After reading this chapter, students should be able to:
Outline how public relations can be traced to rhetoricians and press agents. Knowledge of how promoting ideas and events for political or financial gain serves as the root of public relations provides scholars with a knowledge of the foundation from which public relations grew and how early claims of false representation may later haunt the field. |
|
|
|
Describe how American's became disenfranchised with corporations following the American Industrial Revolution, which lead to public relations consulting and organizations seeking means of communicating with target publics who influence their success. Knowledge of early public relations consultants, especially Lee, not only gained favorable recognition of PR and its abilities from their clients but also how they established the standards of public relations especially in regards to working with the media is a key component of understanding how public relations essentially came into being as a profession. |
|
|
|
Identify how individual efforts to achieve specific short term goals evolved into linking multiple activities into public relations campaigns to reach more long-term objectives after the use of public relations during WWI and the emergence of Edward Bernays. Knowledge of how the success of the Creel Committee made evident the value of public relations to corporate America and how Bernays was able to achieve wholesale persuasion through publicity and ingenious special events provides a foundation for the study of today's public relations campaign strategies. |
|
|
|
Outline how public relations evolved from a unidirectional form of communication with the practitioner/organization speaking to the public with little interest in feedback to a more reciprocal, two-way communication between an organization and its constituents where public opinion is interpreted and allowed to shape communication while it is taking place. Knowledge of how public relations practitioners began to realize that successful communication involved more than the simple sender-receiver model and that the most persuasive messages are designed with a constant monitoring of public opinion taking place speaks to the importance of involving publics in the development of messages meant to persuade them. |
|
|
|
Delineate how public relations came to be seen as a profession and how education, professional associations, and texts aided in the field being recognized. Knowledge of the factors that lead to public relations being recognized as an accepted field of professional practice provides students with a base from which to later investigate codes of ethics, accreditation and professional development. |
|
|
|
Identify how recent developments in the global communication environment have influenced how modern public relations takes place in contrast to how it was conducted in the past. Knowledge of how public relations grew exponentially as new technologies and channels of communication evolved to meet global communication demands paints a picture of not only the state of current public relations but how the fate of future practice is tied directly to communication technology and the increasing information demands of audiences. |