Tuesday, December 8, 2009

PR History

I believe that public relations go far and beyond just the formal methods that we have come to know them as. I think the concept of public relations could be as simple as the spoken word in that people get good PR sometimes just by what is said. One example I feel compelled to point out is the unplanned PR that has come to the movie “Paranormal Activity.” On Twitter, they have a thing called Trending Topics and that is what people have been talking about the most and the top topic for the week and for the month of October was Paranormal Activity.
Looking back at the history of PR, Wikipedia quotes the father of public relations, Edward Louis Bernays, and his definition of PR by stating it as a management function which tabulates public attitudes, defines the policies, procedures and interests of an organization... followed by executing a program of action to earn public understanding and acceptance" Public relations has come a long way from this humble beginning but I am still under the impression that the concept has remained the same, even if the methods have changed. Another example of how PR has changed is how people communicate across the internet. Back in middle school, if you an AOL instant messenger screen name then you were cool. That was the way people communicated across the internet back then but now, we have a whole new way of communicating and its thru Skype. Skype allows you to video conference from computer-to-computer or make calls to other phones as well for a small fee. In the comparison, 34% said they use neither (that is probably because they text) but 52% said they only use Skype whether with or without video.

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