Week 3

I think the key points to remember from this week’s readings were:

• Agenda setting relates to the way news is given prominence or dissonance and can therefore influence what we understand as important. Most commonly, P.R practitioners try setting the agenda by getting positive and prominent coverage for their clients on a particular issue. In doing this practitioners need to be aware that the message they send will be more effectively received if it is in line with the beliefs/attitudes of the targeted audience.
• The ‘General Systems Theory’ considers organizations to either be ‘open’ or ‘closed’ systems. Open systems indicated that an organization must be open to outside event to be successful whereas closed systems indicate that the organization should avoid external factors. Both systems help model a flow of information, however threaten the success of an organization by either possibly linking the organization to an unfavourable external factor (open) or not seizing an opportunity that may lead to success (closed).
• Semiotics is the study of signs and how a sign can represent something. It explains how our thoughts can be manipulated. For example, associating smoking with an image of a lady with mouth cancer in an anti-smoking campaign is used to manipulate smokers to understand the adverse affects on their health.
• ‘Critical Theory’ argues that powerful organizations are dominating many areas of communications, which interrupts the way in which people would normally consider and issue freely in public.
• The best known theory of public relations can be seen in the four theories by Grunig and Hunt which give guidance as to how public relations can be practiced and changed:

1) Press Agentry- seek attention to promote their subject

2) Public Information- provides information to the public with no intent of persuasion

3) Two-way Asymmetric- public relations aimed at promoting an organizations view

4) Two-way Symmetric- both the organizations and public views are considered important

• Rhetorical Theory that society’s views are capable of being won over by the most rational argument. Whilst seeming an ideal model of communication (not unlike the two-way symmetric model) the theory has its critics who believe the theory is unachievable due to those being engaged not being equally resourced.
• The ‘Relationship Management’ approach to Public relations centres around aspects in the relationship between the organization sponsoring the public relations work and the target audienceof that project. Some aspects that determine the success of the relationship include the abilities of parties to adapt in the relationship and whether the parties have mutual goals.
• Situational theory suggests that people will act on a situation when they believe it will affect them personally and when they believe their actions can make a difference. The theory helps practitioners know when publics will be active or apathetic about and issue and from there create strategies for particular publics by examining a publics ability to recognise a problem that they can do something about (problem and constraint recognition) as well as the levels of involvement that a public will tend to have.
• ‘Social Learning’ theory suggests that people modify their behaviours to fit in with the attitudes and actions of others.
• ‘Social exchange’ theory suggests that people act in a way that will minimise costs and maximise rewards.

The readings made me think more about public relations theory/practice in that:

They made me realise the diverse range of beliefs about the public relations field. For example, the Rhetorical Theory suggests that logical arguments are the most effective way to influence a public however when considering agenda setting, a public can be thought of as being more influenced by what is covered in the media meaning that the media may have the ability to determine what a public may think of as logical.

Furthermore, regarding public relations practice, the readings allowed me to realise that there are many important considerations when communicating a message. The message must not only take into account the intentions of the organization providing the message but also the differing ways the message may be received by a public. When considering the notion of semiotics, different signs/symbols can carry a different meaning for different people so a practitioner must structure the message in such a way that will be easily understood by a public, however at the same time the message must be communicated in a way that accounts for the most likely way a public will react to the message. Balancing a message in such a way that considers both the organizations and public’s views as important will result in the best possible outcome.