Social Media plays an extremely important aspect of PR and any other life these days.
Here is my Webcast,as a part of the University of Westminster assignment.
Social Media is very important for businesses and brands as well.
I hope this video will clear the question of what social media exactly is and how it works and helps to make a business or brand a number one activity.
Watch and enjoy.
"Whoever controls the Media, controls the mind" - Jim Morrison
The last session we were discussing political PR and spin-doctoring in this context. The film we were showed tells about Alastair Campbell and his work during Tony Blair was in duty. Alastair Campbell is actually known as a real spin doctor. Not going deep into details I just express some of my emotions after the film.
First of all-I've never known that actually every step of politicians is measured: where to stand while photoshooting, what to say, how to move. Everything is written by political PR people. I was surprised that absolutely everything is counted. We saw an episode where Vladimir Putin (ex-president of Russia) arrived at Downing Street 10. Lot's of people(including Alastair Campbell) were discussing every step of 2 politicians. Finally Putin messed all the plans (haha as usual) not arrivivg to the discussed point of photoshooting. Second what is not so surprising but still left strong emotions in me is that Campbell held press-conferences for the journalists twice a day-in the morning and what is more important in the evening. Again telling everything from the position of a strict PR person that atrces every small step. He said what to write and what not, which questions he will answer and which not. Everything professionally,but so strictly.
We were also shown a piece of a press conference where one of the journalists was to ask Blair unfavourable questions. Campbell knew that(it's amazing just how such PR people can know everything happening around). During the conference he just didn't give the chance for that journalist to ask even a short question.This guy was totally ignored.
That is how political PR works: PR people try to control everything (media,journalists,their questions). And try to present the story in a better "light".
However being a professional it's hard to believe that Alastair Campbell got his name of a "spin-doctor" without any reasons. Watching the film I began to understand from where the roots grow.
Months before working on a debate on famous PR profs, my responsibility was to find as much information about Alastair Campbell as I could. And believe me he is not a saint at all. Just remember the Iraq Dossier when Campbell gave an incorrect fabricated information. That later became a reason for public panic as well as a suicide of an official of the Ministry of Defence. You still think that Campbell is such a good man? No he is not, but,abruptly, he knew what he was doing. It's hard to help rule the country and mislead so many people for almost 6 years, if u don't know what PR is and if you are not a professional.
However such people as Campbell undermine public trust in political PR. It's not a surprise that people tend to think that Politics is all about spin doctoring. Actually political PR experts play an important role in connection between the government and people.
It's not just PR people to blame but also the politicians who fail to do their things right.
Going back to spin doctors I can once again repeat that not all the political PR professionals are like Alastair Campbell. Trying to spin the information and control the media spin doctors can face troubles,when the media stops being interested in what they say and becoms intersted in themselves. The same happened to Alastair Campbell.
World is so vague these days so I leave the ability to decide whether all the political PR guys are spin doctors or not -to you. Political PR is not always clean and some actions should be critisised,but that doesn't mean (like in any field) that it as all dirty from head to toes.
The definition "third sector" is a synonym to the NGO's.
Not going very deep into details (I hope the Wikipedia link will answer most of the questions) i just can say thet this sector is one of the largest.
For example only in Russia there are 277,000.
All of them play important roles:some more,some less.
There are bright examples of International NGO's that operate globally like UNESCO or World Health Orhanisation.
Their aims to maintain good relationships through all the countries in terms of public health and culture.
However NGO's do not limit their responsibilities just in one field.
There are many examples of NGO organisations that operate in terms of other global issues like energy and other resources consumption, food consumption, environmental issues and protection, distribution of resources among different nations.
It's not a surprise that holding significant power in their hands NGO's pay huge loads of attention to the PR. They now hire good PR practitioners to help them achieve their goals.
Actions can be different: stunts,flash-mobs.polls,surveys,celebrity participation and many more.
In this case PRofs in the organisations should always be all there.
With the rise of the NGO's activism and people's trust in NGO's power big corporations (and not only just big ones,and not only corporations) PR practitioners should create special plans or actions in case NGO's try to hit on the organisation.
