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== Further reading ==
== Further reading ==
{{commons category|Public relations}}
{{commons category|Public relations}}

Revision as of 00:56, 8 July 2013

For how to participate on Wikipedia as a public relations professional, see WP:COI.

Public relations (PR) is the practice of managing the spread of information between an individual or an organization and the public.[1] Public relations may include an organization or individual gaining exposure to their audiences using topics of public interest and news items that do not require direct payment.[2] The aim of public relations by a company often is to persuade the public, investors, partners, employees, and other stakeholders to maintain a certain point of view about it, its leadership, products, or of political decisions. Common activities include speaking at conferences, winning industry awards, working with the press, and employee communication.[3]

History

Main article: History of public relations

Some academics believe the origins of public relations date back to ancient civilizations, such as Rome, Greece and Egypt. In Rome military leaders documented their deeds to persuade the public to support their political candidacy and many of the principles of persuasion were established by Greek philosophers. Gospel writers practiced audience segmentation by creating alternate versions of their gospels and the term "propaganda" was founded by Pope Gregory XV in relation to his use of trained missionaries to spread Christianity.

Many textbooks say that public relations was first developed in the US, before expanding globally, and claim the field's history dates back to the settlement of the New World. Early settlers of the New World used exaggerated claims of grandeur to raise money for expeditions and attract settlers. Brochures were used to raise funding for Harvard. Pamphlets helped spread anti-British sentiment and sending The Federalist Papers to news outlets helped raise support for the constitution.

According to Barbara Diggs-Brown from the American University School of Communications, public relations has been anchored in historical events retrospectively to lend legitimacy to the field. She claims the history of public relations didn't begin until around 1900. This is when the first public relations agencies were formed. Also in the early 1900s, Ivy Lee and Edward Bernays, both sometimes referred to as the father of public relations, helped establish the field as a professional practice.

Lee created a Declaration of Principles, created the first press release and advocated for public relations as a two-way communication between an organization and its stakeholders. Though in practice, his work defending coal-mining operations against union workers led the press to identify his it as spin and propaganda. Bernays felt that audiences had to be understood carefully and persuaded to see things from a client's perspective. He taught the first classes in public relations, published the first college text-books and is known as the field's first theorist.

Several trade associations were founded in the mid-1900s, including the Public Relations Society of America (1947), the Empire Marketing Board and the Ministry of Information in the UK, the Chartered Institute of Public Relations (1948), and the International Association of Public Relations (1955).

In the late 1900s, advertising dollars on traditional media declined dramatically and circulation of traditional news outlets dropped. During this period, the "social media news release" was created and new titles began to emerge in the field such as "social media manager" and "community manager." Social media and digital communications was introduced as a significant aspect of corporate communications.

Salaries

In the United States, public relations professionals earn an average annual salary of $49,800 which compares with £40,000 for a practitioner with a similar job in the UK.[4] Top earners make around $89,220 annually, while entry-level public relations specialists earn around $28,080. Corporate, or in-house communications is generally more profitable, and communications executives can earn salaries in the mid six-figures, though this only applies to a fraction[need quotation to verify] of the sector's workforce.[5]

The role of public relations professionals is changing because of the shift from traditional to online media. Many PR professionals are finding it necessary to learn new skills and to examine how social media can impact a brand's reputation.[6]

Tactics

Public relations professionals present the public face of an organization or individual, usually to articulate its objectives and official views on issues of relevance, primarily to the media. Public relations contributes to the way an organization is perceived by influencing the media and maintaining relationships with stakeholders. According to Dr. Jacquie L’Etang from Queen Margaret University, public relations professionals can be viewed as "discourse workers specializing in communication and the presentation of argument and employing rhetorical strategies to achieve managerial aims."[7]

Specific public relations disciplines include:

Within each discipline, typical activities include publicity events, speaking opportunities, press releases, newsletters, blogs, social media, press kits and outbound communication to members of the press. Video and audio news releases (VNRs and ANRs) are often produced and distributed to TV outlets in hopes they will be used as regular program content.

Building and managing relationships with those who influence an organization or individual’s audiences has a central role in doing public relations.[8][9] After a public relations practitioner has been working in the field, they accumulate a list of relationships that become an asset, especially for those in media relations.

Audience targeting

A fundamental technique used in public relations is to identify the target audience, and to tailor messages to appeal to each audience. Sometimes the interests of differing audiences and stakeholders common to a public relations effort necessitate the creation of several distinct but complementary messages.

