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Public Relation Publicity, Propaganda and Public
Opinion
As one embarks on the academic route to understand
these three terms, he will inevitably ascertain that PR
publicity, Propaganda and Public relation are essentially
related to the most common and fundamental facet of
our every day life – COMMUNICATION.
How are Public Relation publicity, Propaganda and Public
relation related to communication?
Communication, as a word sounds very familiar, and as a
general idea is very significant. We all know how to
communicate and we all communicate with each other;
that’s why we have friends, family and a circle of other
people we communicate on a daily basis.
What is communication?
Communication in its most simple form could be
understood as a process of transferring information from
one entity to another.
While Macmillan dictionary defines it as the process of
giving information or of making emotions or ideas known
to someone, according to the Oxford Dictionary, it is the
imparting or exchanging of information by speaking,
writing, or using some other medium.
There could be different ways of communicating; verbal
and non-verbal, and also that there is a flow of
information from one entity to another.
Purposes of communication:
There must be a purpose of a communication, as only
purpose could attribute a meaning to a data so as to
make it information.
As the above-mentioned diagram displays, there can be
several purposes of communication. They can be:
an action
Stages of communication:
A communication witnesses various stages before it
achieves the intended purpose.
information is transferred and it becomes a knowledge
for the target audience.
-way exchange of
ideas to give develop an understanding by effectively
listening to the target audience and satisfying their
queries.
involvement and engagement so that the two parties
develop a communication relation.
is a change in action or behavioral pattern.
This process makes it amply clear that the ultimate
stage of a communication would be a result where a
change in action or opinion is brought about and the goal
is achieved.
What is Public Relation?
‘PR’ stands for public relations. Institute of Public
Relations, USA defines PR as the deliberate, planned and
sustained effort to establish and maintain mutual
understanding between on organization and its publics.
Herbert M. Baus, the political campaign manager who
engineered President Richard M. Nixon's victory in
California in 1960 and remained a major supporter and
campaigner for Nixon in US Senate, vice presidential and
presidential races, defined PR as a combination of
philosophy, sociology, economics, language, psychology,
journalism, communication and other knowledges into a
system of human understanding.
PR aims at transmitting a message to its target audience.
It seeks to establish a connect with a certain group of
people or organisation in order to achieve an objective. It
can have a wide circle of entities that it aims to reach to.
A few of these are mentioned in the image.
What is Publicity?
Publicity, in stricter sense, means a conscious and
calculated attempt to manage the public's perception of a
subject. Subject in the context of the definition could
include people, for example, a politician or an artist as
well as particular goods and services, organizations of all
kinds, and works of art or entertainment. Liberally
interpreted, publicity would tend to draw attention of
people or entities towards a particular subject. It usually
seeks to create a positive opinion and to gain public
awareness for a product, person, service, cause or
organization.
Are Public Relation and publicity synonymous or
completely exclusive?
PR (Public Relation) and publicity are not synonymous
but can be said to be two aspects of communication.
Their boundaries overlap because of the goals they seek
to achieve but they differ in the technique of their
approach.
Public relation usually deals with individual publicity with
the people in a mass while dissemination of information
to the people in the mass is distinct from individual
publicity. Many public relations campaigns include
provisions for publicity and publicity can be seen as a
result of effective public relations planning.
Therefore, we can say that PR generates publicity but
that is not all to the purpose of PR. It has a broader
perspective and it involves many tactics for the purpose
of managing image and reputation.
Tools of PR (Public Relation):
While press releases and notes constituted the primitive
tool of PR, with advancement in technology and shrinking
of the world with increased use of computers, various
innovative modes of public relation have emerged.
Professionals are now using technology as their main tool
to get their messages to target audiences and it goes
beyond publicity.
With the creation of social networks, blogs, and even
Internet radio, PR professionals are able to send direct
messages through these mediums that attract the target
audiences. Methods used to find out what is appealing to
target audiences include the use of surveys, conducting
research or even focus groups. Tactics are the ways to
attract target audiences by using the information
gathered about that audience and directing a message to
them using tools such as social mediums or other
technology.
What is Propaganda?
According to Clyde R Miller propaganda is the attempt to
influence others to some predetermined end by appealing
to their thought and feeling.
As per Anderson and Parker, propaganda is the deliberate
use of communication to induce people to favour one
predetermined line of thought or action over another.
Kimball Young defined propaganda as the more or less
deliberate planned and systematic use of symbol chiefly
through suggestion and related psychological techniques
with a view first to altering and controlling opinions, ideas
and values and ultimately to changing overt action along
predetermined lines.