Reading the Russian Laws when I was writing this post I came up with thoughts that Russia has so many NGO's,but they actually cannot really influence the Government and it's policies.
First of all, Russian law concerning the NGO's was adopted not such a long time ago.
Secondly, Russia is an "amazing" king of country, where the Government is everything-"its Tzar and the God and all the Saints" in one body.
What I came up with reading the law, is that it is constructed in a very tricky way (as usualy Russian Government does). It depicts all the do's and don't of NGO's in Russia, providing them ephemeral freedom-however if we look deeper in the law it makes so many obstacles (oficially supported by Consitution) that none of the NGO's will ever affect any body or member of the Government.
At least not the international ones.
Actually, during my not so long (but actually not so short) life I've never heard of any case when NGO's succeded in reaching it's goals fully if there is Russian Government on the way.
When PR talks about any action it makes it always says about the "audience". There are no actions made just for the sake of it, but that directly target the "audience", "stakeholders", "publics". Seems so natural,isn't it? But if we look deeper in the issue-who are actually those stakeholders? How to define them? How to orientate actions on them? There is a whole bunch of questions that apper in the mind.
Well, first the term "stakeholders" appeared in 1963 and defined stakeholders as "those groups without whose support the organization would cease to exist". Actually this definition is too narrow. Another definition that is now widely used and seems to be more relevant is the definition of Professor Freeman, given in 1984 in his book "Strategic Management:A stakeholder approach" (1984). So the definition is "A stakeholder in an organization is (by its definition) any group or individual who can affect or is affected by the achievement of the organization's objective". There is one more definition made by Johnson and Scholes (2002): Stakeholders are those who have a stake or interest in a particular organisation, i.e. they depend on organisation to fulfill their own goals, and on whom,in turn, the organisation depends.
Professor Freeman talks about stakeholders
I prefer to agree with Professor Freeman,as I think that he detects relations between stakeholders and the organisation as double-sided,instead of Johnson and Scholes,who seem to make stakeholders the head of everything. So, now the definition is clear. But who can be a stakeholder? There are several groups of stakeholders:
Employees
Trade Unions
Financial Investors
Customers
Suppliers
Distributors
Local Community
Local and General Government
Industry groups
Media
However the term"stakeholders" is often interchangable with wide term "audience". Is it actually possible to interchange these two trems?
Well the difference is not so huge.
Grunig and Hunt(1984) say that "publics are stakeholders that face a problem or have an issue with an orgaisation".
However here it is necessary to say that Ralph Tench and Liz Yeomans agree with Grunig but the same time describe the difference between "audience" and "stakeholders".
They describe a kind of "drift" from stakeholders into publics, when the problem or issue arises. And thus stakeholders form general public and can influence and affect the company.
Like in the example of McDonalds when customers concerned with their obesity organised campaigns for healthier food.
Our favourite Grunig and now Repper(1992) also say that relationships with stakeholders help to create stable,long-term relationships that are actually extremely important fot the company.
There are different approaches of mapping stakeholders. Here are 3 of them:
Bernstein’s wheel
Esman’s linkages theory
Power-interest matrix
The last but not the least goes the Situational Theory of Publics by Grunig and Hunt (1984).
I want to tell more about it. It seems to be a very good example of mapping the public as Grunig and Hunt predict that public are not just passive users of information, but they can be really active: change their decisions and thus move from one group to another.
So Grunig and Hunt divided public (we remember they were more for "public" than "stakeholders") into:
Non Public
Latent Public
Active Public
Aware Public
So who is who though?
Non Public - as seen from the name these are people not interested in your organisation. Your organisation doesn't affect them as well as they just don't influence on your organisation
Latent Public - those who probably will be affected by your organisation or will affect you, but just don't know it yet. They are very probable of becoming "active" or "aware" public
Active public - is the most active (ha-ha really obvious) public that will participate as actively (again) as they can in the life of your organisation. The would like to know who,what,where,when and why in your organisation. They are really interested in what is going on.
Aware Public - those who know that they are affected by you. They try to get information from you as an organisation.
This Theory of Grunig and Hunt is really a practical one and can be easily used in real life.
So here is an overview of stakeholders now it's for you to decide which theory and ideas you like most.
