Media members surround Noam Schalit, father of captured Israeli soldier Gilad Schalit. The release of the soldier in a prisoner swap deal caps a sophisticated five-year public relations campaign that won over Israelis by portraying the captive serviceman as the nation's son. (AP Photo/Sebastian Scheiner)
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Supporters of WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, hold posters with his photo during a protest in front of the British Embassy in Madrid. The protesters are wearing masks depicting an anti-establishment figure from the movie V for Vendetta. (AP Photo)
By Sean Duncan
Anonymous, a hacktivist group, aided the Arab Spring revolutions by disabling Tunisian government websites and publishing guides on how to work around government filters and controls. According to Al-Jazeera, these hacktivists “have previously brought down the websites of the Church of Scientology, Amazon, Mastercard and others they saw as hostile to WikiLeaks.”
Public relations: a tool of global influence?
By Liza Cantu
In his 2009 article “Paradigms of global public relations in an age of digitalization,” in the journal PRaxis, James E. Grunig of the University of Maryland explores the changing dynamics of modern media, specifically social media, and its impact on public relations. With the advent of digital media, and the breaking down of long-held barriers of communication flow and information exchange, many communication professionals fear a loss of control. Yet, according to Grunig, the control that public relations professionals, journalists and other media specialists believe they have over public perception is just an illusion, one that he terms “the traditional paradigm of public relations.”
Practitioners of this logic believe that they can create, mold and influence their audience through a form of communication specifically designed to support the organization for which they endorse. Through their research, Grundig and his colleagues have formulated a different understanding of the changing realm of public relations, one that identifies public relations not as a tool for those in power to convey a particular message, but instead identifies public relations professionals as key participants in global decision-making.
With over a quarter of the world’s population currently using the Internet, and with that number increasing rapidly, we now live in an era where computer-mediated communication is the norm and information can reach a global level almost instantaneously. While some critics of Grunig’s theory may argue that the progression of public relations from a purveyor of localized policy to a globally influential news source may not follow such a precise trajectory, (especially in developing nations where digital media is not as prevalent), Grunig brings to light an important trend in media policy- one that is worthy of further exploration.