberate, planned and sustained effort”. This idea is best developed when looked at in terms of Systems Theory (Bertalanffy, 1968). This idea works around describing PR organisations as “open” or “closed” systems. These systems are theoretically made up of many smaller sections that work together simultaneously.

The first model that fits into Systems Theory is “Public Information” (Grunig & Hunt, 1984). This model aims to inform its publics with truthful information that satisfies the masses. If the organisation keeps its publics informed they will believe what the organisation tells them and therefore behave in a way that benefits the company’s objectives. This is a closed system because it does not offer any opportunity for publics to contribute to the campaign or aim to

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