In simplest terms, propaganda is the use of reasoning or
facts in order to persuade another person to favour a
particular kind of action that he would otherwise not
favour or has not been in favour of. Propaganda has to
be continuous and needs to have impact not only on the
people who do not support the propagated idea, but also
has to consolidate those who already support the idea,
but have doubts, and eliminate these doubts.
Propaganda is not always negative:
Let us not gather the notion that propaganda is
necessarily the propagation of wrong views by
questionable methods. Although, it uses strong
persuasive tools to change one’s opinion in the favour of
a particular subject, groups and organizations whose
objectives have been socially constructive have often
resorted to the method of propaganda. The Family
Planning Department, in order to control the birth rate
has used all the devices of propaganda.
Propaganda is merely a means of influencing others often
towards a desirable end. It aims at persuasion by means
of symbols.
Features of propaganda:
A common feature about most of the propaganda
strategies are that they seldom show the situation from
different points of view and refrains from giving the full
picture in details. A propagandist is generally expected to
be aimed at changing people’s opinion, belief and
understanding the situation in order to influence their
future actions and decisions so that these actions would
coincide with the interests of the propagated group, or
person. And hence, propaganda, an influential
communication strategy, is always the most effective
when it rests upon verifiable information. It can readily
justify itself in terms of the real interests of the target
groups and can show a genuine commonality or interests
among the individuals who compose the group.
Besides, there are certain common features of
propaganda. As the main idea of propaganda is to
actively influence people’s opinion and social mood, it
uses various means of spreading ideas.
The first feature of propaganda is therefore the tendency
to utilize as many means of spreading information as
possible: telecommunications, radio, banners, internet
means, different billboards, leaflets and advertisements,
and even road signs containing special information can
be used as the sources of influencing public opinion.
Secondly, propaganda is meant to influence people’s
emotions first of all, for the messages that involve
emotional side will be remembered first. Usually the
propagated messages are meant to underline,
romanticize some idea or phenomenon, or vise versa, are
directed to show some idea or person from the negative
side. In any case strong emotional involvedness of the
audience is used in propagating to replace missing facts
with the people’s attitude to the propagated
phenomenon.
Uses of propaganda:
Even without knowing this, we all have to deal with
propaganda in our ordinary life. It happens through
advertising, propaganda occurs in political speeches, in
TV shows, even in the news. With the development of
means of communication and especially of mass media,
propaganda has become inseparable from the
contemporary mass culture.
In modern times it has come to play an important role.
The modern world is very much dependent on it owing to
its pace of influencing opinion. The government, business
houses, political parties and various other sections of
society use it so serve their own distinctive purposes.
While the techniques of propaganda can be successfully
implemented to trigger damaging emotions, like the one
policy, ‘Divide and Rule,’ helped the British government
to rule on India as an imperial colony for two centuries,
propaganda can equally be used for positive purposes
like for spreading healthy lifestyle, anti-smoking
campaigns, anti-discrimination ideas etc.
In the two world wars the battle on the propaganda front
was as intense as on the military front. While the German
government led by Hitler extensively relied on
propaganda to spread the notion that the war was
necessary and that Germans were superior that
Americans or Britishers, American government used a
wide variety of media and the propaganda fomented
hatred for the enemy and support for allies, urged great
efforts for production and victory gardens, enjoined
people to make do so that more material could go to the
war effort, and sold war bonds. Propaganda helped in
crushing the morale of the army and civil population in
the enemy state and in building up the morale of the
army and civil population in one’s own state.
The above picture, showing Hitler as a knight holding the
national flag, is one of the large number of posters used
by the German during the world war to promote his
personality.
Similarly, on a positive note, propaganda can also be
useful to bring about a change in the policy of the
government. In India the propaganda against dowry,
pre-natal sex determination and gender discrimination
helped the government of India to enact laws prohibiting
the impugned acts. The propaganda against compulsory
sterilization forced the government to change not only its
policy regarding family planning programme but also the
name of the Ministry from the Ministry of Family Planning
to Ministry for Family Welfare.
The next image shows one of the propaganda pictures
used by the family welfare department to discourage
people from differentiating between a male child and a
girl child.
The Government, employing propaganda as a powerful
instrument to bring about social change, also uses
propaganda to win people’s cooperation for implementing
its policies and programmes. Thus the family planning
programme was widely publicised and vast propaganda
machinery was mobilised to influence the people in its
favour. It is difficult to change the habits and attitudes of
the people. The propagandist through psychological aids
goes directly to the springs of motivation. Propaganda is
an important medium for transmitting those pressures
which help in breaking the bonds of the traditional social
order.
