Case Study: American Red Cross

An organization as large and influential as the American Red Cross inevitably attracts lots of online attention. A few hundred comments appear every day and the organization recognizes that any and all of them can carry meaning and weight. To understand what is being said, Wendy Harman, the organization’s senior associate for new media integration, reads all the posts and comments she can find daily. Even those with few readers or limited engagement are important because many of those are writ- ten by people who are as passionate about the organization as anyone, and all of them have influence with someone.

Monitoring hundreds of blog posts about the Red Cross is a key component of a public relation practioner’s work to identify influencers in online communities. Every day she uses online search engines like Technorati to find blog posts and comments about the Red Cross. Technorati has a ranking system, where a blog with a higher ranking indicates that the blog has many other blogs linking back to that blog. Yet, for the Red Cross, even a blog with just a few links can be important and influential.

Social media is changing the way communications professionals within the American Red Cross are conducting public relations. This new media channel gives the Red Cross the ability to connect directly with the public in a two way conversation. The ability to set up their own blogs and other social media websites is especially important for the Red Cross when working on disasters or more mundane matters.

Wherever people are publishing, be it a blog post, Facebook or Flickr, there’s a lot of passion about the Red Cross. Whether what is published is negative or positive, Wendy focuses on those who are passionate about the Red Cross to identify key influencers. Measuring passion is complex and requires more focus than just a ranking number.

The Red Cross’ social media initiative has more than met its initial goals. Online conversations are monitored and tracked, and the Red Cross has found its voice online and not only regularly engages in conversations, but also has paced itself at the hub through proactive social media campaigns and initiatives. The organization’s social media program has enabled the Red Cross to track sentiment about Red Cross related issues, respond to misconceptions when they emerge, and support praise for the Red Cross where it exists.

The Red Cross’ social media awareness strategy, made up of a variety of communication and collaboration techniques, is resulting in new levels of success with its stakeholders. By adopting a policy of connecting with interested and engaged influencers, the Red Cross is maximizing the public relations value of new social media tools.

Week 11: Asian Pubic Relations Management

I think it is important that public relations practitioners develop an understanding of not only how cultures differ, but also how cultural differences impact public relations practices.

As mentioned in the book, I agree that language and government plays a huge part in public relations practices. For Singapore, she has a multi ethnic and multicultural environment and, Public Relations were practiced since the occupation of British Colonists here. Multinationals brought big public relations budgets to Singapore and these monies attracted multinational public relations and advertising agencies. At the same time, local consultancies spruced up to serve local industries that either could not afford the big consultancies or believed their business plans were better entrusted to well-established native speakers. The dramatic economic changes of the early 1980s led to tremendous growth in certain industries. Until then, the government used to propagate the information using a one-way communication model hence, the flow of information was top down. Since then, with rapid economic changes which includes trade expansion, the entry of multinational companies in Singapore and the rise of middle class consumer markets, began to shift in the level of importance and nature of public relations. Public relations became an increasingly decision-making function. As mentioned by Joseph (1991), the establishment and development of stock markets throughout Asia, together with the privatization of government-run companies, have helped to drive the need for corporate positioning, financial communication and investor relations programs. Restrictive government legislation and pressure from special interest groups has increased the demand for crisis communication and issues management as well as high level public affairs programs. Hence, with the rapid expansion of communication and media technologies including satellites, computers and cable enabled television technologies have also aided the growth of the public relations profession including increased recognition of public relations as a management function.

In conclusion, as the world becomes more and more interdependent in many ways, the use of culture as a key consideration in management communication planning is inevitable. Public relations have become vital for the study of employee communication, community relations, understanding of other stakeholders interests, awareness, perceptions and information needs. This critical information is necessary for strategic planning of communication campaigns, more so in communicating with multicultural societies and for cross-cultural communication.

Week 10: New Media and Public Relation.

New media, also known as the alternative media is the up and rising trend of this century. With regards to public relations, Marketers and public relations practitioners today are confronted with an astounding array of new communications channels which they have to face everyday i.e: mobile applications, new softwares to read e-mails, social networking sites and more. Internet-based social media tools including blogs, online video and social networks are giving voice to the opinions of millions of different consumers all over the world. While mainstream media continues to play a vital role in the dissemination of information, even these traditional channels are increasingly being influenced by online conversations. The “new influencers” are beginning to tear at the fabric of marketing as it has existed for 100 years, giving rise to a new style of marketing that is characterized by conversation and community.

