Public
relations
From Wikipedia, the free
encyclopedia
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
Ancient
origins
The earliest known example of
"the communication of information to influence viewpoints or
actions," is a clay tablet from 1800 BC, which told Babylonian farmers how
to sow crops.[4][5][6]
Ancient India, Rome and Greece can be said to have practiced public relations
tactics, though the term was not yet identified. India had a team that
monitored public opinion.[7]
Greek philosophers like Socrates, Plato and Aristotle advocated for the value of honest communications.[8]
Aristotle
studied persuasion as a method of swaying public opinion to support political
causes. He divided rhetoric into three components: ethos (credibility), pathos
(emotion), and logos (logic).[9]
Poetry was a common form of persuasion in Greece.[7]
Julius Caesar and others wrote biographies on their military successes to
persuade the Roman public to support their political candidacies.[10]
Others in Rome and Greece wrote books and taught classes on persuasive speaking
and rhetoric.[8]
In medieval Europe craftsmen guilds
coveted their reputation and Lord Chancellors acted as mediators in England
between rulers and subjects. Public relations was also used to spread
Christianity.[8]
Pope Urban II is said to have used public relations to recruit for the crusades[7]
and Jesus could be considered an early practitioner of ethics in communication.
He told his apostles "Say 'Yes' when you mean 'Yes' and 'No' when you mean
'No'"[11]
Emperor Nero created an early example of spin and deceptive public relations,
when he blamed the burning of Rome, which was a staged event, on the
Christians. Early gospel writers practiced audience segmentation by creating
four different versions of their gospels for different audiences. John Wycliffe
and Martin Luther practiced public relations by campaigning for reform in the
church using pamphlets, lectures and books.[8]
Pope Gregory XV is considered the founder of the term "propaganda"
for his work persuading people to join the church through trained missionaries.[4][12]
La reputation was the word used for French publicists that promoted
absolutism in the 1500s and 1600s.[13]
Early
History
Land promoters used exaggerated
stories of grandeur to persuade English citizens to migrate to the New World
in the 1600s.[14][15]
The first fund-raising pamphlet, "New England's First Fruits," was
created by Harvard University in 1641 to support the efforts of three preachers trying to
raise funds in England.[4][16]
The first propaganda ministry was created in 1792 as the National
Assembly of France.[13]
Public relations tactics were used to incite the American revolution. Pamphlets called "Common Sense" and
"American Crisis" were used to spread anti-British Propaganda. To
incite revolution, supporters created the slogan "taxation without
representation is tyranny." Staged events like the Liberty Tree
and the Boston Tea Party rallied protest against British control. After the
revolution was won, disagreements broke out regarding the constitution.
Supporters of the constitution sent letters now called the Federalist Papers to major news outlets that persuaded the public to support
the constitution.[4][5][14]
Exaggerated stories of Davy Crocket
and the California Gold Rush were used to persuade the public to migrate West in
the US and to fight the war against Mexico respectively.[8]
One of the first instances of large-scale government propaganda in France was
when public relations was used to rally support for the French Revolution in 1792.[13]
In the United States, publicists that promoted circuses, theatrical
performances, and other public spectacles are considered a precursor to public
relations.
The first appearance of the term
"public relations" was in the 1897 Year Book of Railway Literature[17]
to persuade US consumers to use the new rail system.[18]
Some credit an 1807 address to Congress by former US President, Thomas
Jefferson, as the first time the term "public relations" was coined.[19]
In the 1800s the first Federal Press Secretary in the US, Amos Kendall, was
appointed by President Andrew Jackson.[20]
Westinghouse
Corporation created the first in-house PR
department in 1889.[18]
The first public relations agency was created in 1900 in Boston by three former
journalists under the name Publicity Bureau.[14][21]
Foundation
as a profession
Ivy Lee, a former Wall Street reporter, is sometimes called the
father of public relations and was influential in establishing it as a professional
practice. In 1906, Lee published a Declaration of Principles, which said that
public relations work should be done in the open, should be accurate and cover
topics of public interest.[4][14][22]
Ivy Lee is also credited with developing the modern press release
and the "two-way-street" philosophy of both listening to and communicating
with respective publics.[23]
In practice Lee's work was often
identified as spin or propaganda.[14]
In 1913 and 1914 the mining union was blaming the Ludlow Massacre,
where on-strike miners and their families were killed by state militia, on the
Rockefeller family and their coal mining operation, The Colorado Fuel and Iron
Company.[24][24]
On the Rockefeller family's behalf, Lee published bulletins called "Facts
Concerning the Struggle in Colorado for Industrial Freedom," which
contained false and misleading information.[25][14][25]
The press said Lee "twisted the facts" and called him a "paid
liar," a "hired slanderer," and a "poisoner of public
opinion."[14]
Edward Bernays, a nephew of Sigmund
Freud, is also sometimes referred to as the father of public relations for his
work in the 1920s. He took the approach that audiences had to be carefully
understood and persuaded to see things from the client's perspective. He wrote
the first text-book on public relations and taught the first college course at
New York University in 1923. Bernays also first introduced the practice of
using front groups in order to protect tobacco interests.[22][26]
In the 1930s Bernays started the first vocational course in public relations.[27]
Bernays was the profession's first
theorist. He was influenced by Freud's theories about the subconscious.[23]
Bernays authored several books, including Crystallizing Public Opinion
(1923), Propaganda (1928), and The Engineering of Consent (1947).
