Page 99 - DLIS102_LIBRARY_AND_ITS_USERS

Library and its Users

Notes their consequences, counseling organizational leaders, and implementing planned programs of
action, which will serve both the organization and the public interest.”
Others define it as the practice of managing communication between an organization and its publics.
Public relations provides an organization or individual exposure to their audiences using topics of
public interest and news items that provide a third-party endorsement and do not direct payment.
Common activities include speaking at conferences, working with the media, crisis communications,
social media engagement, and employee communication.
The European view of public relations notes that besides a relational form of interactivity there is
also a reflective paradigm that is concerned with publics and the public sphere; not only with
relational, which can in principle be private, but also with public consequences of organizational
behaviour. A much broader view of interactive communication using the Internet, as outlined by
Phillips and Young in Online Public Relations Second Edition (2009), describes the form and nature
of Internet-mediated public relations. It encompasses social media and other channels for
communication and many platforms for communication such as personal computers (PCs), mobile
phones and video game consoles with Internet access. The increasing use of the mentioned
technologies give the media a democratization power and thus, aid to the demystification of subjects.
Public relations are used to build rapport with employees, customers, investors, voters, or the general
public. Almost any organization that has a stake in how it is portrayed in the public arena employs
some level of public relations.

There are a number of public relations disciplines falling under the banner of corporate
communications, such as analyst relations, media relations, investor relations, internal
communications and labor relations. Most of them include the aspect of peer review
to get liability.

14.1 Public Relations

Say PR, as in public relations, particularly during a conversation about marketing and/or social
media, and participants are liable to have vastly different perspectives on the topic.

Traditionally, public relations referred to the art of getting mentions of a person,
company or other organization placed in the media, namely print, radio and
television.
The practice of public relations is spread widely. On the professional level, there is an organization
called Public Relations Society of America (PRSA), the world’s largest public relations organization.
PRSA is a community of more than 21,000 professionals that works to advance the skill set of public
relations. PRSA also fosters a national student organization called Public Relations Student Society
of America (PRSSA).
The Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) says “public relations is concerned with or devoted
to creating mutual understanding among groups and institutions.” The PRSA recognises the place
of groups and institutions in the public relations process. It admits that these entities have interests
that must be protected. It also presupposes a streamlining of these benefits for mutual good. The
concept of mutuality in this definition makes you as a public relations man or woman an intermediary
between your organisation and its publics. This implies that you should be able to align the interests
of these two parties for their mutual advantage. You do this by convincing your organisation that

94 LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY