Introduction

Online PR: emerging

organisational practice

The development of information and

communication technologies has implications
of many kinds in the everyday work of public
relations (PR) practitioners as well as in their
education and further education. In their fifth
annual survey on the adoption and use of new
technologies by North-American
communication professionals, Ross and
Middleberg (1999) state that information and
communication technologies are
revolutionising the practice of public
relations. In their opinion, public relations
practitioners who do not use Internet
communications in their public relations
strategies can even cause damage to their
clients and their employers.
PR online may be quite different from what
most PR firms and practitioners are
accustomed to. This article describes recent
changes in the media landscape where
companies and organisations operate. Such
changes have many impacts on the basic
tenets of public relations as well as its practice
and education.

Pertti Hurme

The author
Pertti Hurme is based in the Department of
Communication, University of Jyvaskyla, Jyvaskyla,
Finland.
Keywords
Public relations, Public relations consultants,
Communications technology, Qualifications
Abstract
This article describes recent changes in the media
landscape where companies and organisations operate.
Such changes have numerous impacts on the basic tenets
of public relations as well as its practice, education and
further education. The impacts are described, new
practices for PR practitioners are identified, and guidelines
are given. In the future, there will no longer be two kinds
of PR practitioners persisting side by side: those using
traditional tools and those practising online
communication. Instead, PR practitioners will be expected
to integrate all means of communication to be a part of
their professional qualifications.

Organisational media landscape

changing
There have been many innovations in
information and communication technologies
in the last few decades (see e.g. van Dijk,
1999). All organisations (be they for-profit or
not-for-profit, small and medium enterprises
or large corporations) have been driven to
adopt such innovations.
Typical for the recent innovations is that
many of them have been widely adopted at a
fast pace. While it took the radio something
like 30-40 years to have 50 million listeners,
and the television more than ten years, the
World Wide Web had such a number of users
in three or four years. There are indications
that the mobile Internet (e.g. in the form of
WAP and GPRS) will be adopted even faster.
A crucial factor in the success of innovations
is the speed at which they are adopted by
organisations.
The Internet consists of many technologies
and services, e.g. e-mail, mailing lists
(LISTSERVs), Usenet (or news or electronic
bulletin boards), chat rooms, ftp servers.
However, the application that is commonly
associated (and even identified) with the

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Corporate Communications: An International Journal

Volume 6 . Number 2 . 2001 . pp. 7175
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Online PR: emerging organisational practice

Corporate Communications: An International Journal

Volume 6 . Number 2 . 2001 . 7175

Pertti Hurme

Related to models of communication (see

e.g. Littlejohn, 1999), the producer-driven
transfer model has been complemented by the
receiver-driven semantic model. The
emphasis is shifting away from mass
communication; dialogical or interactional
communication is gaining ground.
A new audience used to the instantaneous
speed and global reach of the Internet has
arisen. The PR practitioner needs to outsmart
Internet users who can be too savvy for
conventional PR (Bayer, 1999a). How should
the various means of communication (face-toface, computer-mediated) be incorporated in
the PR mix of an organisation?
It seems evident that many PR practitioners
have adopted the Internet as an additional
medium for delivering one-way information,
as in conventional mass communication (e.g.
Ekachai, 1999; Holtz, 1999; Stein, 2000).
Understood this way, the Internet largely
equals a conventional news brochure
produced by an organisation. In fact, such a
use of the Internet has scornfully been called
brochureware. Clearly, the properties and
possibilities of various means of
communication should be analysed and their
use accommodated to the goals and needs of
the organisation.
The new information and communication
technologies are potentially global. Thus, a
WWW message intended for local use may
arouse reactions from anywhere. An
organisation needs to limit certain documents
and discussions within the organisation-wide
intranet, open only to the employees of the
organisation. On the other hand, the
Internet's speed, interactivity and crossing
nations' borders make it highly attractive to
public relations practitioners as a
communication strategy tool (see Ekachai,
1999).
The WWW is to a large extent
uncontrolled. In principle, anyone can say or
show anything on the WWW. Much of the
material that reaches the public no longer
passes through traditional gatekeepers, such
as newspaper editors as well as radio and
television producers. The result is both
freedom of speech and distribution of
unreliable, unconfirmed and untrue
information. This can be a threat but also an
opportunity for PR practitioners.
The new information and communication
technologies have potential for interactivity.
In addition to standard Web technologies,

Internet is the World Wide Web (WWW).

