New Media and Public Relations

This chapter is about new media and its impact on public relations. It is about how the internet has changed the way people interact with one another and how it affects or benefits public relations.

Public relations is concerned with either the management of relationships between publics and organisations or the management of communication between publics and organisations (Fitch, 2009). Thus, with the rise of new media, PR practitioners are able to communicate and relate with the public through the various online sites. They can also reach out to the public through their official websites that contains enough information to educate the public about them. Organisations can even create discussions forums to promote 2 way communications between the public and the organisation through social networking sites such as twitter, facebook, MySpace and many more. The creation of blogs also helps to promote an organisation. Thus, new media has indeed helped the organisation to reach out to a wider mass and it is a convenient method as well.

However, at the same time, the rise of new media has post the question of credibility. This is because, the net has become such that anyone can post anything online. This means that some people do not believe what they see online and thus, it might be a disadvantage to the organisation and PR practitioners as well. This is because the rise of Flogs which are fake blogs has made the public question the credibility of the website. An example would be the Wal-Mart flog which was created by PR agencies themselves. This is a form of unethical method and it back-fired the company when the public came to know about it. Thus, PR practitioners have to be cautious when they are dealing with the online community.

Another disadvantage would be that certain websites do not promote 2 way communications between the public and the organisation which is the main aim of PR. Even if they do, they provide limited communications such as chat boxes in blogs and social networking sites. And even if there is 2 way communications, the question of credibility arises again as companies would not know if the public means what they are saying or vice versa. This is because the problem of spammers may arise. Thus, new media does pose some concerns with PR practitioners.

In conclusion, I think new media is an effective way to reach out to a larger audience and it is definitely a convenient method as well. Although it poses to be a challenge to PR practitioners, they have to think of methods to keep their sources credible as they have to be on-par with the IT-savvy public. All hope is not lost as there are still so traditional and effective methods left such as e-mail and creating online websites as well. Thus, PR practitioners have to be creative and adaptable to the public.