Friday 28 March 2008

NEW MEDIA AND PUBLIC RELATIONS



The beautiful thing about the Internet, as a communications medium of New Media, is that it bridges the gap between people from different countries, permitting them to exchange views and share information. Scholar Cancross (1988) expresses this fast development as "the death of distance"

In the past year, there has been countless examples of the rising influence of new media on public relations. These include (1) the outing of Prince Harry during his brief stint in Afghanistan (2) China's child kidnappings which the country's traditional media refused to explore until a firestorm of net postings forced them to report.

I shall explore the latter in detail. As we all know, talking about politics in China can be dangerous. Critics of the Communist Party are often silenced. However, the blogosphere is changing all this and increasingly Communist leaders are fearing the power of the blog as bloggers are becoming impossible to control - a strange concept for the Chinese government.

Currently, there are over 30 million bloggers in China - a considerably large number for a country where free speech is suppressed so vigorously.

The child kidnaps were originally ignored by members of the traditional press refusing to assist with the search until the parents of the kidnapped children appealed through a written letter to bloggers. After several online attention, the mainstream media eventually decided to investigate the issue. This incident cast a sad light on the Communist party and finally ignored the dominance of the Propaganda department of the party.

It latter turned out after investigations that local police officials were involved in the kidnappings revealing the real reasons why the Department of propaganda had been initially reluctant to give information.



On a general note, I wonder what the rising influence of new media means for our profession. I think it means that practitioners can become more efficient at predicting what could be a potential crisis. Learning what public opinion is can better equip practitioners on all parts of the job from launching a product, developing an effective campaign strategy to dealing efficiently with future public relations crisis.

SKILLS & PROFESSIONALISM IN PR

I think for the next 25 years, debates will continue to surface about the skills required for Public Relations and whether they are - or should be - intellectual or practical. As someone who has worked predominately in developing countries - I will rightly argue that it is about who you know not necessarily how much you know.

In the Western world, it is increasingly obvious that it is more about your academic achievements (I discovered this the hard way whilst trying to apply for jobs in a highly competitive market)

What I will concur is that to be truly distinct in the market, one needs to couple both. If our dear profession will be reckon with, we need to demonstrate passion for it and this can only start when more people show interest in it and are willing to go and gain qualifications to truly demonstrate how serious they are about the profession not just taking in the media's representation of the job as a certificate.

GOOD BUSINESS: THE RISE OF CSR



I was shocked to discover that good CSR has only become mainstream in just little over a decade. For years, it was seen as a do-gooding slide show taken on by a few companies.

I was recently at a M&S mega store on Oxford Street sitting in the cafeteria flicking through their in-store magazine when I stumbled upon their CSR campaign "Plan A" which is essentially a set of 100 worthy targets over the next 5 years.

The company detailed explicitly its plans to give 15,000 children in Uganda a better education; save 55,000 tonnes of CO2 in a year; recycle 48m clothes hangers; triple its sales of organic food; convert over 20m garments to fair trade cotton. My initial response was all this sounds very elaborate - how can the company afford to warehouse this vast range of activities under the 'doing-good' umbrella.

I asked myself, is this really necessary and if so for whose benefit? As a PR student, I'm familiar with the CSR boom - the need for big companies to tell the world about their corporate citizenship, the need to push the message through websites, magazines, print press even CEOs are on the act, jumping at opportunities to speak at conferences about their willingness to be more "green".

And why not, after all, in 2006 the government made it law; according to the 2006 Companies Act, it is a requirement for public companies to report on social and environmental matters.

To answer my question on for whose benefit - the companies itself of course. This is essentially an exercise in protecting reputation, enhancing trust in big business, keeping the army of NGOs at bay whilst motivating, attracting and retaining staff.

Tuesday 11 March 2008

THE FEMINISATION OF PUBLIC RELATIONS

As a man looking to do great things within the PR industry both local and abroad, I find it deeply unsettling this debate that the entire PR industry irrespective of country of practice is increasingly feminised. I must admit, this comes as no surprise to me. This isn't the first time my sexuality has been questioned as a result of my profession of choice. It stated as a joke amongst my male peers but quickly it became a painful blow to me.

This leads to the question, how exactly did this happen?

Today, 79% of the PR employees are women, the remainder are men - the only comforting fact here is that the men fill the board level/ senior management roles in firms and consultancies across the world.

Which asks the question, are women incompetent? Are they less intelligent than their male counterparts?

The first sets of reasons that jump to mind - when thinking women in PR - is the same framework that can apply to any profession and I must confess I find it incredibly hard to tailor this specifically to PR.

Factors such as lesser working hours, maternity leave periods, lower ranking positions in comparison to their male colleagues. The question is this is typical of most industry, why the particular issue in PR?

Some have argued that women's natural capabilities quickly ‘box' them into certain stagnant roles within PR firms/agencies. Skills such as writing and creativity make women easy targets for these roles in their job description where their male counterparts fill managerial roles. During my research, what I found to be most absurd is an independent study conducted by the University of Kent on this current situation. A key finding was this notion that women will never occupy key positions because of their inability to network.

We can go on and on for reasons why women are not on the top of the PR industry as they so rightly deserve after all women continue to make huge breakthroughs in every sector. American Democratic presidential candidate is testimony that it is all a matter of time before things change. It would be utterly foolish to out rightly conclude that women will not dominate the world of business or politics.

Wednesday 5 March 2008

PROPAGANDA: A FORM OF PR?

Many journalists assume that public relations is largely propaganda. Many public relations practitioners tend to break-out-in-a-rash at this accusation. I personally don’t, I have long accepted that there will never be a clear distinction between the two; denying that PR practitioners use strategies and campaigns to persuade anyone about anything in my view is preposterous.

