New media and public relation

New technology has given the world and as well as PR a new path of doing things. IT is greatly improving to provide the best. News letter used to be the popular way to spread the news, but nowadays, with Internet, blogging and website have become the greatest way to spread the news in the shortest amount of time and most of the time, they are free. The audience of the media nowadays are also more interested in the organization that use technology to promote themselves, to maximize the advantage of the new technology, the new media.

As one of the trends development of the new media of PR. Internet is another technology that has been used widely around the world. So internet is one of the important part in PR campagn as well. The chapter stated that new media might be obsolete in future and thus practitioners have to prepare for the future new communication possibilities such as myspace (Chia, 2009).

Another information that the chapter mentions about is that women are taking the lead in the PR because they are able to work well in communication field. Personally i dont actually agree with this because everyone has their own skills, and also depends on the situation, one can do better than another because they are more familiar to it, regardless to their gender.

In my conclusion, i agree that the trend of New media and Public relation are expanding much faster using the nowdays technology, Internet. Since internet is world wide, cost less, it will soon become a major tool for PR to work with.

An Issues–Crisis perspective- Reputation management

Every companies, organizations will sooner of later face issues, or even crisis. This is what the chapter is about.

First we need to know the difference between issue and crisis. 

• Issues arises when there is a gap between what company planned and what had been happening, every minor mistake or miscalculation will lead to some issues. Issue can also be generated and public awareness spiked by organizations who want people to start thinking about and responding to a particular situation. 
• Crisis will affect the organization and prevent the company from functioning properly. A crisis will threaten the organization's reputation and public or audience perceptions of the organization

Understanding the difference between issue and crisis will greatly help the company to have better insight and solution for their problems. 

For example, every issues in the company should be studied and solved as soon as possible to prevent further damage to the company. Every issues counted, therefore, issues will happen in company most likely often.

If we leave the issues to be happening, they will occur a bigger damage to the company, lead to crisis. 

This is very true, it's not only in an organization but it also apply to our daily lives, once we start to leave our minor problems unsolved, it will lead to a bigger problem, a "crisis" in our life.

Part 2: Reputation management

Reputation of the organization involves in many different key concepts:

• Reputation
• Image
• Brand
• Identity
• Corporate culture

There is considerable disagreement on how to define these terms, which often appear to overlap and are sometimes used interchangeably.

Reputation of an organization is created by time, quality, quantity and the service provided from the organization to the society. And the key role of corporate PR is to maintain and raise the reputation of the organization to the public. In a better way.

Stewart Lewis, research director of the Ipsos-MORI reputation centre listed six facets and dimensions of overall reputation:

1. Social responsibility
2. environmental responsibility
3. leadership
4. quality of products or services
5. financial performance
6. treatment of staff

Week 8: Public Relations Management in Organisations - Amisha Mehta and Robina Xavier

Alright, PR management.

First we need to understand the system theory, the system theory will provide a framework through which to view organization and their relationships with the environment. It is firmly established as one of the guiding theories for PR theory and pratice. It is used to explain how PR helps understand and manage the relationships an organization has with its stake holders and publics who make up its environment ( Amisha Mehta )

Moving on, i also understand that a good organization need to be able to adjust and adopt to the situation changing. The PR management role must help the senior decision makers within the organization to navigate the difficulty. Indeed, PR management stand a very important role in guiding and helping the organization to adapt and solve the situation with the least negative impact possible. 

For example, with the recession was going last year, PR management had to guide the company in the right way to reduce the loss and prevent the company from going bankrupt due to the going down trend of the economy. Since PR is the most social-interactive part of the organization to the environment, it knows best how the organization should adjust and adapt to the new situation.

Beside that, It is very important for PR management to understand their roles and responsibilities. Focus of a group of researchers from the United Kingdom ( Moss, Newman & Desanto 2005 ), who found that public relations managers retained some of the technical work and also undertook:

• Monitoring and evaluation
• issues management
• policy and strategy advice
• troubleshooting and problem solving

These are very useful theory that i found in this chapter which helps me alot to understand more about the importance and the roles of PR to the organization. More than that, it also a valuable lesson to learn for everyone of us in our daily lives.

Gae Synnott

Gea Synnott reading, i learnt that we need to have these 3 important steps before the public relations:

Step1: Understanding the problem, issue or opportunity.

Step2: Framing the research questions

Step3: Designing the research activity.

I found this very basic steps but yet very important and true. These are the process of posing questions and finding the answer. Knowing which questions to ask and how to get hold of the answers is a skill to be developed.

