- Title
- Not everyone's aboard the online public relations train: the use (and non-use) of social media by public relations practitioners
- Creator
- Robson, Prue; James, Melanie
- Relation
- Prism Vol. 9, Issue 1
- Relation
- http://www.prismjournal.org/vol9_1.html
- Publisher
- Bond University
- Resource Type
- journal article
- Date
- 2013
- Description
- While the introduction of Web 2.0 technology and social media is changing public relations practice, it is premature to presume that online public relations is now the norm across the industry. This paper reports on an exploratory, qualitative study that was undertaken to further understanding about practitioners’ use and perceptions of social media. Five in-depth interviews were conducted with practitioners working for different types of organisations––agency, government, corporate, nonprofit, and a sole practitioner––to give insight into the different perceptions, experiences and challenges associated with social media. This research builds on an earlier quantitative study (Robson & James, 2011) that found practitioners were trialling social media for public relations purposes and felt their organisation and the resources available to them prevented a more in-depth, ongoing engagement with social media. The findings from this qualitative research provide further detail about the practitioners’ ‘trial’ behaviour, specifically addressing how practitioners could foresee using social media to achieve public relations objectives, the role strategic planning and communication models play in their social media use, and the barriers practitioners perceive as preventing them from enacting social media in their organisation. Although the insights examined in this paper cannot be generalised to other practitioners, this exploratory research extends our knowledge of social media use in public relations and reinforces a number of questions raised by other researchers in the field, suggesting themes of strategy, two-way communication, and the role of the dominant coalition need to be considered as part of a larger scale study.
- Subject
- social media; public relations; communication models; practice; practitioners
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1052741
- Identifier
- uon:15475
- Identifier
- ISSN:1448-4404
- Language
- eng
- Full Text
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