He saw public relations as an "applied social science" that uses
insights from psychology, sociology, and other disciplines to scientifically
manage and manipulate the thinking and behavior of an irrational and
"herdlike" public.[citation needed] "The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the
organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in
democratic society," he wrote in Propaganda, "Those who
manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government
which is the true ruling power of our country."[28]
Early
professional public relations
One of Bernays' early clients was
the tobacco industry. He consulted psychoanalyst A. A. Brill on how to persuade
women to smoke. Brill told him that the desire to smoke was suppressed and
could be released by emancipation and that cigarettes could become "torches of freedom" from gender imbalances. In 1929, he orchestrated a
now-legendary publicity stunt by convincing women to smoke at the Easter parade in
Manhattan as a statement of rebellion against the norms of a male-dominated
society. The demonstrators were not aware that a tobacco company was behind the
publicity stunt. Bernays dubbed his PR campaign the: "Torches of Liberty
Contingent".[citation needed]
Publicity photos of these beautiful
fashion models smoking "Torches of Liberty" were sent to various
media outlets and appeared worldwide. As a result, the taboo was dissolved and
many women were led to associate the act of smoking with female liberation.
Some women went so far as to demand membership in all-male smoking clubs,
a highly controversial act at the time. For his work, Bernays was paid a tidy
sum by George Washington Hill, president of the American
Tobacco Company.
Another early practitioner was Harry Reichenbach (1882–1931) a New York-based American press agent and
publicist who promoted movies. He claims to have made famous the Paul Chabas
painting, September Morn. Supposedly, he saw a print in a Chicago art store window.
He made a deal with the store owner who had not sold any of his 2,000 prints.
Reichenbach had hired some boys to "ogle" the picture when he showed
it to the moralist crusader Anthony Comstock. Comstock was suitably outraged when he saw it. Comstock's
Anti-Vice Society took the case to the court and lost. However, the case
aroused interest to the painting, which ultimately sold millions of copies.
Modern
public relations
The foundation of the Public Relations Society of America in 1947 was followed by the Chartered Institute of Public Relations in London in 1948 and similar trade associations in
Australia, Europe, South Africa, Italy and Singapore among others. In 1955, the
International Association of Public Relations was founded.[18]
Advertising dollars in traditional
media productions have declined and many traditional media outlets are seeing
declining circulation in favor of online and social media news sources. One
website even tracks the "death" of newspapers.[29]
As readership in traditional media shifts to online media, so does the focus of
many in public relations.[30][31]
Social media releases,[32]
search engine optimization,[33]
content publishing,[34]
and the introduction of podcasts and video are other burgeoning trends.[35]
Social media has increased the speed
of breaking news, creating greater time constraints on responses to current events.[36]
Increasingly, companies are
utilizing social media channels, such as blogs and Microblogging.
Some view two-way communications in social media in two categories:
asymmetrical and symmetrical. In an asymmetrical public relations model an
organization gets feedback from the public and uses it as a basis for
attempting to persuade the public to change. A symmetrical public relations
model means that the organization takes the interests of the public into
careful consideration and public relations practitioners seek a balance between
the interest of their organization and the interest of the public.[citation needed]
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.[37]
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.[38]
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.[39]
Methods,
tools, and tactics
Specific public relations
disciplines include:
- Financial public relations – communicating financial
results and business strategy
- Consumer/lifestyle
public relations – gaining publicity for a particular product or service
- Crisis communication
– responding in a crisis
- Internal communications
– communicating within the company itself
- Government relations
– engaging government departments to influence public policy
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.[40][41]
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 mediums.
Social
media 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.[42]
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.[27]
Spin
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."[43]
Today spin refers to providing a certain interpretation of informant meant to
sway public opinion.[44]
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.[43]
Within the field of public relations, spin is seen as a derogatory term,
interpreted by professionals as meaning blatant deceit and manipulation.[45][46]
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.[47][48][49][50]
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.[51]
Politics
and civil society
In Propaganda (1928), Bernays
argued that the manipulation of public opinion was a necessary part of
democracy.[52]
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.[53]
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."[54]
The Public Relations Society of
America (PRSA) defined public relations in 1982 as:
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."[56]
Public relations can also be defined
simply as the practice of managing communication
between an organization and its publics.[57]
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.[58][59]
The entire wiki link can be found at:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_relations
No comments:
Post a Comment