Week 10 - New Media

Saturday, March 13, 2010 2:13 PM

We are living in an age of advanced technology. Many people have internet connections in their homes. Many people use Facebook, twitter and many people blog. New media is on the rise. Public relation practitioners are starting to use new media for campaigns but they have yet to understand and know how to fully utilize new media to their advantage. It is not a top-down approach, but rather a two-way communication; that they may receive feedbacks and ideas from the public.

Having said that, there always has to be a balance in things. Public relation practitioners cannot solely base on promoting their campaigns or events through new media. There are factors to consider. Factors such as, certain countries like China has banned certain websites and searches on the internet, and public relation practitioners have to know that even though we are living in an age of advanced technology, not everyone has internet access. There are people who actually live in poorer conditions and cannot afford internet access.

Besides that, public relations at its basics is mainly a person to person interaction and using new media is another opportunity for public relations practitioners to reach out to those who are more IT savvy. Taken form a quote:

“I think a lot, maybe I'm a bit old school, but I feel that public relations still needs a lot of human touch, still needs a lot of interpersonal feel, [an] interpersonal relationship with the person that you are dealing with and not just leave it to modern technology to take over.” (Fitch, 2009)

To conclude, I think public relation practitioners need to know how to make use of every (kind of) opportunity presented to them, to reach out to the public.

Reference
Fitch, K. 2009. ‘New media and public relations’, Ch. 12 in An Introduction to Public Relations: from theory to practice, Chia, J. & Synnott, G. (eds), Sth Melbourne: Oxford University Press.

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Week 10 - New Media

Saturday, March 13, 2010 2:13 PM

Saturday, March 13, 2010 2:13 PM