On the other hand stakeholders theory identifies people who have a stake in a given institution or issue. All audiences are stakeholders (or presumptive stakeholders), but not all stakeholders are audiences. For example, if a charity commissions a public relations agency to create an advertising campaign to raise money to find a cure for a disease, the charity and the people with the disease are stakeholders, but the audience is anyone who is likely to donate money.

Messaging

Messaging is the process of creating a consistent story around a product, person, company or service. Messaging aims to avoid having readers receive contradictory or confusing information that will instill doubt in their purchasing choice or other decisions that have an impact on the company. Brands aim to have the same problem statement, industry viewpoint or brand perception shared across sources and media.

Social media marketing

Main article: Digital marketing

Digital marketing is the use of Internet tools and technologies such as search engines, Web 2.0 social bookmarking, new media relations, blogging and social media marketing. Interactive PR allows companies and organizations to disseminate information without relying solely on mainstream publications and communicate directly with the public, customers and prospects.

Other techniques

Litigation public relations is the management of the communication process during the course of any legal dispute or adjudicatory processing so as to affect the outcome or its impact on the client’s overall reputation (Haggerty, 2003).

Ethics

The field of public relations is generally highly un-regulated, but many professionals voluntarily adhere to the code of conduct of one or more professional bodies to avoid exposure for ethical violations.[10] The Chartered Institute of Public Relations, the Public Relations Society of America and The Institute of Public Relations are a few organizations that publish an ethical code. Still, Edelman's 2003 semi-annual trust survey found that only 20 percent of survey respondents from the public believed paid communicators within a company were credible.[11]

According to Scott Cutlip, the social justification for public relations is the right for an organization to have a fair hearing of their point-of-view in the public forum, but to obtain such a hearing for their ideas requires a skilled advocate.[12]

Spin

Main article: Spin (public relations)

Spin has been interpreted historically to mean overt deceit meant to manipulate the public, but since the 1990s has shifted to describing a "polishing of the truth."[13] Today spin refers to providing a certain interpretation of information meant to sway public opinion.[14] Companies may use spin to create the appearance of the company or other events are going in a slightly different direction than they actually are.[13] Within the field of public relations, spin is seen as a derogatory term, interpreted by professionals as meaning blatant deceit and manipulation.[15][16] Skilled practitioners of spin are sometimes called "spin doctors."

The techniques of spin include selectively presenting facts and quotes that support ideal positions (cherry picking), the so-called "non-denial denial," phrasing that in a way presumes unproven truths, euphemisms for drawing attention away from items considered distasteful, and ambiguity in public statements. Another spin technique involves careful choice of timing in the release of certain news so it can take advantage of prominent events in the news.

Negative PR

Negative public relations, also called dark public relations (DPR) and in some earlier writing "Black PR", is a process of destroying the target's reputation and/or corporate identity. The objective in DPR is to discredit someone else, who may pose a threat to the client's business or be a political rival. DPR may rely on IT security, industrial espionage, social engineering and competitive intelligence. Common techniques include using dirty secrets from the target, producing misleading facts to fool a competitor.[17][18][19][20] Some claim that negative public relations may be highly moral and beneficial for the general public since threat of losing the reputation may be disciplining for companies, organizations and individuals. Apart from this, negative public relations helps to expose legitimate claims against one.[21]

Politics and civil society

In Propaganda (1928), Bernays argued that the manipulation of public opinion was a necessary part of democracy.[22] In public relations, lobby groups are created to influence government policy, corporate policy, or public opinion, typically in a way that benefits the sponsoring organization.

When a lobby group hides its true purpose and support base, it is known as a front group.[23] Front groups are a form of astroturfing, because they intend to sway the public or the government without disclosing their financial connection to corporate or political interests. They create a fake grass-roots movement by giving the appearance of a trusted organization that serves the public, when they actually serve their sponsors.

Definition

Ivy Lee and Edward Louis Bernays established the first definition of public relations in the early 1900s as

"a management function, which tabulates public attitudes, defines the policies, procedures, and interests of an organization... followed by executing a program of action to earn public understanding and acceptance."