Here's an interesting case study on Coca-Cola.

"Despite some initial misgivings, Coca- Cola demonstrated its appreciation of the role on the new influencer by its willing- ness to embrace and support Eepybird in its ongoing videos showing the effect of mixing Diet Coke and Mentos. Created by two independent artists in the woods of Maine, the Eepybird videos have generated billions of impressions and illustrated the power of the new influencers."

At Coca-Cola headquarters in Atlanta, though, the mood wasn’t so exuberant. Coke lawyers fretted about liability problems from amateur chemists trying to duplicate the experiment. When the Journal called for comment, a spokeswoman said the “crazi- ness with Mentos ...doesn’t fit with the brand personality” of Coke. “We would hope people want to drink [Diet Coke] more than try experiments with it,” she said.

But Coke’s interactive marketers saw a gold mine. Sales of Diet Coke, which had been flat for some time, spiked between five and 10%, the company’s interactive director told MediaPost. In August, they contacted Eepybird asking how they could help pull off more experiments. Voltz and Grobe, who were tired of buying out the local grocery’s stock of soda, were happy to accept. In October, they recorded “The Domino Effect,” involving 251 bottles, more than 1,500 candies and a network of tripwires, pulleys and nozzles that sent choreographed foam spewing in every direction.

The Internet ate it up. Google and Yahoo featured the clip on their video home pages. Voltz and Grobe personally contacted dozens of bloggers who had helped along the first experiment, encouraging them to link to the latest video. Eepybird was flooded with traffic, more media outlets called and offers began coming in from casinos and corporate events departments asking for com- mand performances.

Coke supported the experiment with unlimited supplies of beverages, ad buys on Google and a sponsored contest with Voltz and Grobe as judges. Coke got 1.5 billion ad.

In this case, I feel that social media is rapidly becoming a core channel for disseminating information. Fifty-seven percent of this group of early social media adopters reported that social media tools are becoming more valuable to their activities, After having doen some research, I found our that blogs, online video and social networks are currently the most popular social media tools, but public relations and corporate communications professionals are using a wide variety of means to reach audiences, depending on their unique situations. Therefore, social media are clearly changing the way we think about media and influence

Week 9: Reputation Management & Crisis Perspective

1. Reputation Management

Reputation Management is defined as the process of tracking an organization's actions and other people's opinions about those action.

As the saying goes, success does not happen overnight but failure does. And, critical moments for business and other organizations never goes away. So, in this case reputation management comes in 3 forms: Building, Maintenance and Recovery!

• Building reputation for a business that is just getting started

• Maintaining reputation means keeping the company’s good image superior in the public eye is called

• Recovery will only happen if the organization has gotten bad reputation, then the recovery portion is important.

I have identified 1 area of reputation management - through power. Attaining power and gaining influence has always been problematic in the public relations line. According to Scott Cutlip (1997), some critics charge that public relations exerts power through propaganda techniques that distort society to serve narrow and even dysfunctional interests. And according to the survey conducted by Berger and Reber (2006), the most important issue in public relations listed by professionals was “to gain a seat at the decision-making table”. Hence, the failure of securing a seat at the decision- making table will most probably affect an organization negatively, not only, an individual public relations professionals’ self- esteem but also the profession’s legitimacy as a strategic management function. And yes, I agree that power plays an important role in public relations as it helps to get things done.

2. Crisis!

Barton (1993) defines crisis as a major, unpredictable event that has potentially negative result which can badly damage the reputation of an organization.

I came across this case study: Massacre at Virginia Tech.

The shootings caused a major uproar. And during this devastating crisis, many schools promoted safety campaigns. Some of these campaigns are trying to increase awareness that violence can happen anywhere by reducing optimistic bias in their students. The purpose of these safety campaigns is to widen the gap between conflicting cultural worldviews by reducing optimistic bias, and thereby, increase the likelihood of a violent act. Schools across the region used the shooting as a learning experience as to what could have been done better to protect the people on campus that day.

