Revision - On Public Relations

•ORIGIN OF PR TERM
•Thomas Jefferson combined words “public” and “relations” in 1807
•Dorman Eaton - Yale graduation speaker used the words in 1882
•Words appeared in print in 1897 (Yearbook of Railway Literature)
•Edward Bernays called himself a “public relations counsel” in 1921

IVY Lee

4 Ivy Lee’s contributions to PR:
1)Advancing the concept that business & industry should align themselves with the public interest, & not vice versa
2)Dealing with top executives & carrying out no programs unless it had the active support & personal contribution of management
3)Maintaining open communication with the news media
4)Emphasizing the necessity of humanizing business & bringing its PR down to the community level of employees or customers

PRELIMINARY PERIOD
- Press Agentry (ancient & modern)
- PR grew out of press agentry
- Some aspects of modern PR have the roots of press agentry in the practice
- Development of PR tactics such as publicity, promotion, press agentry


PR Development After Independence Government Public Relations
Public Relations in the Private Sector
1.Public Relations Consultancies
2.Corporate Public Relations Departments


Learning Objectives
1Define public opinion, explain the formation of public opinion, understand the PR functions in public opinion, methods to monitor public opinion, and factors influencing the public opinion
2Define persuasion and explain the persuasion process, users of persuasion, principles in persuasion, and ethics of persuasion
3 Describe the role of media in informing public opinion


James Grunig – Definition of Publics
4 sorts of publics:
1 Non-publics - groups that neither are affected by nor affect the organization and can be ignored
2 Latent publics - groups that face problem as a result of an organisation’s actions, but fail to recognise it.
3 Aware publics – groups that recognise that a problem exists
4 Active publics – groups that do something about the problem

(more posting above on 4types of public)