The widespread use of the WWW started in
the mid-1990s. The ease of the click-andpoint interface of the WWW has led to
exponentially-increasing diffusion. The
WWW is now widely used in organisations in
the form of intranets (internal to the
organisation) and extranets (giving partners
and clients access to specific areas of the
intranet) in addition to the public Internet.
The use of mobile communications (mobile
phones and the mobile Internet) will increase
fast. In leading countries the penetration rate
exceeds 60 per cent of the population. In the
near future, the amalgamation of the Internet
and mobile communications to the mobile
Internet will change the organisational media
landscape profoundly. Consequently,
networked mobile communication will gain in
diffusion and importance in all kinds of
organisations.

Impacts of communication technologies

on public relations
Public relations practitioners have two basic
tasks (e.g. Wilcox et al., 2000). One task
involves message production, disseminating
messages to publics, clients and stakeholders
in multiple media channels. The other
comprises the planning and execution of
communication strategies. The PR
practititioner is the intermediary between
clients/stakeholders and the organisation's top
management. These two tasks are naturally
intertwined.
A journalism bias can often be discerned
among the practitioners of organisational PR
(e.g. Ekachai, 1999; Holtz, 1999). Therefore,
PR can be print media centered and
emphasise one-way communication, a
monologue from the sender to a large
audience. In the journalism paradigm,
communication is few-to-many. However, the
use of new communication technologies has
added to communication within an
organisation and between organisations the
dimension of dialogue, of one-to-one (e.g.
e-mail between two persons) or many-tomany (e.g. a large number of dialogues in a
discussion group, chat room or group
decision system). Therefore, an organisation
has to deal with a ``web of dialogues'', which is
a huge task. Such a web of dialogues is also
highly difficult to control.
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Volume 6 . Number 2 . 2001 . 7175

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diffusion of information and communication

technologies, new analysis possibilities have
emerged. Web pages and electronic
publications can be examined. Survey
questionnaires can be administered on the
Web (with prizes to attract respondents).
Usenet discussions and chat rooms can be
monitored to track current and potentially
troublesome issues. Logs of organisational
Web sites can be analysed and the number of
hits monitored. Such analyses can be
automated to a large extent, as the
information is already in digital form.
By monitoring the Internet, PR
practitioners learn what clients, stakeholders
and various publics are saying. Knowing the
discourses that are going on in the Internet,
they can better form their strategies and
messages. They can also respond faster to
potential crises resulting from erroneous
information or malicious rumours (see
Crawford (1999) and Witmer (2000); both
reporting the Procter & Gamble case where
rumours that circulated on the Web
threatened Febreze, a household cleaner).
Conventional actions in PR practice often
involve print media. If an organisation has
both traditional media professionals and Web
PR practitioners, they tend to work
separately. The change that is taking place
leads to integration of all tools. The actions
are not self-evident: in an interview by Bayer
(1999b), Phil Terry, the CEO of Creative
Good, Inc., encourages PR practitioners to
``do the opposite of their instincts''. The
Internet-savvy public may not like push, they
prefer pull (``If they know where you are, they
will find you'' (Stein, 2000)). Traditional
demographics and segmentation of publics
may not work; Internet users are highly
individual (``I want what I want when I want
it'' (Stein, 2000)).
Evaluation takes place simultaneously with
other functions. In other words, ongoing
evaluation of both analyses, plans and actions
is vitally important.
The functions of PR presented above,
analysis, plan, action and evaluation, form a
loop, or a spiral. In a modern organisation
they cannot be divided to separate functions.
In the practical work of a PR professional well
versed in new information and
communication technologies, these functions
can be concretised in the following guidelines
(see Ekachai, 1999; Lordan, 1999; Sedge,
1999):

