Sunday, July 25, 2010

PUBLIC RELATIONS: STRATEGIES AND TACTICS

"THE ROLES OF SOCIAL MEDIA AS THE MAIN TOOL FOR PUBLIC RELATION PRACTICES IN MALAYSIA"

Some terms that we should know:

Public Relation- Public Relations (or PR) is a field concerned with maintaining public image for high-profile people, commercial businesses and organizations, non-profit associations or programs.



Social Media- Social media are media for social interaction, using highly accessible and scalable publishing techniques. Social media use web-based technologies to transform and broadcast media monologues into social media dialogues. They support the democratization of knowledge and information and transform people from content consumers to content producer

Before the invention of internet people connected to each other by face-to-face, using telegram, by sending a letter, via cell phone etc. Nowadays in modern era we can see that all people around the world use social media as their main medium to stay connected to each other. Social media are media for social interaction, using highly accessible and scalable publishing techniques. Social media use web-based technologies to transform and broadcast media monologues into social media dialogues. Andreas Kaplan and Michael Haenlein define social media as "a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0, and that allow the creation and exchange of user-generated content. Social media can take many different forms, including text, images, audio, and video, for instance Wikis (Wikipedia), Social networking (MySpace and Facebook), Presence app (Twitter and Jaiku), Video sharing (You Tube), Virtual Reality (Second Life), Events (Upcoming), Online gaming (World of Warcraft) etc.

Social media is a very famous and effective medium that people use to share content, opinions, insights, experience, perspectives and media itself. As we know also, social media is a powerful tool that can influence all the people and it can make people to say YES instead of NO even though at first they want to say NO and this social media has the same level of power as the media (communication) such as news paper, magazine, radio, TV etc. As the prevalence of social media continues to rise, organizations of all types and sizes are recognizing the ways in which social media can help them better understand, respond to, and attract the attention of their target audience as what happen in Public Relations.


In Public Relations perspective social media plays an important role in PR practices as what we can see in Malaysia, PR practitioner use social media as the medium to build and maintain the relationship between one organization with its stakeholders as well as the publics. We cannot deny that social media is an important tool nowadays in connecting people and as a main medium for people to share everything and it is very fast to spread any news through social media and we can connect with many people in one time. Other advantages that we can get from social media are democratization of media, relationships and conversation, creativity and re-mix culture, embrace your passion and identity, community, sharing, and connecting and increase transparency in government and organizations. Even though we can see many advantages of social media but can these advantages is use in PR practices in Malaysia? In fact, how far social medium can be use as the main tool in PR practices in Malaysia and is it the effective medium/tool for PR practices?



"Social media play an important role as the main tool for Public Relation(PR) practices in Malaysia..."



Give your comment or opinion regarding the statement and something related to the topic. (E.g :the role of social media)


6 comments:

  1. Dear ct, if i were u i would view the statement pertaining to education
    and politics in Malaysia. For example media has played its effective
    social role in the issue of the reversal ETeMS policy (teaching maths and
    science in English)when its highlighted pros and cons of the policy, the
    same goes to the recent issue on introducing sexual education in school.
    At the same time, media also can influence people on certain stigma such
    as a political assassination or political mileage of certain politicians.

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  2. Dear sir,

    I do agree with you that media has played its effective social role in both of the issues and we also know that media is more powerful than other because the media got the power to influence the entire citizen by using variety of media channel.For example the printed media such as news paper always come out with a current issue and for the issue of the reversal ETeMS policy, this printed media has shows the public about the pros and cons of the policy..here we can see that whatever written in the newspaper will influence the people/public for that particular issue.

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  3. Nowadays we can see that every organization will have their corporate communication department or public relations department to maintain the relationship between the organization and the publics. For example Oil& Gas Company, Insurance, Banking & Finance, Telecommunication, Media, Hospitality & Tourism etc, have its own Public Relations department to take care and maintain the relationship between the organization with its stakeholders as well as the publics. PR department also play an important role in maintaining the image, identity and the reputation of the particular organization. This profession is no longer a new thing in Malaysia because currently we can see that every issue/conflict that occurs/happens in one orgnization, this department will play its role to resolve the conflict. The main tool that they can use to resolve the conflict is by using the media (a term that implies a variety of people, structures, technology, and relationship). The media channel(the means used to transmit a message, including television, print, radio or internet) can be use to connected the organization to its internal and external stakeholder worldwide because everyone use the medium in their daily life.

    According to Zulhamri Abdullah in his 2nd edition book (2008) entitled International Corporate Communication,there are three perspectives on the early development of public relations in Malaysia and the perspectives were given by Hamdan Adnan, Nordin and Idid.
    - Accoding to Hamdan Adnan(1987: 10), PR began in Malaysia in the fifteenth century.
    - According to Nordin (1986: 13) he maintains that Malaysian PR was born in about 1945, when the Department of Publicity and Printing was developed to promote the new reform of Malaysian's independence during the British colonisation.
    - According to Idid (In Sriramesh, 2004:211), he argues that the birth of public relations was in 1939, when the Director of Information was appointed to promote government policies to the various publics.

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  6. As for me, PR practices in Malaysia are increasing the effectiveness of the power along with the advancement of technology. We as Malaysians today are exposed with many types of technological application mainly focusing on Internet. People nowadays have accepted the fact that communication technology helps them in many ways especially in trying to reach to other people and share the information. That is the power of technology. As we can see social media is part of the communication technology enhancement and it begins to be widely used by the people from all over the world today. Look at Facebook as example, people from all over the world are interconnected and able to share any information with just a click of the mouse. Amazing right? I believe this social media can be the main tool for PR practices in Malaysia just like other countries also. PR practitioners must make full use of this new technology introduced and reach the public in a way that can built the image of PR world to be seen as very successful establishment of humans’ skills in communication that goes along with power of knowledge ( any fields related). Thank you

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