Week 2

WEEK 2

I think the key points to remember from this week's readings were according to Johnston and Zawawi is firstly that the term public relations (PR) can not be easily defined. It crosses over into areas of advertising and marketing. These ideas were covered in the first chapter of the readings.

The governing organisations for PR is the Public Relations Institute of Australia (PRIA). Don Barnes describes it as "officers and consultants maintaining an organisations relations with its various publics" (Johnston & Zawawi, p5.) However, with the advent of new technology, especially that of the internet, there has been a need for public relations to evolve to incorporate these as part of their PR tools (p.6.)

PR itself can be divided into two primary roles. The technician and the problem solver. The problem solvers ask clients to re-think or clarify problems and to look for solutions. They usually belong to management , with accompanying responsibility for decision making and policy formation. They are part of what is know as coalition management (p.7.) Technicians provide services such as media releases.

As previously mentioned PR includes aspects of marketing which includes media strategies, relations marketing and so forth. The difference is the marketing is economics driven.

The readings made me think more about public relations theory/practice in that it is more than just that general idea of spin doctoring, but incorporates events management, social investments for example.