FULL SUMMARY of the course Public Relations (S_PR) for the Master Communication Science on the VU, written in English. All articles are summarized and lecture notes are included. Lecture notes are divided into the theme sessions and in-depth sessions. I added the corresponding articles to the sessi...
Public Relations (S_PR)
Master Communication Science, Marketing and Corporate Communication track
Vrije Universiteit van Amsterdam
Full summary 2023-2024
,Table of contents
Week 1...................................................................................................................................................................... 3
Lecture 1: Introduction to Public Relations ........................................................................................................ 3
,Week 1
Lecture 1: Introduction to Public Relations
Most popular definitions of PR:
- Managing of communication of an organization, e.g. negotiation of points of views
and bridging interests.
- The development of relationships to help communicate about an organization, an
issue, a person or a product.
- The management of a mutual understanding between an organization and its publics.
- The way the company is perceived by consumers might differ a lot from how the
company wants to be perceived by consumers.
It is different from marketing and advertising.
è You have to perform a dialog with stakeholders (consumers).
è Idea is that you present your view on an organization and you listen to what people
think about it. You then apply this information again. This is a never-ending cycle.
An interview is a great example of public relations. The person needed to be prepared for
the interview, questions are often negotiated before the interview, and you need to think
what it is you will answer to this question and how to deliver this message (tone and style).
Another classic example of how PR affects our lives are via newspapers, the results from
press releases or press conferences, any sort of interaction with an organization.
Job is to put out all information that stakeholders need to assess your organization.
è This will always be a biased view, because you decide which information you bias the
story on, but the journalist will decide whether to add extra info or not.
PR can also be fun! Think of the scandal with Harry and Meghan. They created a
documentary to overcome the scandal, which worked out very well. People watched the
documentary because they were interested in to what they had to say. The documentary
was completely made by them, so everything was thought through. So they could decide
what would be said, what would be worn etc.
Important terminologies:
- Organisation is a term we will use a lot. It complies a broader range of institutions
than ‘firm’ or ‘company.
o When we talk of companies we discuss commercial entities
o Organization implies a number of other institutions that don’t necessarily sell
something but that might be still involved in PR
Five themes will be discussed:
1. Crisis communication: how organizations frame communication in order to limit the
damages from crisis, depending on the origin of the crisis
2. Media effects:
3. Corporate social responsibility
4. Social media
Crises have become an inevitable and permanent feature of modern society. Some get
solved behind closed doors, others are thrust into the limelight and therefore upsetting an
organization’s image. The most obvious area of vulnerability is in social media, which
enables disgruntles stakeholders to air their grievances against an organisation. Think of the
example of when a flight was overbooked and the passenger was forcibly removed from the
flight, which was filmed, shared on social media and thus affected the airlines’ reputation
negatively, causing its stock to drop.
In an era of instantaneous communications and social networking, crisis news travels faster
than ever before, making breaking news in international media channels, and viral feeds on
social media platforms. New communications technologies make the world smaller and
closer, and this enhances the visibility of many crises.
Extreme weather events are also shared on social media very often, which causes us to be
aware of such events, as well as of terror attacks, health pandemics and other human-made
crises. All of these have implications for organizations and we are becoming more aware of
risks and vulnerabilities in our societies.
The risk society (which is a book) describes how new risks created by science and social
changes, such as nuclear accidents, climatic change and genetically modified organisms,
have, since the Second World War, partly over-shadowed the old natural disasters like pests,
earthquakes and famine.
It is argued that as our technology increases, and wars increase, and we invade nature more
and more, we create systems – organizations and organizations of organizations – that
increase risk for operators, passengers and innocent bystanders.
Awareness is the beginning of the journey in crisis prevention, preparedness and eventual
management. Communication is a central component of this journey.
Defining organizational crisis
“Crisis” has many explanations and there is thus not 1 specific description. Some crises are
clearly visible—for example, natural disasters—while others are invisible or are based on
contested perceptions, such as certain forms of organizational crises like misdeeds. An
organization might be in a crisis without its leadership knowing or acknowledging it as a
crisis because they have a high threshold for what constitutes a crisis. There is no clearly
definable point at which we can say that a minor problem has become an official crisis. It is
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