Week one's readings

This week’s readings taught me new things about PR that I would never have known had I not gone through the readings. Well, first and foremost, I’ve learnt that PR is about the “management of communication between an organization and publics”, according to Grunig and Hunt (1984). Prior to taking up this course, I’ve always thought that PR was just about corporate communications, and nothing more.

And publics, that’s an interesting word that I’ve never come across, until now. I’ve learnt that publics are the groups of people who share the same interests or concerns as an organisation, and they can be either active or latent/passive. The readings also talk about the two primary roles of the PR practitioner, namely the technician and the problem solver/manager.

I think the key points to remember from this week’s readings were the different functions of a PR practitioner, and why PR is absolutely essential in today’s corporate world.

The readings made me think more about public relations theory/practice in that PR and marketing are different disciplines that actually overlap each other. I studied marketing previously and it was only having read the readings did I realise how closely related the two disciplines are.