Chapter Nine: Strategies to Proactively Manage Activity
One inspiring quote from this chapter's "Practitioner Profile" before we begin:
"Work harder on yourself than you do on your job... Great professionals... get there because they know their values, strengths and ethics, they stick to them and build on them with gritty determination."
- Heidi Alexandra Pollard (as cited in Chia & Synnott, 2009).
Anyway, this chapter describes how strategy is a very important part of PR practice, and introduces concepts of meaning construction in a contested space, intentional representation, and intended meaning. We also learn about planning models, about how to conduct a campaign from research to evaluation, developing the startegies needed to reach specified objectives. Lastly, certain major PR tactics and their usefulness are discussed at the end of this chapter.
For this post, I would like to look at the concept of the contested space, intentional representation, and the intended meaning. Firstly, 'contested space' is an idea that has only come about with newer models of communcation; for example, Shannon and Weaver's transmission model fails to account for a space in which the meaning of a message is constructed, and where varying messages compete for attention (Chia & Synnott, 2009). As such, this concept tells us that there is no one absolute meaning to everything, but a set of interpretations that different communities possess and deem useful to them. The 'contest' element comes from the fact that society today is actually saturated with many similar messages from organisations of all sorts, for example, the newspaper which has limited editorial space - to be featured in the newspaper the PR practitioner would have to take steps to ensure that what he is proposing to the journalist is more interesting than what other organisations are doing, such as through product samples, media kits, media releases, personal ties and even using the journalism skills such as framing and angling certain pitches to target specific journalists (Chia & Synnott, 2009). Only then can we help our organisations stake a claim in this contested space.
Intentional representation and intended meaning are similar - in simple terms, intended representation is the action that is carried out by the organisation in order to shape perception and intended meaning refers to the end-result where the public interprets the representation as intended. A recent case study follows: Mediacorp, the local state-controlled media company (the other being Singapore Press Holdings) intends to represent itself to the general public as Asia's top media company, with their mission being to deliver 'valued content to the world'. This much can be gathered from their mission statement as seen on their webpage.
However, this intended representation failed to generate its intended meaning in light of a recent email, made public from Mediacorp's Marketing Communications department, which sought to canvass for advertisements on Channel NewsAsia during their coverage of the 2011 Sendai earthquake and tsunami. Many netizens condemned Mediacorp when news of this broke, forcing Mediacorp to issue a statement on the 12th of March (see here) in apology. In my opinion this is only a routine measure, what remains to be seen is if Mediacorp can repair the damage caused by this email leak, perhaps by directly assisting in relief efforts as a sign of goodwill. It does not matter if they have won many awards at the broadcaster level, small things like these can actually cause an organisation harm if not handled properly. In reflection, I once again realise that a good reputation and intended representation requires a lot of effort to build and to shape the audience into receiving the intended meaning, but all it takes is a series of minor incidents to undo the work done. This is a challenging field indeed and with that, I end my post for this week.
"Work harder on yourself than you do on your job... Great professionals... get there because they know their values, strengths and ethics, they stick to them and build on them with gritty determination."
- Heidi Alexandra Pollard (as cited in Chia & Synnott, 2009).
Anyway, this chapter describes how strategy is a very important part of PR practice, and introduces concepts of meaning construction in a contested space, intentional representation, and intended meaning. We also learn about planning models, about how to conduct a campaign from research to evaluation, developing the startegies needed to reach specified objectives. Lastly, certain major PR tactics and their usefulness are discussed at the end of this chapter.
For this post, I would like to look at the concept of the contested space, intentional representation, and the intended meaning. Firstly, 'contested space' is an idea that has only come about with newer models of communcation; for example, Shannon and Weaver's transmission model fails to account for a space in which the meaning of a message is constructed, and where varying messages compete for attention (Chia & Synnott, 2009). As such, this concept tells us that there is no one absolute meaning to everything, but a set of interpretations that different communities possess and deem useful to them. The 'contest' element comes from the fact that society today is actually saturated with many similar messages from organisations of all sorts, for example, the newspaper which has limited editorial space - to be featured in the newspaper the PR practitioner would have to take steps to ensure that what he is proposing to the journalist is more interesting than what other organisations are doing, such as through product samples, media kits, media releases, personal ties and even using the journalism skills such as framing and angling certain pitches to target specific journalists (Chia & Synnott, 2009). Only then can we help our organisations stake a claim in this contested space.
Intentional representation and intended meaning are similar - in simple terms, intended representation is the action that is carried out by the organisation in order to shape perception and intended meaning refers to the end-result where the public interprets the representation as intended. A recent case study follows: Mediacorp, the local state-controlled media company (the other being Singapore Press Holdings) intends to represent itself to the general public as Asia's top media company, with their mission being to deliver 'valued content to the world'. This much can be gathered from their mission statement as seen on their webpage.
However, this intended representation failed to generate its intended meaning in light of a recent email, made public from Mediacorp's Marketing Communications department, which sought to canvass for advertisements on Channel NewsAsia during their coverage of the 2011 Sendai earthquake and tsunami. Many netizens condemned Mediacorp when news of this broke, forcing Mediacorp to issue a statement on the 12th of March (see here) in apology. In my opinion this is only a routine measure, what remains to be seen is if Mediacorp can repair the damage caused by this email leak, perhaps by directly assisting in relief efforts as a sign of goodwill. It does not matter if they have won many awards at the broadcaster level, small things like these can actually cause an organisation harm if not handled properly. In reflection, I once again realise that a good reputation and intended representation requires a lot of effort to build and to shape the audience into receiving the intended meaning, but all it takes is a series of minor incidents to undo the work done. This is a challenging field indeed and with that, I end my post for this week.
Thats a good example, wondered what was their department thinking when they send out those adverts, only gave their PR department more workload to handle.
ReplyDeleteI have no idea. Their MarComm department probably didn't even think the email would leak. There must have been a breach of company security somewhere.
ReplyDeleteStill, it seems like fallout from this crisis has subsided. No one's dissing MediaCorp anymore, and their coverage of the disaster is still what people have been focusing on.
However, I believe that institutional memory is selective. If people want to dig it out again in the future, they can and they will. MediaCorp had better be wary of that.