Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Saturday, September 13, 2008

Assignment 1 - PR Definition

Definition

Public relations is a sub-discipline of communications that is concerned with influencing the public opinion in favor of an organization, person, product or issue, which gets involved in a balanced two-way communication with its publics. 

Chapter 3 - Public Opinion


1. Definition of Public Opinion
  Public opinion consists of two components: public and opinion.
  Public: a group of people who share common interest in a specific subject.
  Opinion: is the expression of an attitude on a particular topic. Attitudes become strong enough to build opinions, which become strong enough
to create action.
  Public opinion is the aggregate of many individual opinions on a particular issue that affects a group of people.
  a. What are attitudes?
     Attitudes are based on a number of characteristics: religion, culture, race, social class, education, family and personal.
     Attitudes can be:
        . Positive/for
        . Negative/against
        . Neutral/nonexistent
     Most of the time, people do not care much an issue. A small percentage supports it (proponents), another small percentage opposes it (opponents), and the vast majority stays passive, neutral and indifferent (uncommitted).

  b. How are attitudes influenced?
     Leon Festinger developed the Cognitive Dissonance concept. It argues that individuals tend to avoid dissonant information and seek consonant information.
     -> PR professionals attempt to avoid/remove dissonance to reach communicative goals.


2. Power of Persuasion
  Persuasion: getting another person to do something through advice, reasoning or just force.
  Persuasion is the most essential element in influencing public opinion and the goal of most PR programs.
  For instance, persuasion is the basic process of the political campaigns in countries where people's votes can make a change.


3. Focusing on Beliefs and Actions
  Unconvinced audience members neither believe nor act. 
  To push the unconvinced audience to act in the favor of your clients, you need as a PR practitioner to convince/persuade them to believe your claims by producing enough evidence.
  The kind of evidence that can be used to convince people is:
     . Facts: empirical data.
     . Emotions: appealing to emotions.
     . Personal: appealing to personal experiences.
      . Appealing to "you": repeating the word people never get tired of 
"you", involving the targeted individual.


4. Influencing Public Opinion
  Public opinion is easier to measure than to influence
     1. Public opinion must be understood.
     2. Targets must be clear.
     3. PR professionals must have in sharp the laws that govern public opinion.


5. Laws of Public Opinion
  Developed by the social psychologist Hadley Cantril
  1. Opinion is highly sensitive to important events.
  2. Opinion is generally determined more by events than by words, unless those words are themselves interpreted as an event.
  3. At critical times, people become more sensitive to the adequacy of leadership.
    . If they have confidence in it, they are willing to assign more tha usual responsibility to it.
     If they lack confidence in it, they are less tolerant than usual.
  4. Once self-interest is involved, opinions are easily changed.
  5. People have more opinions and are able to form opinions more easily on goals than on methods to reach those goals.
  6. If people in a democracy are provided with educational opportunities and ready access to information, public opinion reveals a hardheaded common sense.


6. Polishing the Corporate Image
      Positive corporate image is essential for continued long-term success. Corporate image is a fragile commodity, and it takes a great deal of time to build it favorably, but only one slip to create a negative public impression.
      In the wake corporate scandals, smart companies realized they simply could not hide any longer from public scrutiny.


7. Beware the Trap of Public Opinion
      The difficult task in PR is to maintain a favorable public opinion rather than to win it.

Chapter 2 - Theories of Communication


1. Why Communication Theories?
  PR professionals should have an idea about these theories because they represent the conceptual foundations which help them understand the underpinnings of successful PR strategy.


2. The Two Step Flow Theory
  It was developed by Paul Lazarsfeld in 1948. This theory argues that ideas flow from the mass media to the opinion leaders and from them to the less active sections of the population.


3. The Concentric-Circle
  This theory was developed by Elmo Roper, and it states that ideas evolve gradually to the public at large moving in concentric circles from!
     . great thinkers to
     . great disciples to
     . great disseminators to
     . lesser disseminators to
     . the active audience to
     . the inert

4. Pat Jackson's PR Model
  The model developed by Pat Jackson takes the form of a five-step process:
     1. Building awareness, through publicity, advertising, face-to-face communication
     2. Developing a latent readiness
        Publics begin to form opinion at this stage.
     3. Triggering event
        Publics want to change their behavior.
      4. Intermediate behavior
        This is the investigative period when an individual is determining how best to apply a desired behavior.
     5. Behavioral change through the adoption of a new behavior.