To better manage this crisis and restore trust, many universities have implemented new ways of warning faculty, students, and staff when there is a violent incident on campus. This consists of sending text messaging blasts and e-mails, along phone calls, and not forgetting television and radio announcements. Universities also made it a point to promote safety on their campuses through brochures distributed in the resident halls. For instance, one of the brochures recommend that students not walk alone after dark and caution students not to stay in academic buildings late at night.

From another point of view, while these campaigns may be well-intentioned, it could have adverse effects. By decreasing optimistic bias the campaigns are encouraging the acceptance that school shooting scan. Essentially, the campaigns created an awareness and remind students they can be shot at school! In this context, terror management studies have repeatedly shown that messages which remind individuals of death cause anxiety. High mortality salience has been shown to increase stereotyping, derogation, hostility, and aggression towards others. I have found out that Miller & Landau (2005) argued that campaigns aimed solely at reducing optimistic bias to encourage self-protective measures could be increasing attacks on alternative worldviews. Hence, those who do not fit the socially constructed norms of the school’s climate will be outcast and diminished from the normal group. These attacks could then encourage a counter attack, potentially to the point at which an individual seeks to eliminate the threatening worldview.

From this case study, I think that crisis management is vital - it has to be handled properly else, though well-intentioned, the campaigns might send out wrong messages, which might cause unnecessary anxiety to the people involved.

Week 8: Public Relations Management In Organization

I agree with what Ms. Tanya always stress, public relations practitioner needs to establish good working relationships and maintain important ties.

As mentioned by Bruning & Ledingham (2000), relationships between an organization and its public audiences have been the focal interest in public relations research and practice.

After having done some research on public relations management, I came across OPR (Organization Public Relationships). So, what is this all about?

Broom, Casey, and Ritchey (1997) define that organization public relationships are represented by the patterns of interaction, transaction, exchange, and linkage between an organization and its publics. So, organization-public relationship is a connection or association between an organization and a public that results from behavioral consequences an organization. Organization Public relationships refer to relationships between the organization and its external publics.

And, EPR (Employee Public Relationships) simply mean that the individual level relationships that develop between employees and external publics. Quoting Hon and J. Grunig’s (1999) perspective and conceptualize EPR as an employee-public relationship is a connection or association between an employee and a member of the public mainly resulting from interpersonal communication that occurs because of behavioral consequences an organization or the public has on the other. Relating this to J. Grunig and Huang’s (2000), dimensions of relationships of trust, satisfaction, and commitment, defined cultivation strategies as “communication methods that public relations people use to develop new relationships with publics and to deal with the stresses and conflicts that occur in all relationships” In this case, employees play a vital role in communicating with customers and, I have come across a selective set of symmetrical communication strategies that are likely to produce relationship outcomes. Several strategies were adopted from interpersonal relationships and conflict resolution theories:

• Access—members of publics or opinion leaders provide access to public relations people. Public relations representatives or senior managers provide representatives of publics similar access to organizational decision-making processes.

• Positivity—anything the organization or public does to make the relationship more enjoyable for the parties involved.

• Openness—of thoughts and feelings among parties involved.

• Assurances—attempts by parties in the relationship to assure the other parties that they and their concerns are legitimate.

• Networking—organizations’ building networks or coalitions with the same groups that their publics do, such as environmentalists, unions, or community groups.

• Sharing of tasks—organizations’ and publics’ sharing in solving joint or separate problems.

These conflict management theories are both 1) integrative as because all parties in a relationship benefit by searching out common or complementary interests and solving problems together through discussion and decision making and, 2) cooperative as the organization and the public work together to reconcile their interests and to reach a mutually beneficial relationship. In general, I think that it in order for an organization to effectively build long-term relationships with customers, it must first develop positive, long-term relationships with employees who interact those customers. Hence, in conclusion, within the relationship management paradigm, public relations is a critical strategic communication management function which will lead to a certain relationship outcome.

Week 7: Mid Semester Break!

Happy Holidays!

Week 6: Strategies to Proactively Manage Activity

Public Relations Strategy

According to the reading, strategy is a key concept within the public relations field.

