New Media Public Relations : Internet

The Internet is a communications revolution is very broad and deep. The digital world has changed the communication within the organization and between organizations exist with a variety of different public. In PR, the Internet is a barrier-free information line.

New-media expert John Pavlik and Shawn McIntos say about change "media convergence" as follows:

The merging of telecommunications, computer, and media in a digital environment. Convergence and the resulting changes have transformed many basic aspects of mass media and communication

Advances in technology have changed communication production, distribution, delivery, and storage. And although many people who recognize that new media technologies have changed the way PR is run, the speed of change has made the PR must make every effort to continue to follow it. Consequently, the Institute for Public Relations and Worldcom Public Relations Group conducted a study of the impact of the Internet on PR. Although the findings may be unimpressive for students now, but they have documented major changes in practice which began centuries - 20. The conclusion of the study include:

There is almost unanimous agreement (98%) among PR professionals that advances in technology such as e-mail and Internet has affected the way they work

The majority (91%) believe that they are now dealing with more people in the business and professional environment they than before the e-mail. Only 7% who disagree with this statement.

Most (90%) agreed that the ability rapidly to submit a written communication vie e-mail and access to real-time information through the Internet has accelerated the pace of decision-making in news journalism.

PR professionals surveyed in this study spent an average of between 15 to 19 hours online each week, and do online an average of 5.8 days per week ... one third (33%) say that they are online seven days a week.

Subjects were also asked if they would choose a daily newspaper, Internet-connected computer, radio or television if they get lost in a place for some long time and there is access to these media. The result showed 69% chose computer with Internet. (Donald K. Wright (Principal Investigator), "The Magic Communication Machine: Examining the Internet's Impact on Public Relations, Journalism and the Public" (Gainesville, FL: The Institute for Public Relations, 2001), 37-39. (Online at http://www.instituteforpr.com/internet_-_news_technology.phtm.)

The study also found the possibility of another change in the way the PR operation vis-à-vis the media:

In fact, one of the biggest advantages of the Internet as a medium of public relations is its real ability to ... provide quick and direct access to a specific audience, and therefore superior to the traditional news media. (Ibid., 36)

However, this change is even more profound. Encoding the message has changed from analog to digital, which by Nicholas Negroponte called the transition from the "atom" to "bits" (Nicholas Nagroponte, Didital Being (New York: Vintage Books, 1995), 11-20. The change of atoms to digits, the causing convergence, changing the nature of communication. In the era of "analog" publisher disseminate information to an audience that has limited ways to communicate with each other or communicating with a source of Opera. In contrast, Audience in the era of convergence can communicate with the parties that creates and publishes content of mass communication via e-mail, online forums, and other interactive media easily and quickly. In addition they can also create their own mass communication content, and get a bigger audience with a cheaper cost than if it is done with traditional media. (Blogger Patrick Belton, as cited by Alan Elsner, "Bloggers Make Debut at the Democratic Convention," Reuter (July 26, 2004).(http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.html?type=internetNews&storyID=5777817)

For example, weblogs or "blogs" started out as a personal electronic journals on the Internet. Bloggers can "publish" their observations, their opinions, and their interpretations. When a member of the Democratic Party meeting in Boston and a member of the Republican Party in New york to hold conventions each in 2004, several established bloggers worked as a "reliable media" together with journalists traditional news agency. As predicted by a blogger: "The Convention 2004 will be remembered as a convention blog; as the 1952 Republican convention in mind as a television convention, the convention in 1924 as a radio convention.

But of course, the bloggers do not have to come to the convention to become a publisher of news and opinions on the issue, the speaker, and the candidate. For those who are in a virtual community that has the same line of thought, the blog has become the preferred digital virtual space interconnected. PR practitioners increasingly watching actors in this new medium to reach out to the public that web experts, be it with a try that would also be covered by the blog to create your own blog as part of a communications strategy.

Internet-based methods of communication have changed the media landscape in the organization-public communication. The World Wide Web has the potential to open up communications with a worldwide audience. On the one hand, it has the power to send messages instantaneously to many public specific targets, and receive messages from them, 24 hours a day seven days a week making the Internet is very important for PR communication. Rapid technological advances that promote the acquisition of knowledge and new skills in the "cyberworld" is without limits and provide many health insurance, exchanges, news and information ceaselessly.

Practitioners who heads interactive PR practices around the world, Fleishman-Hillard, PR communication summarizes the new context as follows:

In the digital world, text, sound, images, video, and animation flows in the bit-stream media information received by consumers. By looking at the website of the US newspapers now we can see how far the print news has been changed to a one-dimensional with a lot of content and three-dimensional. (David Wickenden, "High-Tech Trends That Will matter to PR Executives," Public Relations Strategist 9, No. 2 (Summer, 2003): 24)

source:http://kuliahkomunikasi.com/2009/12/...ions-internet/