The Public Relations industry, which is an offshoot of the traditional advertising industry, turned into a dominant business institution through the course of the twentieth century. The two countries that pioneered this industry are the United States and the United Kingdom. In the case of the former, Edward Bernays, a nephew of Sigmund Freud, is widely acknowledged as the founding father of the industry. In the United Kingdom, the government propaganda campaigns to mobilize support during the two World Wars made clear the importance and potency of strategic PR campaigns to influence and control public opinion. Toward the end of the century, as business corporations became the dominant institutions of our times, the scope of PR widened and assumed new roles in the commercial realm of product marketing. At the birth of the new millennium, the ascendency of digital technology into the mainstream has once again enhanced and redefined the nature and role of public relations industry. Irrespective of the evolution and change of mediums of communication over the last century, the essence of PR industry has remained more or less the same. In other words, the theoretical framework within which the PR industry operates is applicable across media technologies, both new and traditional. This essay will pertain itself to the analysis of how Public Relations communications theory can help understanding the role of new media.
Firstly, new media is a term that is used to refer to a range of communication options that fall along a spectrum. The research team of Diana Owen and Richard Davis have done extensive analytical work on new media. They describe the wide range of new media technologies thus:
“At one end are communications platforms based on old technologies that have taken on new political roles, such as radio and television talk programs, tabloids, and television news magazines. In the middle of the spectrum are mixed or hybrid media that combine elements of traditional media with newer technologies. These include 24-hour cable news programs and the Internet sites of newspapers and magazines. On the far end of the spectrum are new media that have developed as a result of new technology that has been put to novel political uses. Internet applications, such as social networking Web sites like Facebook and MySpace, blogs, video-sharing sites including YouTube, and podcasts fall into this category.” (Owen & Davis, 2008)
What we learn from the history of PR theory over the last century is the identification of four distinct models. These are “press agency, an approach intended to yield favourable publicity, largely through the mass media; public information, in which largely objective information is distributed through mass media; two-way asymmetrical, which utilizes research to develop messages meant to persuade publics to the organization’s point of view; and two-way symmetrical, which uses communication to improve understanding, manage conflict, and achieve “win-win” consensus with strategic publics.” (Berger, 1999) The felicity of new media technology is such that it is compatible with these four models of information dissemination that embodied traditional public relations practice. Moreover, the two prominent public domains upon which PR communications theories are applied are politics and business. In the case of politics, electoral democracy, both in the UK and the USA, has always utilized mass media avenues to get the messages of candidates across. Similarly, the launch of a new product is inevitably accompanied by PR and advertising campaigns. Bruce Berger of the University of Kentucky sees an ideological role for PR in both these domains. He says that it is important to critically question the relationship between organizational public relations and ideology, especially at a time when significant changes are happening in the development and application of new media technologies. During the last ten to fifteen years, corporations have accelerated their expansion into powerful global enterprises; political actors have adopted ‘spin’ techniques to portray and interpret events; transnational media and entertainment companies have “consolidated control over news content, production, and distribution; and organizations have invested billions in communication campaigns intended to create or enhance brand and institutional images worldwide” (Berger, 1999).
The above interpretation of the prevailing role of PR especially makes sense when we consider the fundamental question, namely, ‘why do organizations (both political and business) practice public relations at all?’ A reasonable answer would be on the following lines: that PR offers organizations with “dynamic and comprehensive methods and processes of intentional representation in contested sites in which information is exchanged, meaning constructed and managed, and consensus, consent, and legitimating gained or lost with others” (Berger, 1999) . Seen in this perspective, the ideological underpinnings of PR activity do become apparent. Moreover, when one considers the concentration of new media ownership, the case for PR as an instrument of ideological propaganda is further strengthened. For example, most popular websites in public domain are run by “either big companies like Microsoft or national telecoms providers; or well established media organizations like the BBC or AOL Time Warner. These are complemented by start-ups like Yahoo! and Google who had sufficient funding and a good enough product to challenge the big boys. Hence, mass communication continues to be dominated by a handful of huge companies and is likely to remain so” (Park & Choi, 2002).