So, to start off, what is strategy? Oxford dictionary defines strategy as a plan designed to achieve a particular long-term aim / the art of planning and directing military activity in a war or battle.

And so, what is public relations? “Public Relations is about reputation – the result of what you do, what you say and what others say about you. PR is the discipline which looks after reputation, with the aim of earning understanding and support and influencing opinion and behaviour.” “It is the planned and sustained effort to establish and maintain goodwill and mutual understanding between an organization and its publics.”

Strategic planning is crucial in public relations sector because of a few factors.

Firstly, it is too complement the overall business plan of an organization and then, identify ways in which Public relations can help achieve an organization's goals and objectives. Next is to focus and manage all the communications of an organization and also to o ensure maximum benefit from all public relations activities. It can also help educate those within an organisation about the value of Public Relations. So in this case, public relations is more than simply producing publicity material. An organization is only as strong as its reputation. The public relations function is to manage that reputation.

After doing some research, I learned that a good and useful Public Relations Strategy should answer a few questions, for instance: Where are we now?, Where do we want to be?, To whom are we talking (audiences)?, What do we want them to do?, Why do we want them to do it?, What are we going to say to them (messages)?, Where are we going to reach them?, When are we going to reach them?, Which techniques (methods) are we going to use?, How much are we going to spend?, What if there are unforeseen problems?, How did we do?.

I would like to highlight a few interesting parts - Firstly, it would be audiences! From my point of view, I realized that a public relations' practitioner's objective is nearly always about influencing someone to do something. Therefore, it makes sense to identify target audiences as it is a vital part of a strategy (if the people I'm talking too ain't the right person, I might as well forget it, right?). So, next up is to identify the smallest possible groupings of individuals for maximum effect. Now, having identified the audiences, they should be prioritized.

Next interesting part would be the timing part! Research shows that timing is very important because it link specific public relations activities to fixed events in an organization's corporate calendar and it makes no sense in issuing a news release days after an event.

For the part on unforeseen circumstances, I feel that potential problems should be identified and worked on. It is better to be safe than sorry and in this case, contingency planning is crucial! Developing a good and comprehensive strategy is vital as it leads to the success / failure of a designated campaign. Whao, seems like there really is quite a lot to do for a detailed public relations strategic plan!

Week 5: Engaging with the media

There are a few useful communication theories which PR practitioners should apply to their work with the media. Communication is defined as the production and exchange of information and meaning by use of signs and symbols which involves encoding and sending messages, receiving and decoding them, and synthesizing information and meaning. Communication permeates all levels of human experience and it is central to understanding human behavior (referenceanswers,2009)

There are many communication theories for instance:

1. Two Step Flow, by Lazarfeld (1955), states that an organization beams a message to the mass media which will then deliver it to a great mass of people for their response. With regards to Public Relations, this theory asserts that information from the media is transmitted in 2 prominent stages : Firstly, from radio and print to opinion leaders. Opinion leaders will then add in / pass on their own interpretations in addition to the actual media content. ‘Personal influence’ refer to the process intervening between both, the media’s direct message and the viewer’s ultimate reaction to that message. Opinion leaders are influential in getting people to believe in them and change their attitudes and behaviors. And secondly, message is transmitted from the opinions leaders to the less active sections of society. The two-step flow theory has helped to improve my understanding of how the mass media influence decision making
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2. Agenda-Setting Theory, by McCombs, M., & Shaw, D.L. (1972), states that the media, usually the news media channel, ain't always successful at telling us what to think however, they are successful at telling us what to think about. I agree with this theory as a powerful influence of the media, as it has the ability to tell us what issues are important. Linking back to public relations, agenda-setting is to create public awareness and concern of salient issues by the news media. Two basis assumptions underlie most research on this theory. Firstly, the press and the media does not reflect reality. They filter the information they receive and shape it. Secondly, the media concentration on a few selected issues and subjects leads the audience to perceive those concentrated issues as more important than the others. I think that agenda-setting theory seems quite appropriate to help me to understand the pervasive role of the media.


