Traditional Media, Social Media And Stakeholder Engagement

Today, it is without a doubt that public communication is at the heart of our economy, our politics and our society. It is being used in different aspects of society - studios use it to advertise their films. Advocates use it to encourage social causes. The businessmen use it to furnish their image. Politicians use it, for them to get elected. It is a field constructed on various ideas and images, many information and persuasion, tactics and strategy. There is no product or policy that will ever succeed without a clever message that targets the right audience or people in innovative and creative ways. To communicate strategically is one of today’s ability to communicate and what our programs are all about. Therefore, public communications

Ever since Bernany’s work, public relations have continued to become a vital part to businesses success, as the field continues to grow. While this progression has occurred, different public relations functions also have developed. Specifically,

Luttrell, Regina. Public Relations Tactics. Dec2014, Vol. 21 Issue 12, p12-12. 3/4p. , Database: Corporate ResourceNet

Public relations practitioners have to cautioned because the demographics of the United States is not monolithic, instead it is very diverse and complex in aspects as geography, history, economics, ethnicity, generational, socio-economic status. The PR practitioners must understand and act base on those aspects to positive approach the audience. Otherwise, the communication with the audience will be not effective and the channel use may be not the adequate for the specific

The most recent definition of public relations, according to the Public Relations Society of America (2012), states that “Public Relations is a strategic communication process that builds mutually beneficial relationships between organizations and their publics.” Through the rapid advancement of modern media and technology, there have never been more outlets and opportunities available for accomplishing the goals of public relations. Believing the development of social media has not created serious changes in the way public relations practitioners go about their duties would be foolish and a fast track to falling behind in this rapid world of communication. The main goals of public relations are “to

Public opinion is not just a belief, but rather an expression of a view that is central to a functioning democracy. In 1965 Krugman stated that advertising doesn’t change attitudes, it simply changes the perception of what should matter when buying. Whether what that citizen is buying is a certain brand of coffee or the idea of going to war, communication is the cornerstone for how our society functions as a whole. Public relations is not just for products and companies, it shapes ideas and movements. With an increasing global market and issues the need for public relations has and will continue to grow.

Due to the world's rapid change through advanced technology public relation became more and more a global activity. Nowadays it is one of the fastest-growing

Press agentry, public information, two-way asymmetric public relations, and two-way symmetric public relations are four models of public relations theory devised by Grunig and Hunt (1983). In this essay, the author goes on to identify an example each from current public relations business practices that goes on to show the four public relation models in action. Further stress is provided to ensure that the examples have all been taken place within last twelve months in the Australian media and justification of selection is to be done by comparing it with real world examples that are chosen.

Media relations can be defined as one of the most significant areas of the practice of public relations. (Shaw&White, 2004) It enhances the practice of public relations by serving a systematic, strategized and mutually beneficial relationship between journalists and the public relations practitioners to build credibility, understanding and respect between the two parties. (Supa&Zoch, 2009) It is essential to cultivate a positive and healthy relationship between public relations practitioners and journalists because journalists tend to look at public relations practitioners in a negative way where they believe that they spin information to get free publicity which making it difficult for journalists to report legitimate news and at the same time, against the basic rules of news writing. (Fedler and DeLorme, 2002) Another study by Kiranjit and Halimahton (2006) also suggests that public relations practitioners and journalists are very much sceptical about each other’s role and the relationship between two of them is doubtful and uncertain. From the point of view of public relations practitioners, they complaint that journalists do not understand the role of public relations. On the other side, journalists tend to think that public relations

As technology advances, social media has become more prominent in the public relations (PR) industry. Many PR practitioners now utilize social media to interact with their publics, in attempts to have strong two-way symmetrical communication and build relationships with them. I chose the topic of “The Use of Social Media in the PR Industry” because I have a great interest in how practitioners use this newly developed communication mechanism. After reading these articles, my search results revealed that practitioners are fully aware of the benefits of using social media. They believe it is a new way to establish two-way symmetrical communication with their publics, however, a vast majority of practitioners do not understand how to go about utilizing social media for their organization. Social media strategies will often differ for each organization because their public’s have unique, specific needs and interests. If PR practitioners fail to develop tailored strategies which create a consistent, mutually beneficial relationship between their organization and its publics, their social media efforts will not reach their fullest potential.

The theory explains that the value of public relations in organization and society lies in socially responsible managerial decisions and quality organization to public relations. Organisations must behave in ways that solve the problems and satisfy the goals of the stakeholders as well as the management in order to be effective. Good relationship with organisation’s strategic publics is helpful in developing and achieving goals desired by both the organization and its publics, reducing costs of negative publicity, and increasing revenue by providing products and services needed by stakeholders. Practitioners identify publics who are affected by or affect organizational decisions and communicate symmetrically with them to build high quality long term relations.

Public relations seeks the interests of the organization, through the mass media to improve the organization 's reputation, and the principle of mutual benefit(Johansson, B, & Larsson, L 2015). In today, public relations plays an increasingly large proportion of the companies, especially in the crisis situation of the company, the public relations to maintain the company 's image to make a significant contribution (Ha, JH, & Ferguson, MA 2015). The crisis is due to some unexpected events cause damage to corporate image, It requires companies to make key decisions and for emergency response (Ki, E, & Brown, KA 2013). In recent years, Social media has begun to play an important role in the crisis communication and management.

The public relations tactics in relation to the corporate context will now be examined. Customer relations can be associated with the monitoring of attitudes of key publics and stakeholders especially in regards to any negative incidents that have the potential to effect the organisation’s reputation and consumer trust (Wilcox, 2013, p.312). For Malaysian Airlines, this is evident given the potential for consumer boycotts with the missing aircraft’s (Crossman Communications, 2015, p2). Having over 12, 000 employees, employee relations are important for the organisation. Employee relations consist of monitoring employees’ attitudes and beliefs towards the organisation (Wilcox, 2013, p316) as there is potential for negative word of mouth by employees essentially damaging the company’s reputation. This is evident as according to Malaysian Airlines, they offer a “dynamic exciting environment that nurtures a diverse talented team that work to make great things happen” (2017). Finally, media relations are vital in a corporate context as “negative coverage can cause a corporation’s reputation to plummet” (Wilcox, 2013, p. 310). Having said that, it is important as public relations professionals to establish positive relationships with those who operate in the media industry. Kimberly Blessing argues the two fields (public relations and journalism) have an important working interrelationship with “60% of PR

Only recently being recognized as a discipline in itself, modern day professional public relations practices can trace its roots to the early 1900s where the first public relations firm, the Publicity Bureau, was founded in Boston. In 1923, Austrian-American public relations pioneer, Edward Bernays, identified three fundamental concepts of public relations. In 1984, American theorists, Grunig and Hunt, conceptualized the now-famous four models of public relations and the excellence theory that were generally adopted by public relation agencies across the globe. With so many significant milestones and theories of public relations established in the United States, it stands to reason that public relation practices would naturally adopt a western perspective.

This article examines the important role of social media to public relations practitioners. The researcher wants to investigate the innovation of social media through the case study of Obama presidential campaign and public health issue. Moreover social media can bring destruction to the organization, if the user misuses the social media. Social media has brought a new challenge to the society. The researcher use intensive interview and focus group toward public relations practitioners to explore how important the social media did to them and the negative outcome of social media. The researcher use quantitative method – survey to examine the appetency of the social media among different size of community.