mobile technologies show plenty of promise

in interactivity. Two types of interactivity can
be distinguished (Hurme, 2000; Rafaeli,
1988):
(1) Quasi-interactivity, i.e. one-way
communication (e.g. subscribing to the
organisation's news releases and sending
feedback to the organisation) that in
principle (and occasionally in practice)
can receive a response. Quasi-interactivity
has the potential of being two-way
communication, e.g. an e-mail message
can be responded to, a subscription for
news releases can lead to further
communication.
(2) Two-way, truly interactive
communication (e.g. exchanging e-mail
messages with a PR person, discussing
with other stakeholders in the
conversation area of a Web site).
For an organisation, both forms of
interactivity are useful. One user may search
for information (e.g. news releases) on the
organisation's Web site, while the other can
engage in dialogue with a PR person,
potentially resulting in a deeper
understanding of an issue for both
discussants.
With the ascent of networked
communication, the function of the media
gatekeeper can be problematised. On one
hand, organisations still need to be able to
pass the gatekeepers in the media, when a
large audience is required. On the other hand,
the dialogic nature of the Internet opens new
possibilities. Through the Internet, PR
practitioners can ``not only reach their clients
and stakeholders directly bypassing the
traditional gatekeepers, but also engage in
dialogue with them'' (Ekachai, 1999).

New technologies, new practices for PR

practitioners
Four functions are often distinguished in the
practice of public relations: analysis, plan,
action and evaluation (see e.g. Witmer,
2000). These functions have even been
characterised as steps, even though their
relationship hardly is linear.
In PR practice, the perceptions and
opinions of important publics are evaluated.
Conventional methods include analyses of
print media and analyses of publics. With the
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Pertti Hurme
.

Consider clients/audiences. Use media

adapted to them. Create contacts with
Web influentials.
Online means up to date. Update content
continually; nothing is older than
information that is both outdated and
online. Updating will cost.
Get in the right lane on the information
highway. Arrange for your site to be listed
with search engines (Altavista, Yahoo,
etc.). Use search engine persuasion (SEP)
techniques, but beware of spamming.
Align yourself with people in similar
industries; create links between your Web
service and theirs.
Synergy and integration are important.
For instance, make sure that the address
of your Web page is referenced in all of
your printed material.
Give the clients, the stakeholders and the
media what they want the way they want
it. PR practitioners must know how they
want information delivered: e-mail, fax,
letter, Web page access etc. However, it is
not a good idea to transmit your message
in every way possible: it is too expensive
and breaks the netiquette by flooding the
media.
Design a media kit or media room on
your site, giving the media immediate
access to e.g. press releases, biographical
information, photos, and questions and
answers.

organisation that is distributed, often also

geographically dispersed.
Today, keywords of PR practitioners are
interactivity, dialogue, dynamism,
involvement. In the future ``Web PR age'',
there will no longer be two kinds of PR
practitioners persisting side by side: those
who hold to traditional tools and those who
practise online communication. They will be
``expected to integrate all of the tools [. . .].
Integration requires a solid, complete
understanding of the new communication
models and how to use them in tandem with
traditional tools'' (Stein, 2000; see Holtz,
1999). Therefore, organisations need to
rethink their public relations strategies and
tactics. This is vital for the organisation. As
Bayer (1999a) puts it: ``if companies doing
business on the Internet can't figure out what
the Web is, they may soon self-destruct''.
Emerging online public relations challenges
education and further education. PR
practitioners are expected to have good skills
in the use of information and communication
technologies. They are expected to be
proficient in monitoring the Internet and
designing Web pages. They should master the
use of groupware and the intranet of an
organisation (Hurme, 1998). What they need
even more is a new way of thinking about PR:
interactive and networked.
In the working life, communications
professionals are expected to have a wide
outlook on their work. They are expected to
have expertise on group and team
communication as well as organisational
behaviour in the flux of constantly changing
information and communication
technologies. Most important, they have to
understand how people use media, how they
actively produce messages, and how the
borderline between the reception and
production has become blurred as a result of
the new information and communication
technologies. PR practitioners will be
expected to integrate all means of
communication to be a part of their
professional qualifications.

Conclusion
In organisational public relations, print media
will remain strong. However, the importance
of new information and communication
technologies will increase. In contrast to radio
and television, which are few-to-many media,
the Internet and mobile communications are
one-to-one or many-to-many media. They
supplement both face-to-face communication
and communication by means of print media
between individuals and groups, but do not
replace it. Nevertheless, especially in
distributed organisations, some functions of
face-to-face communication have been
augmented by information and
communication technologies. This shift in
means of communication gives novel
challenges to PR practitioners. They are
expected to project an integrated image of an

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Corporate Communications: An International Journal

Volume 6 . Number 2 . 2001 . 7175

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