3. Framing Theory, by Tversky & Khaneman (1981), states that either the media or organizations decide where people think about. It is the shaping of views and discussions through selective choice of facts, themes and works. In addition, the sender makes the selection. With regards to public relations, Public Relations Practitioners has a huge influence in 'framing' how the media will discuss a certain product, or development. Hence, framing creates the context in which the discussion occurs. For instance, a good case study would be the company Apple Computer, making a come back to the IT market with the introduction of iMac Computers. From this, I understand that the media draws the public attention to certain selected topics and then decides where people think about. Framing, is the way in which the news is written, the frame in which the news is being presented, is being selected and put up by journalists. Frames are abstract notions which serve to organize or structure certain social meanings. It influences the perception of the news. I feel that this form of agenda-setting not only tells what to think about, but also how to think about it. In conclusion, the basis of this theory is that media focuses attention on certain events or issues within a field of meaning. Framing is important as it can have a big influence for the media to inject certain messages to the public - magic bullet theory.

After doing some research, I came across this interesting theory: Expectancy Value Theory - This theory has nothing to do with the theories which PR practitioners will apply to their engagements with the media instead, it serves as a motivation for PR personnels.

Expectancy Value Theory, by Martein Fishbein (1970), states that it focuses on the complex nature of attitudes, which highlights social influence, both attitude & its' changes in particular. behaviour is a function of the expectancies and the value of the goal toward which one person has and is working towards. This predicts that, when more than one behavior is possible, the behavior chosen will be the one with the largest combination of expected success and value. The behaviors people perform in response to their beliefs and values are undertaken to achieve some end. Relating to public relations practitioners, I think that this model proposes that the overall tendency to achieve in a particular situation depends upon two obvious motives - 1) To be successful, 2) To avoid failure. This model is very much for the well-being of each pr personnel themselves. This mathematical model predicts that goals that require moderate effort to achieve will have the greatest value for persons highly motivated for success.

I think theories acts as an important guideline and understanding them will be useful as theory helps to make me understand how individuals construct meaning and how these meanings are affected by different factors. :)

Week 4: Public Relations Research & Public Relations Practice

Lecture - Media Relations

Media Relation is defined as a sub-field of PR and is the linkage with the media personalities and resource that facilitates a business organization in getting a favorable, timely, and widespread editorial coverage.

As Ms. Tanya mentioned, Media Relation has different types of tactics which comes in different forms, #Written, #Spoken, #Acted, & #Imagined. What I find interesting is the imagined tactic. Initially, I thought that imagined tactic literally meant that it was "made up" or rather, it was "hallucination"! Alright, so I made a mistake. Imagined tactics actually meant computer generated pictures, photoshopped-edited photographs, painted pieces of art and, etc. Interesting, right? :)

Alright, moving on, tutorial has been the most interesting so far! There's actually a "walking organizer" service in Singapore! I don't literally meant "organizer, books" I meant as a whole, organizing chaos - for messy places, messed up people. This business is certainly interesting and thriving well, the first and only!

Coming back on track, Ms. Tanya showed the press release by this company and, she emphasized on the way she portrayed her company and herself. Yes, this article is certainly intelligent. She was conscientious in piecing up all the information to suit the needs of her target audience - what they need but don't necessary do it.

Reading

Public Relations Research

From what I understand, Public relations practitioners does research in a few forms. Firstly, two types of research would be primary and secondary. Next, two methods of research would be qualitative research and quantitative research. The distinct characteristics that defines both quantitative and qualitative have both its benefits and disadvantages when it comes to applying its research methodology on different case studies, however when in need of precise and quantitative evidence, quantitative research would be the preferred method to be used due to the nature of quantitative research methodology itself. With regards to public relations, I think that these two types of research are equally important, base on the nature of the subject. If you need detailed and precise information, obviously you would go for qualitative research. Personally, I feel that triangulation research method, incorporating both quantitative and qualitative, would be the best method to use, seeking both precise data and a large sampling unit. Having done relevant research, the information gathered can make a big difference as it helps the organization to better understand, plan the next step, implement and further evaluate their program. And, I totally agree that without research and in-depth analysis, pr practitioners will be making wild guesses and assumptions issues which can't be justified and might just end up with more problems at the end of the day.

So, in conclusion, the relationship between public relations and research is that market research provides the basis for public relations decisions and in most cases, research should be carried out before planning a campaign, as well as to assess the campaign. In addition, strategic research is primarily used to set program objectives and to develop messages as theoretical research helps build theories, such as why people communicate.

