Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Trends and Developments

Global and local trends change the operating environment for public relations.Thus, this is leading to an change about how to shape the profession and what is influencing public relations practice.

As described by Stark and Kruckeberg, public relations is taking a critical role and engaging with society and the community. However, public relations practitioners need to be guided by their professional values and beliefs and make it to be relevant and meaningful.

As such, public relations practitioners have to work hard to meet the requirements of project managing or to work with clients, and stakeholders so that the best possible outcomes are achieved for all parties. Furthermore, ethical practice is paramount to public relations practitioners and best practice because as corporate scandal become more common, there is a growing of distrust of business. Meanwhile, public relations practitioners should be open and honest in their communication to the public and make your clients believe what you are talking about.

One of the influences on public relations practice is the international context and increased tension between local-global perspectives. This means activity may take a local and global position as they pressure local governments and influence wider public opinion.

To sum up, as global and local trends changed the environment of public relations, it also changed the influences of public relations. Ethical has been a paramount to public relations practitioners and best practice in their communication to the public. However, international and local context is another influence on public relations practice.

Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Focus on Asian public relations management

The purpose of this chapter is to indicate that public relations is also very important in Asia, which take in Japan, Sourth Korea, China, Vietnam, Taiwan, the Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, and Indonesia. Furthermore, it also offer some theories for non-Western cultures such as relations ship theory, Excellence Theory, relationship development and stakeholder theory etc.

Public relations theory is a separate entity to different theories. and it provides the ground on which the fast-growing public relation sector in Asia is being built. However, relationship theory plays an important role in the development of public relations practice in Asia. For example in China "guanxi"is one of the most significant applied in business relationships. Excellemce Theory shifts a capitalist-style to Janpan, South Korea, and Taiwan.

Well, actually this is not mean all public relations theory development and practice in Asia is controlled by Western cultures.

Understanding twenty-first century public relations

To get a clear understand of what publics and stakeholders about is an important term to make sense of what public relations is. This whole chapter keep explaining the definition of public relations by provides different perspecitve from the US, the United Kingdom and the Asian.

Well, according to the readings, public is any group of people who share common interests or values in a particular situation, and the stakeholders are people who have a relationship and involving with your own organization.Thus, public relations is envolving and dealing with the problems occur in organizations by appreciating and understanding the values, ethos, and the professional philosophy of public relations.

However, public relations is developing differently in coutries according to social, political and policies. For example,public relations in China will have a wide influce by the government.Public relations in the US is focusing on planning and research that inform and direct the profession, and also set up networks and connections with the community so that the relationship become more meaningful and have values for all parties.

As such, public relations practitioners engage in all levels of orgnazational and develop ways to work with the community or other publics to changing societal needs and demands.Moreover, sometimes they also allow to give their own opinions and expressions of attitudes to what is happening in society as public relations has always been part of society.

In conclusion, this chapter gives me an overall ideas of what public relations is about by providing different perspectives from Asia and the US. Furthermore, it also explained the role of public relations practitioners in organizations as well.

Monday, March 15, 2010

An issues-crisis prespective

Organizations nowadays are responsible to give quick response to different management issues which affect every aspect of our lives. Apparently, these issues not only affect people as individuals, but also the government we elect and the different groups we are belonging to.Therefore, public relations practitioners should focus on the identification of issues that may affect the organizations, and then help organizations to develop a response to best manage the issue.

In order to give a quick respond,which means that people who feel strongly on an issue, public relations practitioners should firstly recognize the risks that unmanaged issues could present to their relationships and reputation before identifying and understanding issues. Furthermore, stakeholders are stress needed in discussing and debating which are easier for opinion-forming to individuals and groups.Meanwhile, public relations practitioners also need to seek what are audience expectations of the organization's behavior by developing harmonious relationships with their key publics.

Well, understand and identify the difference between an issue and a crisis is another task for public relations practitioners to do the best for organizations.However, an issue arises when there is a gap between what a company does and the key public or audience expectations of the company's behavior. According to the readings, a simply example is environment lobby. Today,lots of products have key messages like" dolphin safe tuna", "not tested on animals", and furthermore, issues can also be generated and public awareness spiked by organizations to start thinking about and responding to a particular situation.

However, a crisis are said to be highly uncertain events in which the causes and effects are unknown. An example like a mine disaster occurred in Beconsfield, Tasmania in 2006; natural disaster Hurricane Karina cased widespread damage on business and loss of life. Therefore, a crises can interrupt normal business operations and can threaten the existence of the organization.

