Public Relations: A Practitioner's Guide (part 5)

Communication

 By

 Charles Lamson

In the 21st century, the whole world is truly "wired." The power of communication, through the oral and written word and the images that flash around the world to millions of people in real time, is more awesome than any individual or group or even nation.

What happens at a market in Baghdad is witnessed in a matter of seconds in Berlin and Bangkok and Boise. The world has become, as a twentieth-century communications professor once put it, "a global village." 

And perhaps no individual is more responsible for this global phenomenon than this man:

Sir Arthur Clarke was the British Science Fiction novelist who, in 1945, wrote a short article that talked about combining the technologies of rocketry, wireless communication, and radar to envision an extraterrestrial system that relied on orbiting space stations to relay radio signals around the world.

FIGURE 1

Father of the communications satellite. Sir Arthur C. Clarke, science fiction novelist, in 1945 invented the concept that today beams images around the world in real time.

Today, more than 60 years later, Sir Arthur's vision has morphed into the global system of two dozen geosynchronous satellites that orbit 22,300 miles above the earth, transmitting words and images around the world at the speed of light. Thanks to the "Clarke Orbit" and the uplink technology that continues to be developed, events from wars to coronations to courtroom trials are now broadcast globally at 186,000 miles per second (Figure 2).

 

FIGURE 2
Show trial. The murder and torture trial of Saddam Hussein, his half -brother Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti, and six co-defendants was broadcast for all the world to see in real time in 2005 and 2006.

As a consequence communication has never been a more potent tool, and communications must be handled with great care.

 Which brings us back to public relations.

First and foremost, the public relations practitioner is a professional communicator more than anyone else in an organization, the practitioner must know how to communicate. 

Fundamentally, communication is a process of exchanging information, importing ideas, and making oneself understood by others. It also includes understanding others in return. Indeed, understanding is critical to the communications process. If one person sends a message to another who disregards or misunderstands it, then communication has not taken place. But if the idea received is the one intended, then communication has occurred. Thus, a boss who sends subordinates dozens of emails is not necessarily communicating with them. If the idea received is not the one intended then the sender has done little more than convert personal thoughts to words---and there they lie.

Although all of us are endowed with some capacity for communicating, the public relations practitioner must be better at it than most. Before public relations practitioners can earn the respect of management and become trusted advisers, they must demonstrate a mastery of many communications skills---writing, speaking, listening, promoting, and counseling. Just as the comptroller is expected to be an adept accountant, and the legal counsel is expected to be an accomplished lawyer, the public relations professional  must be the best communicator in the organization. 

Goals of Communication

When communication is planned, as it should be in public relations, every communication must have a goal, an objective, a purpose. If not, why communicate in the first place? What are typical Communications goals?

1. To inform. Often the communications goal of an organization is to inform or educate a particular public. For example, before holidays, the Automobile Association of America (AAA) will release information providing advice on safe driving habits for long trips. In so doing, the AAA is performing a valuable information service to the public.
2. To persuade. A regular goal of public relations communicators is it is to persuade people to take certain actions. Such persuasion need not be overly aggressive. It can be subtle. For example, a mutual fund annual report that talks about the funds long history of financial strength and security may provide a subtle persuasive appeal for potential investors.
3.  To motivate. Motivation of employees to "pull for the team" is a regular organizational communication goal. For example, the hospital CEO who outlines to her managers the institutions overriding objectives in the year ahead is communicating to motivate these key employees to action. 
4. To build mutual understanding. Often communicators have as their goal the mere attainment of understanding of a group in opposition. For example, a community group that meets with a local plant manager to express its concern about potential pollution of the neighborhood is seeking understanding of the group's rationale and concerns.

The point is that whether written release, annual report, speech, or meeting---all are valid public relations communications vehicles designed to achieve communication goals with key constituent publics. Again, the best way to achieve one's goals is through an integrated and strategically planned approach.

Traditional Theories of Communication

In its most basic sense, communication commences with a source, who sends a message through a medium to reach a receiver who, we hope, responds in the manner we intended.

Many theories exist---from the traditional to the contemporary---about the most effective ways for a source to send a message through a medium to elicit a positive response. Here are but a few.