Public Relations Practice

Week 3: Public Relations Ethics

Lecture

This is the second lesson for Public Relations and I've learnt that advertisements runs in every part of Singapore, surrounding our everyday lives.

So, just what is public relations? From my understanding, public relations is the opposite of advertising. For advertising, money is paid for messages to be posted to consumers through different forms of media. In public relations, money is not paid for company to appear in print or articles. Instead, reports and publications of the company is based on the reporter's information which they received and researched.

Going deeper into the context, each and every advertisement that we see on the street is a strategy to attract targeted consumers. These strategies has a goal (objectives) and, in order to develop a good and working strategy, comprehensive research is vital. I agree with this point as I believe that an adequate amount of research certainly helps in contributing to our knowledge and will build a better foundation for the designated campaign and

Ms. Tanya elaborated on the SWOT Analysis which includes Strengths, weakness, opportunities and threats. I understand that SWOT analysis as a simple framework for generating strategic alternatives. In other words, it is a strategic planning method utilized by many organizations to ensure that there is a clear objective defined for the project. SWOT falls into 2 categories, whereby strength and weakness are internal factors and opportunities and threats are external factors.

For instance:

Strength - Quality processes and procedures & location of the business

Weakness - Poor quality of goods and services & damaged reputation

Opportunities - Market vacated by an ineffective competitor & join ventures / mergers

Threats - Price wars with competitors & taxation introduced by government on the product

A good example will be Wal-Mart, a successful retail company made use of SWOT analysis to analyze and focus on the key issue:

Strengths - Wal-Mart is a powerful retail brand. It has a reputation for value for money, convenience and a wide range of products all in one store.

Weaknesses - Wal-Mart is the World's largest grocery retailer and control of its empire, despite its IT advantages, could leave it weak in some areas due to the huge span of control.

Opportunities - To take over, merge with, or form strategic alliances with other global retailers, focusing on specific markets such as Europe or the Greater China Region.

Threats - Being number one means that you are the target of competition, locally and globally.

Personally, I feel that SWOT analysis is good for analyzing and examining the interaction between the business and the external marketplace. With this planning technique, it helps marketers / organizations to focus on key issues, that potentially has the most impact on the business. In addition, it also allows the organization to know their current standing in the market.

Apart from analyzing, setting objectives for the project is equally important. Let me elaborate - SMART objectives help ensure that effective goals are set. Setting objectives are important as it helps the company to focus on specific aims over a period of time and can motivate staff to meet the objectives set.

Specific – Objectives should specify what they want to achieve

Measurable – Should be able to measure whether the objectives set are met

Achievable - Are the objectives set, achievable and attainable?

Realistic – Can the goals be realistically achieved with the available resources

Time – When do to achieve the 'set' objectives.

I didn't know that for planning, there's so many steps to go through. However, these steps are essential for the success of a campaign as it reminds the organization of its' aim and focus over time.

Reading

So, what exactly are ethics? The book define ethics as standards of behavior and, my ethics are the rules and standards governing the conduct by which I live my life and make all my decisions by. And, in relation to public relations, ethics are important for a few reasons. Firstly, ethics act as a guideline and gives a baseline for understanding the concepts of right and wrong and ethics helps by giving a ready understanding of how to react to a certain situation long before that situation happens. Secondly, ethics acts as "invisible" mediator when dealing or coming into contact with other people. So, If the sense of ethics are wrong then, the reaction to other people will result in a negative manner. Lastly, ethics are critical as people see us in them. We have the ability to show others the correct way to act and behave by remaining ethical in the way we talk to people and deal with the media.

So, being honest, keeping promises and caring for others are ethical behaviors. Then, how is unethical behavior defined? Pushing someone is unethical however, when someone is about to be hit by a car, and was pushed hard onto the other side of the street, is that considered unethical too? Often, unethical behaviors are not illegal and frequently, it falls in the grey area, between both right and wrong which often makes it difficult for people to decide what to do when it is encountered. In addition, different people have different views of what is ethical and what is unethical. For example, some people feel that it is alright to tell a little "white lie", while others feel that a lie will always be a lie and there is no excuse for it.