The connection between propaganda and public relations (quite frankly I don’t know why academics and scholars have crafted to separate definitions) can be further explored with some of the more definitions out there.

The European Public Relations definition of public relations is ‘the conscious organisation of communication’. It also defines public relations as ‘a management function’ using the Iraqi war and ‘the embedded journalists’ as an n example, isn’t this just a classic example of public relations? Why is this considered largely propaganda?

Propaganda has been described as ‘the deliberate and systematic attempt to shape perceptions, manipulate cognition and direct behaviour to achieve a response that furthers the desired intent of the propagandist’ (Jowett and O’Donnell 1992)

This emphasises the purposefulness of propaganda, its organisation and the way propaganda seeks to further the sender’s not the receiver’s interests. It also draws further on the point that the propagandist seeks to influence the thoughts and behaviour of the audience. The issue is that it could equally describe a great deal of public relations activity. Edward Bernays (the father of public relations) has famously described public relations as ‘the engineering of consent’.

If PR is about persuading people to consent to the purpose of an organisation – or person, why is it any different from the definitions given above on propaganda? This is all hypocritical in the public relations practitioners path, we all want to be “ethical” and “correct” by labelling the “dutier” aspects of our discipline of looking after reputation.

To go one step further, too many PR scholars focus in its wartime application. I’m still searching for truly convincing civil or corporate examples of propaganda.

I am not convinced that examining the nature of war, the attempt to achieve mutual understanding and to establish a beneficial relationship, between the government and the publics – we can ever achieve PR – it will always be seen as propaganda.

Scholar Taylor (1992) has said we should discard any notions of propaganda being “good” or “bad”, and use those terms merely to describe effective or ineffective propaganda.

He raises a key issue of intent in propaganda, not just who says what to whom, but why (Taylor 2001). I utterly agree with this approach as I believe propaganda should be re-examined rather than demonised in PR texts.

Utterly, the role of PR in political, military and corporate communications is seen as fuelling propaganda.

CRISIS MANAGEMENT: THE 'BEIJING TORCH'




Effective crisis management protects organisations, their reputation and, at times, can salvage their very existenxe. In the case of this chosen case study, the protests against the Beijing Olympics.

Ineffective crisis management could potentially harm China's hard-won reputation reputation built over recent decades.

It is no rocket science that recent pro-Tibet campaigners are quickly disrupting normal runnings of much anticipated Beijing Olympics - which China has been working incredibly hard for over six years to use as a vehicle to establish it's nation as an economic and political power house.

However, as more and more oppositions and global protests over shadows the Olympic games, creating embarassing headlines as we've seen on the streets of London during the Olympic torch journey through our Capital's streets.

36 people were arrested, two protesters were held for trying to put out the flame which one man ried to grab the torch out of a celebrity carrier's hands. The images splashed across newspapers were one of shock and chaos. I couldn't actually see the flame admist 2,000 police uniforms, China's blue track-suited "guardians of the flame" and hundreds of protest placards.




The question is couldn't the Chinese government have prepared something to combat this embarrasing images which has already casted a shadow over the sporting tradition?

Surely, this crisis could have been identified before it happened hence a better response to the situation could have been applied. Schlors, Heath (1997) supports the argument that managing issues can help prevent a crisi. He states: "
if a organisation is engaged in issues management before, during, and after a crisi, it can mitigate - perhaps prevent - the crisi from becoming an issue by working quickly and responsibly to establish or re-establish the level of control desired by relevant stakeholders
"

Perhaps, i'm playing naive and expecting the Chinese government to have predicted this outcome. Perhaps, it is impossible to determine how protesters will recruit across the world afterall it is alledged that in China, no protests have been seen during the Olympic rally show on TV.

This will make sense thinking on Schlors Sam Black's breakdown of crisis into the 'known uknown' and the 'unknown unknown'. The latter are events that cannot be predicted and that can come about from unconnected events or circumstances that are unpredictable.

I will not share my personal views on the current situation - Iam neither a politician or a sporting athlete what I will conclude with it is how China communicates about the crisis that will make the real difference. There are tons of evidence that good communication in a crisis situation can support or increase a country's reputation. It is evident that China's lack of effective communication solutions is already having a powerful negative effect on the country and sadly, the Olympics games.

China needs to communicate exactly what it is going to do exactly, in a timely manner to all stakeholders - the Olympics board, sponsors, governments, Tibetians, the press, sporting associations, athletes and many others.

DIVERSITY IN THE PR INDUSTRY

I've always felt there are great benefits to joining accredited associations. I was utterly distraught by the thought that my postgraduate degree was not acknowledged by the CIPR which means upon the completion of the postgraduate, I will not receive an automatic membership into the association. My desire to join one of these associations is because I strongly believe they can often open doors. Surely I'm not the only person that can see this.

Which leads to the question, why are minorities not in these association and why aren't many of them thinking like I am?

According to Shirley Harrison's Public Relations: An Introduction There are approximately 48,000 people in the UK working in Public Realtions in some way, out of this only 6,000 are currently registered with an association.

As it is clearly not a pre-requisite, I strongly urge minorities to join associations for the following reasons –

 Networking
 Professional development
 Accreditation
 Mentoring

I would also like to ask these association for full support. I believe the three greatest barriers why minorirties are not joining the professional organisations include cost of annual membership dues, lack of diversity among membership and insufficient amount of time to participate.

These organisations can help by

1) looking for ways to partner with racially-based PR organisations to provide discounts on professional development and networking opportunities
2) cultivate professional associations with other minority organisations, such as the Urban League, to better understand diversity issues and to help publicize PR opportunities.