Dr Mohamed Kirat
By Dr Mohamed Kirat
Recent research suggests that public relations professionals are increasingly adopting online tools. According to a 2007 Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) “Wired for Change” Survey, the majority of public relations professionals assert that the use of communication technology has made their job easier by expediting the circulation of information to reach larger audiences. Social media not only allows public relations practitioners to reach out to and engage their publics in conversation, but also provides a channel to strengthen media relations.
Social media have been adopted from its inception by public relations, PR practitioners perceive social media positively with respect to strategic communication. Social media are the creation of platforms that connect people together, provide an opportunity to produce and share content with others, extract and process community knowledge and share it back. Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, LinkedIn, Foursquare and Flickr are among the most popular social network services.
Social media is reorganising the profession of public relations. Since the advent of Internet, PR is becoming more and more online and virtual; many of its activities are performed through the net. Modern technology transforms the way we send, receive and process information. Social media or online networking sites have been heralded as groundbreaking interactions which allow for networked communication to occur instantaneously. Social media enable PR practitioners to share content, opinions, experiences, insights, views, feedback, and media themselves. Social media sites encourage and foster bi-symmetrical communication among participants. Use of social media by PR practitioners allows them to reach and interact with multiple publics and stakeholders, thus opening the opportunities and possibilities for mutually beneficial relationships. The Internet has dramatically changed the media environment, leading to journalists gathering news information online. This shifting trend has also changed the way organisations communicate with the news media.
An increasing number of public relations practitioners are using various Internet technologies (email, websites, multimedia news releases, online pressrooms, RSS feeds, and social media) to better communicate with journalists and to enhance their media relations. In particular, growing numbers of corporate/organisational websites provide online press rooms that provide journalists with access to essential organisation information and media material such as press releases, fact sheets, backgrounders, newsletters, brochures, photographs and audio/video clips, and many downloadable collateral materials.
This makes life easier for journalists who can access a wide range of information to write their stories. According to Pettigrew and Reber, 495 Fortune 500 companies have online newsrooms on their websites. More than 95 percent journalists indicated that it is important for a company or organisation to have an online newsroom available to the press.
Both journalists and public relations practitioners believe that online newsrooms are an indispensable communication channel.
Most social media sites offer comments, data, news, information, and story ideas that PR practitioners may use to perform their tasks and activities such as media relations, communications with various publics and stakeholders, social corporate responsibility, publicity and image building. These changes are also taking place in some trade magazines that serve the public relations industry.
In 2009, PR Week, considered by many to be the most prominent public relations trade publication, changed its weekly print edition into an online format, although it does produce a printed magazine every month. New media have “changed the rules of the game in every part” of strategic communication according to many communication and PR experts and researchers, who claim that over the past decade these new communication vehicles have not only turned on its head everything people knew about communication but have also dramatically changed the business of managing relationships.
Findings of the noted Authentic Enterprise Report of the Arthur W Page Society give the new communication media credit for dramatically changing the ways in which stakeholders are empowered. The Page Society’s most recent report — Building Belief: A New Model for Activating Corporate Character and Authentic Advocacy (2012) – explains how the roles and functions of chief communications officers of major companies are changing given advances in new technologies among other things. Social media are being utilised on an ever-increasing basis by corporations and other organisations. More than two-thirds of the current Fortune 2000 companies are using social networking sites. Advocacy groups are advancing their public relations agendas via Facebook. As mentioned earlier, another measure of the growth and development of social media in public relations is the level of social media activity currently displayed by various professional societies active in the field.
Annual surveys measuring how social and other emerging media are being used in public relations practice showed that the use of these new media has continued to increase every year. This has provided unique opportunities not only for those who practice public relations but also for a wide variety of strategic publics.
Public relations practitioners firmly believe that these new media have enhanced public relations practice, mainly when it concerns external audiences. Results also indicate that PR practitioners believe social and other emerging media continue to improve the profession in terms of accuracy, credibility, honesty, trust and truth telling. They also think these new media effectively serve as a watchdog for traditional news media, impacting corporate and organisational transparency and advocating a transparent and ethical culture. Public relations practitioners spend between 25 to 35 percent of their workday with blogs and other social media meaning that the PR profession is going more and more virtual and digital.
The writer is a professor of Public Relations and Mass Communication at the College of Arts and Sciences, Qatar University.