There are 3 main school of thoughts for ethics:

• Deontologist - Theories suggest that it would be possible to create a complete and comprehensive law that would prevent all negative behavior for everyone who follow the law.
• Consequentialist - theories suggest that how ethical the action is becomes irrelevant… the result of the action in preventing harm and promoting the most happiness for the most number of people becomes the single benchmark for ethical behavior.
• Virtual theory - Moral individualism suggests that a person cannot know what it is to be moral without first discovering what it is within themselves that determines certain behaviour to be linked to moral or immoral acts. Likewise he or she must also give others the freedom to undergo this process within themselves to find their own moral center.

Personally, I agree with moral individualism as the prerequisite is to discover the truth which is true to the person in order for the person to understand their own moral drives. With regards to public relations, virtual theory dictates that public relations practitioner must make the right choices for themselves at all times thinking of both the short term and long term effects. Therefore, if everyone made decisions which created positive benefits for themselves, they would all be acting ethically because they would be true to themselves.

Week 2: First Lecture & Tutorial & Theoretical Contexts

Attended the first lesson for Public Relation and lecturer, Ms. Tanya did an introduction to Public Relations with the class. Personally, it is in contrast to my knowledge of public relations. I am looking forward to the rest of the lessons.

A key concept to public relations is communication hence, communication theories play a significant role in the history of its development. The link between communication theories and PR can be studied in this information transmission model.

According to Shannon and Weaver's model (as seen above), a message begins at an information source, which is relayed through a transmitter, and then sent via a signal towards the receiver. But before it reaches the receiver, the message must go through noise (sources of interference). Finally, the receiver must convey the message to its destination.

From my understanding, this model of transmission fixes and separates the roles of 'sender' and 'receiver'. However, communication between 2 persons involves simultaneous 'sending' and 'receiving' - not based on talking alone, including body language. In Shannon and Weaver's model the source is seen as the active decision-maker who determines the meaning of the message; the destination is the passive target.It is a linear, one-way model, ascribing a secondary role to the 'receiver', who is seen as absorbing information. However, communication is not a one-way street. Even when we are simply reading a book or watching the television, we are far more interpretively active than we normally realize.There was no provision in the original model for feedback (reaction from the receiver). Feedback enables speakers to adjust their performance to the needs and responses of their audience. A 'feedback loop' was added by later theorists, but the model remains linear.

Relating this communication model to public relations, In this linear transmission model, both participants are treated as isolated individuals. However, contemporary communication theorists treat communication as a shared social system. I agree with this statement. We are all social beings, and our communicative acts cannot be represented simply by the expression of purely individual thoughts and feelings. Such thoughts and feelings are socio-culturally patterned & enacted. Even what we call 'our' language (i.e. Singlish) doesn't solely belong to us. In fact, we are born into the culture, Singapore's culture. Hence, we can't change the rules. Words have connotations which we didn't choose for them. An emphasis on creative individuality is itself a culturally-shaped myth which had a historically 'modern' origin in the West. Transmission models of communication reduce human communication to the transmission of messages, whereas, many literature texts, linguists and communication theorists tell us, there is more to communication than this. For instance, phatic communication, which is a way of maintaining relationships. Research shows that in United Kingdom, talking about the weather is a simple matter of phatic communication than just purely transmitting information. No allowance is made in the transmission model for differing purposes. The same images of a football match telecasted on the television would have very different meanings for the fans of opposing sides. Hence, in models such as Shannon and Weaver's, no allowance is made for relationships between people as communicators (e.g. differences in power). Messages are framed differently, according to the roles in which we communicate. For instance, if a friend asks me about my thoughts on a certain lecture topic, I would most likely answer in a somewhat different way from the way others answer the same question. Interviews are a very good example of the unequal power relationship in a communicative situation. Many people in society do not all have the same social roles or the same rights. And, not all values, norms and meanings are accorded equal value. It makes a huge difference on whether the participants are of the same social class, gender, age group, ethnicity or profession. In addition, it is known that certain voices carries more authority than others. I feel that the dominant directionality involved in communication cannot be fixed in a model instead, it is closely related to the situational distribution of power.