• One early theory of communication, the two-step flow theory, stated that an organization would beam a message first to the mass media, which would then deliver that message to the great mass of readers, listeners, and viewers for their response. This theory may have given the mass media too much credit. People today are influenced by a variety of factors, of which the media may be one but is not necessarily the dominant one.
• Another theory, the concentric circle theory, developed by pollster Elmo Roper, assumed that ideas evolved gradually to the public at large, moving in concentric circles from great thinkers to great disciples to great disseminators to lesser disseminators to the politically active to the politically inert. This theory suggests that people pick up and accept ideas from leaders, whose impact on public opinion may be greater than that of the mass media. The overall study of how communication is used for direction and control is called cybernetics.
• The communications theories of the late Pat Jackson have earned considerable respect and the public relations field. Jackson's public relations communications models, too, emphasized systematic investigation, setting clear strategic goals, and identifying key stakeholders. One Jackson communications approach to stimulate behavioral change encompassed a five-step process:

1. Building awareness. Build awareness through all the standard communications mechanisms, from publicity to advertising to public speaking to word-of-mouth.
2.  Developing a latent readiness. This is the stage at which people begin to form an opinion based on such factors as knowledge, emotion, intuition, memory, and relationships. 
3. Triggering event. A triggering event is something--- either natural or planned---that makes you want to change your behavior. Slimming down in time for beach season is an example of a natural triggering event. Staged functions, rallies, campaigns, and appearances are examples of planned triggering events.
4.  Intermediate Behavior. This is what Jackson called the "investigative" period, when an individual is determining how best to apply a desired behavior. In this stage, information about process and substance is sought. 
5. Behavioral change. The final step is the adoption of new Behavior.

• Another traditional public relations theory of communications is the basic S-E-M-D-R communications process. This model suggests that the communication process begins with the source (S), who issues a message (M) to a receiver (R), who then decides what actions to take, if any, relative to the communication. Two additional steps, an encoding stage (E), in which the sources original message is translated and conveyed to the receiver, and a decoding stage (D), in which the receiver interprets the encoded message and takes action, complete the model. it is in these latter two stages, encoding and decoding, that the public relations function most comes into play.

•  There are even those who focus on the growing import of the silent theories of communication. The most well-known of these, Elisabeth Noelle Neumann's spiral of silence, suggest that communications that work well depend on the silence and non-participation of a huge majority.This so-called "silent majority" fears becoming isolated from and therefore ostracized by most of their colleagues. Thus, they invariably choose to vote with the majority.

All of these theories and many others have great bearing on how public relations professionals perform their key role as organizational communicators. 

Contemporary Theories of Communication

Many other Communications theories abound today as Internet communication changes the ways and speed at which many of us receive our messages. Professor Everett Rogers talks about the unprecedented "diffusion" of the Internet as a communications vehicle that spans cultures and geographics. Others point to the new reality of "convergence" of video, data and voice, mobile and fixed, traditional and new age communications mechanisms with which public relations professionals must be familiar.

The complexity of communications in contemporary society---particularly in terms of understanding one's audience---has led scholars to author additional "audience-centric" theories of how best to communicate. 

• Constructivism suggests that knowledge is constructed not transmitted. Constructivism, therefore, is concerned with the cognitive process that precedes the actual communication within a given situation rather than with the communication itself. 
• This theory suggests that in communicating, it is important to have some knowledge of the receiver and his or her beliefs, predilections, and background. Simply dispensing information and expecting receivers to believe in or act on it, according to this theory, is a fool's errand. The task of the communicator, rather, is to understand and identify how receivers think about the issues in question and then work to challenge these preconceived notions and, hopefully, convert audience members into altering their views.
•   Coordinated management of meaning is the theory of communications based on social interaction. Basically, this theory posits that when we communicate---primarily through conversation---we construct our own social realities of what is going on and what kind of action is appropriate. We each have our own stories of life experience, which we share with others in conversation. When we interact, say the creators of this theory, we attempt to coordinate our own beliefs, morals, and ideas of good and bad with those of others so that a mutual outcome might occur.
• The point,  again, is that communication, rather than being the simple transmission of ideas, is rather a complex, interconnected series of events, with each participant affected by the other. 
• Another widely discussed theoretical model of public relations communications are the Grunig-Hunt public relations models, formulated by professors James E. Grunig and Todd Hunt. Grunig and Hunt proposed four models that define public relations communications. 

1. Press agentry / publicity. This early form of communication, say the authors, is essentially one-way communication that beams messages from a source to a receiver with the express intention of winning favorable media attention.
2.  Public information. This is another early form of one-way communication designed not necessarily to persuade but rather to inform. Both this and the Press agentry model have been likened to the common notion of public relations as propaganda.
3.  Two-way asymmetric. This is a more sophisticated two-way communication approach that allows an organization to put out its information and to receive any feedback from its publics about that information. Under this model, an organization would not necessarily change decisions as a result of feedback but rather would alter its responses to more effectively persuade publics to accept its position. 
4. Two ways symmetric. This preferred way of communicating advocates free and equal information flow between an organization and its publics, based on mutual understanding. This approach is more "balanced"---symmetrical---with the public relations communicator serving as a mediator between the organization and the publics.

These are but a few of the prominent theories of communications---all revolving around "feedback"---of which public relations practitioners must be aware. 

*SOURCE: THE PRACTICE OF PUBLIC RELATIONS, 10TH ED., 2007, FRASER P. SEITEL, PGS. 45-49*

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