The confluence of new media technologies and electoral campaigns has attracted much attention in the last two decades. The theory that PR is an aid to ideological propagation can be tested for this case. In doing so, not only do we realize that new mediums such as the Internet are an effective tool for political campaigns but offer several advantages over other traditional media. There are four distinct areas where the Internet scores over conventional communication systems. These are
“first is the low cost of entry into the media, as opposed to television advertising. Second, costs associated with the web do not increase with the number of people reached. Third, the format is interactive, so candidates can involve voters in the process. Fourth, natural communities of interest about campaigns already exist on the web. Additional advantages for candidates in setting up web sites are: interactive campaign headquarters that can be accessed anytime by anyone with a modem; an inexpensive, direct way to engage in two-way communication with voters; and television-like graphics at a fraction of the cost.” (Park & Choi, 2002)
Other dominant theoretical perspectives that have shaped and moulded the PR industry are the practitioner perspective, symmetrical/systems perspective and a growing body of rhetorical/critical, feminist, and social scientific approaches that concern themselves with the questions of PR’s roles and responsibilities in society. These theoretical perspectives were articulated in the scholarship of noted sociologists such as J.E. Grunig and Botan. The core of Grunig’s argument was that the two-way symmetrical approach, which “sees an organization’s relations with publics as balanced — relations in which both adjust their behaviour to each other, is desirable, ethical, and characteristic of those organizations with excellent communication” (Park & Choi, 2002). This view is in contrast to the ideological role of public relations proposed by Bruce Berger.
The new media, which is largely driven by the advancement in digital technology, is well suited to all the aforementioned theoretical approaches to public relations. To this extent one can say that the new media does not play a role in influencing or altering existing theoretical frameworks, but rather adapts itself to their specific needs. (Berger) For example, in the case of an earlier instance of technological innovation that was the Gutenberg printing press, no historian argues that this invention was solely responsible for starting the socio-political Reformation in early modern Europe. But rather, it was one of the important factors along with other political and social factors that brought about change. Similarly the new media technology only plays a minor role in setting the agenda for the public relations industry. A common misunderstanding is that new media technologies are the sole or major cause of social or behavioural change. As many social commentators have pointed out there is no simple cause and effect connection between the two. With the era of technological advance and the advent of the Internet now in its third decade, this is an opportune time to reassess the role and value of new media from its initial understanding. (Sriramesh, & VerČiČ, 2003)
In the final analysis, we can come to the conclusion that the new media has the potential to enlighten and empower an individual. It also can be utilized to deprive citizens of their privacy and fundamental liberties. In practice, individual empowerment is subject to many conditions. First of all, individuals are likely to be empowered only if they have an internal personal drive to achieve that end. While the new media offers a glut of up to date information, we as a society are far from wielding democratic power to hold governments and corporations accountable for their deeds. But the hope lies in the fact that the new media has the potential to remove hurdles to people’s “thirst for knowledge, creativity and personal development” (Sriramesh, & VerČiČ, 2003). While there is room for optimism, there are also some worrying trends. Some media critics point out that the advancements in new media technologies have been paralleled by certain regressive trends in democratic societies, which could ultimately limit the value of new media. For example, across democratic nations of North America and Europe,
“political participation is declining; many argue that news coverage is moving away from serious consideration of policy issues towards a tabloid obsession with celebrities, ignoring international news in favour of domestic news. All the evidence suggests that the internet has not revolutionized media consumption but rather built on existing patterns of behaviour. A combination of cross-promotion, the enormous power of the existing media and the search for trust in an environment of limitless choice means the ‘old’ media dominates the ‘new’ media, as suggested by the fact that UK’s most popular website is that of its most popular broadcaster – the BBC”. (Sriramesh, & VerČiČ, 2003)
References
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