Moving on with the reading, Gea  Synnott also stated that attitude, opinions, and behavior are also linked together. To achieve attitude change, one must understand the facts of the case in a rational manner, and feel before one changes his or her mind. This suggests that there is a casual link between providing information and achieving attitude and behavior change. However behavior can be influenced by other factors, such as situation, motivation, constraints, and the factors outlined in Grunig and Hunt's situational theory.

Engaging with the Media - Hamish McLean and Richard Phillips

Reading the chapter 11, Hamish Mclean and Richard Phillips i found some interesting points in Theories section. One of them is Spiral of silence theory (Noelle-Neumann 1984), explaining that in group discussions, if people think they are in a minority they are less willing to say what they think. This is because of peer pressure or keenness to adopt a view. People go along with what is perceived to be majority thinking for the sake of the peace within the group, because they do not want to stand out as being different, or to embarrass themselves. 

I found this very true and relate to us in our school, working as group.  Not everyone will stand out and say their ideas, therefore the group will be less active for this reason, however, it will help the group to work peacefully. On the other hand, different idea sometimes greatly increase the group's performance and sometimes occur conflicts within the group.

Another interesting theories that i had learnt before in this course is "Framing Theory" ( Tversky & Khaneman 1981). This theory explain how the news story is framed in certain way or perspective. This will portray the news under the perspective of the news provider. However, most of the time the news will be bias since it is framed under certain opinion, feeling of a person, or an organization.

I had learnt this in my last semester and i understand that this theory is being used in almost every newspaper, magazine etc... Some to control the riot of the country if they find out something is wrong within the government's system, therefore they have to frame the story in which way that benefit the government more. However, sometimes framing only be used to the sake of the organization. 

Interesting reading, i found some related to my previous studies and i do understand how important these theories are to PR, since we are trying to reach out to more people, to everyone.

Move on with the reading, i found some values which will benefit our materials, such as:

• Truth
• Timeline
• Proximity
• Conflict
• Eminence and prominence
• Consequence and impact
• Human interest
• The unsual or remarkable
• Fit the focus of each medium

Indeed, these values are essential for every materials we use in PR. I will take a look more and maybe apply these theory to my future essay. 

Understanding twenty-first century public relations

Hello,

We study more about twenty-first century public relation ( PR ) in this week 3, and most of them i remember are from a the textbook which was scanned and i was able to read them online on blackboard website.

"As the profession develops, definitions may not be useful if they too narrowly describe public relations or if they include descriptions of what is ideal rather than what is possible. It is also important to define the profession in terms of its practice, values, and cultural context."

Yes, these definitions are discuss from many perspectives, USA, United Kingdom, ASIA etc... and according to the values of the profession.

I also learn what PR people should do:

• Internal communication management
• External networking and multifaceted communication, relationship building
• Issues management/crisis management, reputation and brand management
• Research
• Public affairs
• Investor relations and financial public relations
• Developing a new public relations position for an organisation

These jobs really make sense to me and make me see how important PR is to any company in many aspect.

Part2:

The PR profession have 5 steps They are: Press agentry and publicity, communicating and initiating, reacting and responding, planning and prevention and status of professionalism development (Newsom, Turk Kruckeberg, 2007). This shows that there are different stages for PR and each of it has to be achieved before moving on to the next stage.

These steps are important as a guideline and present the planning of the organization. I think it's quite true and interesting how PR consists these values in their campaign. 

2nd Week of PR lalala

Hello everyone,

Today, "STRATEGY, TACTICS, and EVALUATION" , ok, to be honest, the first part about how research, analysis stuff i was unsure but i understand that every company will need strategy for their company before starting to do anything.

Let say the starbuck example, i understand that they have tons of competitors around, local brands as well. In Singapore, we have Ya Kun coffee, very cheap and delicious, we also have coffee bean etc... However they managed to attract their customer by many fun way of advertisement and free small gifts in Plaza Singapura, Orchard etc... McDonald is another example for giving out free toys

Beside i also learn that PR works best when it goes along with communication.A planing process designed to assure that all brand contacts received by a customer for a product, service, or organization are relevant to that person and consistent over time.

To narrow the process i have learnt that we need to Research, Analysis , Goal Setting, Objectives, Targeted Audience , Developing Strategies, Devising and Implementing tactics , monitoring, evaluation.

I think PR campaign is very interesting. It really reflect different views from many different perspectives. Starbuck and Macdonald are really successful in attracting their customer with "free toy" tactic. I really like the idea.