5. The SEMDR Communication Process
     PR function most comes into play in the encoding and the decoding stages.


6. Spiral of Silence Theory
  This theory was developed by Elisabeth Noelle Neumann
  It argued that people tend to remain silent when they feel that their views are in the minority. Therefore, they form the silent majority that fears becoming isolated, and choose to vote with the majority.


7. Constructivism
  This theory suggests that knowledge is constructed, not transmitted. In this sense, the task of the communicator is to understand how receivers think about the issue in question and work to challenge their preconceived notions with the goal of converting their views.


8. Coordinated Management Meaning
  This theory is based on social interaction. It argues that when we communicate, we construct our social realities. We each have our stories of life experience that we share through interaction. Consequently, we coordinate our beliefs and ideas with each other so that a mutual outcome might occur.

9. Grunig-Hunt PR Models
  Grunig and Hunt propose four models to define public relation communications.
     . Press agentry/ publicity
      One way communication that beams messages from the source to the receivers with the intention of winning favorable media attention.
     . Public information
      One way communication designed to inform rather than to persuade.
     . Two way asymmetric
       A two-way communication that allows an organization to put out its information and receive feedback from its publics about that information.
     . Two way symmetric
        A preferred two-way communication that advocates free and equal information flow between the organization and its public based on mutual understanding.

Chapter 1 - Defining PR


1. Prominence of PR
  PR's evolution was due to:
     1. The growth of big institutions.
     2. The increase of change, conflict and confrontation in society.
     3. The sophistication of people worldwide as a result of technological innovations in com.
     4. The growth of the power of public opinion in the current century.
     5. The exponential growth of internet-based com tools (social software).


2. PR Definition
  PR is a planned process to influence public opinion, through sound character and proper performance, based on mutually satisfactory two-way communication.


3. Planned Process to Influence the Public Opinion
  a. John Marston suggested a four step model (RACE) based on specific functions:
     1. Research (attitudes about the issue)
     2. Action (action of the client in the public interest)
     3. Communication 
     4. Evaluation (evaluate the com. to see if the public opinion was influence)
     NB: No amount of communications can save an org. whose performance is substandard.
  b. Melvin Sharpe's applies five principles to the public relations process:
     1. Honest communication for credibility
     2. Openness and consistency of actions for confidence
     3. Fairness of actions for reciprocity and goodwill
     4. Continuous two-way communication to prevent alienation and to build relationships
     5. Environmental research and evaluation to determine the actions or adjustments needed for social harmony
     -> Through these 5 principles, Sharpe aims to harmonize long-term relationships among individuals and organizations, which can enjoy not only good will of its publics but also stability and long life.


4. PR as Management and Public Interpreter
  Every organization has PR whether it wants it or not, and the trick is to establish good PR.
  In order to make institutions powerful, PR professionals must interpret the philosophies, policies, programs and practices of their management to the publics, and convey the attitudes of the public to their management.


5. The Publics of PR
  A public is a group of people with a stake in an issue, organization, or idea.
  The categories of publics are:
     . Internal/External
     . Primary, secondary, and marginal
     . Traditional and future
     . Proponents, opponents, and the uncommitted


6. The Functions of PR
  . Writing
     It includes producing news releases, speeches and brochures.
  . Media relations
  . Planning
     This function involves planning events such as special and media events.
  . Counseling
  . Researching 
     This function is about researching the beliefs, values and attitudes of the publics to enable influencing behavior.
  . Publicity
  . Marketing communication
  . Community relations
     This function aims to put forth the organization's messages and images within the community.
  . Consumer relations
     This function is about interfacing with consumers through written and/or verbal communications.
  . Employee relations
     This functions aims to communicate with the all-important internal publics of the organization.
  . Government affairs
     It deals with all those who have governmental interface with the organization.
  . Investor relations
     This is about communicating with stockholders and those who advice them.
  . Special publics relations
     It deals with the publics uniquely critical to particular organizations (women, African Americans, etc.)
  . Public affairs and issue management
     It deals with public policy and its impact on the organization.
  . Development of internet-based communication
     This is about monitoring the world wide web through creating the organization's interface with the public for instance.


7. The Curse of Spin
  Spin is antithetical to the proper practice of PR. So, if you lie once, you'll never be trusted again especially by the media.