Essay Sample on Public Relation in the Contemporary Society

Public Relation is an essential management function in all organizations as it assists it to develop and sustain an efficient communication system with the public (Newsom, VanSlyke Turk and Kruckeberg, 2013). Subsequently, it has helped many organizations to understand the public opinion and stay updated with the current changes in its environment. As such this is an important organ in the prosperity of any organization. However, it has been subjected to misuse by different entities such as the politicians, celebrities and other unethical MALCOM companies who seek self-gain.

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Abuse of Public Relation by Politicians, Celebrities and Unethical MALCOM companies

Consequently, many politicians have manipulated the Public Relation organ to spread propaganda rather than using it as a medium for engaging the citizens in policy dialogues (Academia.edu, 2016). The politicians try to communicate their ideology and change the perceptions of citizens regardless of whether it is beneficial to them or not. Celebrities on the other hand, have used public relation to attract most attention to them. However, most of them have misused it by exposing negative traits which can erode the moral fiber of a community. It has also been abused by some MALCOM companies to spread false messages about services and products offered by the companies.

Social Media and Public Relations

The use of social media has seen many people get addicted to it, which has been seen as an opportunity by PRs (Writer, 2012). It has enabled an efficient two-way communication between the public and the organizations. This has helped to understand the needs of the target market and improve on the products they are manufacturing. However, it is a bane to personal relationship as many clients expect to be served on personal levels and develop individual relationship with the public relation staff which is mostly not the case in social media in instances where companies create blogs and websites (Keller, 2013).

Decline of real human communication

Many people prefer to communicate with other individuals via their social media enabled by their gadgets which are faster and more convenient which could see a decline in real human communication (Writer, 2012). It contains massive pool of information and retrieving it is an easy task. Many public relation staff prefers posting organizations details on the social media as they ate assured that it would reach a wider community within a short period. Hence, many people hardly meet to have a face to face communication with each other regarding controversial issues in the society.

A challenge to the two-step flow theory

In public relations, the two-step flow theory of communication is crucial as it influences a larger audience. Public relations professionals utilize this opportunity to reach a larger target and impact on their perspectives. Celebrities can also utilize this opportunities to make themselves more popular. For example, they can use the social media such as twitters or blogs whereby they have a large number of followers to advertise their work to the people. In this case, if another celebrity or a prominent person acknowledges the work of the celebrity, it creates more room for other people to love and acknowledge that work which makes the celebrity more famous. The same can apply to other activities such as campaigns (Macnamara, 2012).

CSR misrepresents and masks the organizations misdeeds

None the less, the public relation has been used by the Corporate Social Responsibilities staff, to cover for misdeeds of organizations (Csreurope.org., 2016). They can influence the emotions and perceptions of the people, and they can cover for misacts of their respective organization. This is unethically wrong and not only does it misguides the public it hinders the citizens from knowing the truth.

References

Academia.edu,. (2016). The Public Relations and Propaganda Controversy: [online] Available at: http://www.academia.edu/6724463

Csreurope.org,. (2016). CSR Europe The European Business Network for Corporate Social Responsibility. [Online] Available at: http://www.csreurope.org/ [Accessed 28 Jun. 2016].

Keller, M,. (2013). Social Media and Interpersonal Communication: Social Work Today, Vol. 13NO. 3, pp. 1O

Macnamara, J. (2012). Public Relations: Theories, Practices, Critiques: Pearsons Australia.

Swann, P. (2014). Cases in public relations management Routledge

Newsom, D., VanSlyke Turk, J. and Kruckeberg, D,. (2013). This is PR. Boston, MA: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning.

Writer, S,. (2012). The impact of social media on public relations: The Drum.