week 3 - Theoretical Contexts

The important point in development in public relations is the theory move from functional perspective to a co-creational one. A functional perspective sees publics and communications to achieve the organization’s goals, while co-creational sees publics as a friend in the making process to achieve the goals.

There are 4 steps of theories that can be applied in PR practice:
1. System theory. A system is defined as a set of things that influenced one another within an organization (Littlejohn 1999:41). In order to make the organization compete with the others, the organization needs to adapt to its environment. In an organization, system theory looks through the factors that may affect people inside the groups and how they related to each other. The effect of organization’s adaption is depends on whether the system is open or closed. Open system boasts openness from public feedback, such as from the customers and willing to interact with the environment. In contrast, closed system is system that does not interact with their environment.
Cybernetics, which part of system theory, explain how PR works to analyzed the feedback from the public or audience outside the organization to make changes in an organization, to stabilize and be more effective. If the feedback is not effective then the employees cannot handle the changes, it can leads to employees resign.
Requisite variety suggesting that organization will be more prepared to preserve the changes if it consists of employees with different point of view (Sison, 2009). The more the representative organization from different communities, the more chances they can easily adapt and survive the changes.
Boundary spanning is an area, which factors of organizations and their environment combined to relate the organization become more effectively in outside world.

2. Communication Theories talks about how people communicate. It arises from Shannon&Weaver-info source->transmitter->noise source->receiver->destination-model and also that, in fact, much of people’s behavior are influenced by the media messages they been exposed to. Some ways to communicate the message are: (1)persuade the public for organisation’s benefit with imbalanced effects, such as for organization’s benefit (Grunig&Hunt,1984)- Persuasion, (2)change people’s behavior by make them understand and believe the case (Attitude-behaviour change). (3)make sure the source is reliable and trustworthy.(4)make sure to have an opinion leader that can receive information from media to tell their associate,makes celebrities as spokespeople (5) using ‘fear appeals’ to captivate people attention.e.g: an ordinary man, who is actually a worker in a game company, wrote a blog abt how he got ‘psycho’ after playing this video game. This of course has gain people’s curiosity of the game and result in increase in the sales.

3. Public relations theory, known as The Excellence Theory, believes that public relations are unique management that helps the organization to interacts with social and political components in its environment (Grunig, Grunig and Dozier, 2006). Activities involved can help reduce the problems inside the organization with discussing it with the activist public. Public relation practices are categorized into four (by Grunig and Hunt). Firstly is press agentry which is a one-way communication and publicity dominated. Useful in promoting movies, etc that wants to gain publicity. Secondly, Public information model aims to provide truthful information to audience. Thirdly is the two-way asymmetric model which use scientific information to persuade audiences, but prone to be manipulative (Dozier & Grunig, 1995). Lastly, the Two-way symmetry model meant to establish mutual understanding between organizations and their publics. Most ideal. *both are using ‘two-way’ meaning material formed r using audience expectations as info.

4. Rhetorical and interpretive perspectives is a way people build up the meaning, and it shows what the public relations role are. For example understanding how people generate and respond to ideas.
Cultural theory explained the basic assumption of an organization. It reflects the proverb “Different fields have different insect, different ponds have different fish”, which means different country (and organizations) have different culture. Culture is used to define the organization identity, and make it easier for the employees to adapt with the environment they work in and in constructing strategies and tactics.
Critical perspectives can be concluded as focusing on the power and influence inherent in relationship established and managed by practitioners (Sison, 2009).