The next image is the one that propagated the idea of
having a small family. This image used to be displayed in
cinema halls before start of a movie, on TV and used to
pasted as posters at several points letting people know
the benefits of a small family.
Difference between PR publicity and propaganda:
While propaganda is a deliberate and guided campaign to
induce people for the acceptance of a given idea using
persuasive techniques, publicity looks at disseminating
information, maintaining public image of a subject and is
constantly promoted.
While PR publicity and propaganda, as tools of
communication, have different features and objectives, if
one looks closely, both aim at influencing ‘public opinion’.
What is meant by public opinion?
According to Bertrand R Canadian, “Public opinion is an
expression of a belief held in common by members of a
group or public on a controversial issue. The public
opinion emanates from an individual’s opinion of
members of a group whose views are subjected to the
influences exerted by the group until a consensus is
reached and is expressed as the public opinion.
Public opinion can also be comprehended as the
aggregate of individual attitudes or beliefs held by the
adult population.
The basic objective of PR publicity and propaganda is to
influence public opinion, which develops from the
attitudes of individual comprising the public. Therefore, it
is important to understand the meaning of attitudes, why
people hold attitudes and their role in the opinion for
mind process.
How is attitude important in forming opinion?
Attitude may be defined as a way of looking at situations.
An attitude expressed verbally by behavior is an opinion.
Attitude which expresses a feeling for or dislikes are a
product of numerous physical and mental influence. Body
process affects attitudes. Good health contributes to
favorable attitudes, while illness develops negative
attitudes. Cultural and religious backgrounds often
determine a person's attitude.
Attitudes are dominant until aroused by motive, which
are incited by a need, emotion, idea or physical state.
The motives which arouse attitudes in individuals
originate into desires for rewards, as in the case of a
worker who has a favorable attitude towards his union
because it seeks to secure for him increased
compensation and benefits. Businessman agreement
seeks the favorable attitude of employees by rewarding
them bonuses and providing benefits for improved
performance. On the other hand, unfavorable attitude are
aroused in employees who are inwards in their desire for
higher wages, recognition or good working condition.
Individuals express their beliefs, philosophy and value
their attitudes. A good Indian has attitude towards
freedom and democracy, which reveals his benefits and
expresses his character.
Types of attitude:
There can be three types of attitudes: positive, passive
and negative. A positive attitude induces a person to
react favorably towards another person, an issue, a
policy, or an organization. Many industrial workers have a
positive attitude favorable for labor unions and inciting
participation in union activities.
An individual’s attitude towards an issue, person or
organization may be completely passive. As a result, he
will have no opinion on issues or on the group. A worker
who has passive attitude towards labor union will have no
opinions on controversial questions involving union policy
or activities.
Similarly, attitude can also be negative, giving an
individual an unfavorable opinion of a person, issue or
organization. A negative attitude is usually accompanied
by a feeling of unpleasantness or dissatisfaction. A
worker may have a negative attitude towards labor
unions. The negative attitude may create prejudice,
which causes the worker to prejudge the aim and
activities of labor unions without understanding their
contribution to the welfare of workers.
The attitude is very important because it eventually
become opinions. Opinion is the public expression of
active attitudes. The opinions of a person are activated
by his attitudes, which are motivated by mental and
physical forces that propel him to express his opinion.
When these individual attitudes, resulting into individual
opinion, are formed into a set of opinions, they form
public opinion on a particular subject.
The basic objective of PR publicity is to influence public
opinion, which develops from the attitudes of individual
comprising the public. However it cannot be overlooked
that public opinion matters a lot in the public relations
and a publicity strategy is formulated on the basis of the
existing opinion about the subject.
However, usually, public opinion is only a consideration in
propaganda and the strategy aims at creating the one in
its favour. Propaganda, simply put, is the manipulation of
public opinion. It is generally carried out through media
that is capable of reaching a large amount of people and
effectively persuading them for or against a cause.
Major points of difference between PR publicity and
propaganda:
While PR publicity may deal with:
relation policies,
l
channels of communication media, developments &
execution of promotional product publicity campaigns,
at local, state and national levels,
company,
and also between investors in general, etc.
Propaganda will remain an attempt to change opinions by
persuasively presenting new ones. The propagandist
attempts to alter the opinions of his subjects or viewers
by convincing them of the validity of their own. In order
of accomplish this, he or she uses a variety of methods
and techniques. The purpose of propaganda is to change
opinions, but more importantly to influence your
decisions. Unlike PR publicity, it is usually less objective
therefore.