By Dr Mohamed Kirat
Recent research suggests that public relations professionals are increasingly adopting online tools. According to a 2007 Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) “Wired for Change” Survey, the majority of public relations professionals assert that the use of communication technology has made their job easier by expediting the circulation of information to reach larger audiences. Social media not only allows public relations practitioners to reach out to and engage their publics in conversation, but also provides a channel to strengthen media relations.
Social media have been adopted from its inception by public relations, PR practitioners perceive social media positively with respect to strategic communication. Social media are the creation of platforms that connect people together, provide an opportunity to produce and share content with others, extract and process community knowledge and share it back. Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, LinkedIn, Foursquare and Flickr are among the most popular social network services.
Social media is reorganising the profession of public relations. Since the advent of Internet, PR is becoming more and more online and virtual; many of its activities are performed through the net. Modern technology transforms the way we send, receive and process information. Social media or online networking sites have been heralded as groundbreaking interactions which allow for networked communication to occur instantaneously. Social media enable PR practitioners to share content, opinions, experiences, insights, views, feedback, and media themselves. Social media sites encourage and foster bi-symmetrical communication among participants. Use of social media by PR practitioners allows them to reach and interact with multiple publics and stakeholders, thus opening the opportunities and possibilities for mutually beneficial relationships. The Internet has dramatically changed the media environment, leading to journalists gathering news information online. This shifting trend has also changed the way organisations communicate with the news media.
An increasing number of public relations practitioners are using various Internet technologies (email, websites, multimedia news releases, online pressrooms, RSS feeds, and social media) to better communicate with journalists and to enhance their media relations. In particular, growing numbers of corporate/organisational websites provide online press rooms that provide journalists with access to essential organisation information and media material such as press releases, fact sheets, backgrounders, newsletters, brochures, photographs and audio/video clips, and many downloadable collateral materials.
This makes life easier for journalists who can access a wide range of information to write their stories. According to Pettigrew and Reber, 495 Fortune 500 companies have online newsrooms on their websites. More than 95 percent journalists indicated that it is important for a company or organisation to have an online newsroom available to the press.
Both journalists and public relations practitioners believe that online newsrooms are an indispensable communication channel.
Most social media sites offer comments, data, news, information, and story ideas that PR practitioners may use to perform their tasks and activities such as media relations, communications with various publics and stakeholders, social corporate responsibility, publicity and image building. These changes are also taking place in some trade magazines that serve the public relations industry.
In 2009, PR Week, considered by many to be the most prominent public relations trade publication, changed its weekly print edition into an online format, although it does produce a printed magazine every month. New media have “changed the rules of the game in every part” of strategic communication according to many communication and PR experts and researchers, who claim that over the past decade these new communication vehicles have not only turned on its head everything people knew about communication but have also dramatically changed the business of managing relationships.
Findings of the noted Authentic Enterprise Report of the Arthur W Page Society give the new communication media credit for dramatically changing the ways in which stakeholders are empowered. The Page Society’s most recent report — Building Belief: A New Model for Activating Corporate Character and Authentic Advocacy (2012) – explains how the roles and functions of chief communications officers of major companies are changing given advances in new technologies among other things. Social media are being utilised on an ever-increasing basis by corporations and other organisations. More than two-thirds of the current Fortune 2000 companies are using social networking sites. Advocacy groups are advancing their public relations agendas via Facebook. As mentioned earlier, another measure of the growth and development of social media in public relations is the level of social media activity currently displayed by various professional societies active in the field.
Annual surveys measuring how social and other emerging media are being used in public relations practice showed that the use of these new media has continued to increase every year. This has provided unique opportunities not only for those who practice public relations but also for a wide variety of strategic publics.
Public relations practitioners firmly believe that these new media have enhanced public relations practice, mainly when it concerns external audiences. Results also indicate that PR practitioners believe social and other emerging media continue to improve the profession in terms of accuracy, credibility, honesty, trust and truth telling. They also think these new media effectively serve as a watchdog for traditional news media, impacting corporate and organisational transparency and advocating a transparent and ethical culture. Public relations practitioners spend between 25 to 35 percent of their workday with blogs and other social media meaning that the PR profession is going more and more virtual and digital.
The writer is a professor of Public Relations and Mass Communication at the College of Arts and Sciences, Qatar University.