In short, public relations practitioners are indelible in helping organizations to give quick and correct responses to different manage issues like environment lobby and so on. Meanwhile, effective management requires an organization to act in a proactive manner to best mange potentially damaging situations and issues which may have a great influence on people's daily life.

Saturday, March 13, 2010

Reputation management: A driving force for action

Nowadays, along with the highly increasing importance of corporagte public relations, "reputation management" has been mentioned in the definition of public relations, especially by practitioners. It has been one of a key concepts not only for us to get a better understanding of corporate public relations, but also make sure that the corporate public relations sits right in the space where business and society meet in today's rapidly changing world.

According to the readings, corporate public relations are often given a different name in the real world such as "corporate communications", "corporate relations" etc. Actually, corporate public relations is complex and take responsbility for an organisations's most important asset and its reputation.

Recently, corporate companies are not all the big business or many government-owned business, but hospitals, charities,and educational institutions are all run on corporate line. Therefore, how to communicate with employees or stakeholders, how to achieve their intergrated goals, and how to make a proper organisation politics to manage these problems are some of the main tasks that a corporate public relations practitioner should to think about.

Well, reputation is inevitable in managing an orgnasation to achieve long-team objectives such as Rio Tinto,one of the largest mining companies which used a two-way communication and supported more than 2900 programs on community assistance. However, what really determines reputation is a crucial question. A lot of example cited that the stakeholder management is the heart and soul of corporate public relations and a positive stakeholer experieces can have an extremely good influence on reputation which contributed by him or her or their employees.Potentially, almost everyone in an organisation can contribute to overall reputation, whether positively or not.

It is clear that reputation plays an crucial role in corporate public relations, and how to determined reputation is also an important question for public relations to think about and helps organizational leaders to communcate effectively by coaching it and articulating key messages to all the employees in the company.

Thursday, March 11, 2010

Engaging with the media

This chapter write into a long paragraph of the importance of media relations and how is it influence the general public. Furthermore, it also clearly explained the importance of news values or framing and how is it considered by media gatekeepers. Meanwhile, it also mentions about the tasks of public relations practitioners is to build a good relationship with all the media outlets to looking for opportunities to publish newsworthy stories about your organisation.

Media nowadays has been an opportunity or a stage for organisers to quickly reach their goals or touch their target audiences by making advertments on televisions or newspapers, and writing media release to newspapers or magazines with great photographs to illustrate stories in an imaginative way to portray subjects. However, a good writing skill is very curcial in being a good public relations practitioner. Try to keep the release clear with no grammar mistakes and using the pyrimid writing style to attract people's attention.

Meanwhile, media is also looked by people directly on what is important and what they should pay attention to. This means they actively make their own choices to suit their own needs, thus this leads great challenge for the media to choose the source of information from public relations practitioners. Gatekeepers are the editor, or the chiefs of staff who select the news values and framing from all stories that provided by journalists. The gatekeepers will make a decision on whether to accept or reject the stories by some criteria such as how interesting it is to the readers, is it fit s in the editorial policy, is it really true or is the news is up to date etc.

Therefore, mass media is very important because of their reach, their believability and their timeliness.It is important for public relations practitioners to promote their products to quickly reach their target audiences, and the public audiences can also choose which they believe and pay attention to as well throughout the media.

New Media and PUblic Relations

The emerge of new media has alreadly change the way we communicate with each other. With the rise of new media, more and more people nowadays commucicate by sending emails, chatting on msn, commenting on facebook, and writing blogs. In short, new media is considered to have the potential to develop relationships and build communities.

An every good example of using new media is the increased percentage of using interent in Australia. According to the readings, there are only one-third of people in Australia had internet access in 2001, while double with almost two-third of people use internet in Australia in 2006. Therefore, technology develops greater access to broadband and faster services than the last decade.

Well, there is no surprise that new media is cited by public relations practitioners as one of the biggest challenges facing the public relations profession. This means that the advent of new media makes the communication environment more complicated and more direct. The reason is clear, because it is a bit difficlut for public relations practitioners to identify who is ptentially a producer of information and such information can or cannot be managed as the development of new media, everyone who has access to the internet can become their own author, expressing their own sense of identity to other internet users scattered throughout the world.

On the other hand, the potential of new media also helps public relations practitioners to promote discussions in ways that can impact organisation in the most effective and fast way.For example, they can use the interactive functions of new media to post the information on one website and ensure that every employee are well informed about the decisions about a company compare to the face to face interactiion.

In summary, the development of new media has already changed our lives in terms of communcation, thinking and promoting. However, although it might be a big challenge for public relations practitioners identify valid information, it does bring benefitical to them as well. Thus, we can not resist the changing of the world and the way we live.