In August 1978, the World Assembly of Public Relations Associations defined the field as

"the art and social science of analyzing trends, predicting their consequences, counseling organizational leaders, and implementing planned programs of action, which will serve both the organization and the public interest."[24]

The Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) defined public relations in 1982 as:

"Public relations helps an organization and its publics adapt mutually to each other."[25]

In 2011 and 2012, the PRSA developed a crowd-sourced definition:

"Public relations is a strategic communication process that builds mutually beneficial relationships between organizations and their publics."[26]

Public relations can also be defined simply as the practice of managing communication between an organization and its publics.[27]

The European view of public relations notes that besides a relational form of interactivity there is also a reflective paradigm that is concerned with publics and the public sphere; not only with relational, which can in principle be private, but also with public consequences of organizational behavior.[28][29]

See also

References

  1. ^ Grunig, James E. and Hunt, Todd. Managing Public Relations. (Orlando, FL: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1984), 6e.
  2. ^ Seitel, Fraser P. The Practice of Public Relations. (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2007), 10e.
  3. ^ Rubel, Gina F., Everyday Public Relations for Lawyers, Doylestown, PA: 1 ed. 2007, ISBN 978-0-9801719-0-7
  4. ^ [when?] [1]
  5. ^ "Public Relations Specialist Careers: Employment & Salary Trends for Aspiring Public Relations Specialists".
  6. ^ NMA.co.uk
  7. ^ Jacquie L'Etang (2 September 2004). Public Relations in Britain: A History of Professional Practice in the Twentieth Century. Taylor & Francis. ISBN 978-1-4106-1081-2. Retrieved 22 May 2013.
  8. ^ David Phillips (2006) Towards relationship management: Public relations at the core of organizational development, Journal of Communication Management, Emerald Group Publishing Limited
  9. ^ Kamau, C. (2009) Strategising impression management in corporations: cultural knowledge as capital. In D. Harorimana (Ed) Cultural implications of knowledge sharing, management and transfer: identifying competitive advantage. Chapter 4. Information Science Reference. ISBN 978-1-60566-790-4
  10. ^ Marshall, Tim (2002). "Ethics – Who needs them?". Journal of Communication Management. 7 (2): 107–112. doi:10.1108/13632540310807313. ISSN 1363-254X.
  11. ^ Natasha Tobin, (2005), "Can the professionalisation of the UK public relations industry make it more trustworthy?", Journal of Communication Management, Vol. 9 Iss: 1 pp. 56 - 64
  12. ^ Scott Cutlip (1994) The Unseen Power: Public Relations: A History, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates ISBN 0-8058-1464-7
  13. ^ a b Safire, William (1996) The Spinner Spun
  14. ^ The Free Dictionary
  15. ^ http://donhalepr.com/?p=163
  16. ^ http://blog.prnewswire.com/2012/02/17/dear-gracie-is-flack-a-four-letter-word/
  17. ^ Wattenberg, Martin P. (Aug. 22, 1996). Negative Campaign Advertising: Demobilizer or Mobilizer. eScholarship Repository. UC Irvine, Department of Politics and Society. Retrieved on January 29, 2005
  18. ^ Bike, William S. (March 28, 2004). Campaign Guide: Negative Campaigning. CompleteCampaigns.com. City: San Diego. Retrieved on August 3, 2005.
  19. ^ Saletan, William (November 25, 1999). Three Cheers for Negative Campaigning. Slate. City: Washington. Retrieved on August 3, 2005.
  20. ^ Does Attack Advertising Demobilize the Electorate? Stephen Ansolabehere, Shanto Iyengar, Adam Simon, Nicholas Valentino, 1994, American Political Science Review, 88:829-838; Winning, But Losing, Ansolabehere and Iyenger, 1996
  21. ^ Ask a hitman, Hitman - Negative Public Relations Agency, Pvt., August 22, 2012.
  22. ^ Edward Bernays Propaganda (1928) p. 10
  23. ^ See Peter Viggo Jakobsen, Focus on the CNN Effect Misses the Point: The Real Media Impact on Conflict Management is Invisible and Indirect, Journal of Peace Research, vol.37, no.2. Institute of Political Science, University of Copenhagen (2000).
  24. ^ Jensen Zhao. Encyclopedia of Business, 2nd. Ed. Retrieved from findarticles.com
  25. ^ PRSA's Old Definition of Public Relations
  26. ^ Stuart Elliot (March 1, 2012). "Public Relations Defined, After an Energetic Public Discussion". New York Times.
  27. ^ Grunig, James E. and Hunt, Todd. Managing Public Relations. (Orlando, FL: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1984), 6e. Public relations is what you do with what you know and what other think about what you say.
  28. ^ name=On the definition of public relations: a European view.
  29. ^ Sciencedirect.com

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