STC 501 - Reading Reaction Three PDF

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Reading reaction for Dr. Place's Principles And Theories Of Public Relations course on what a public is....

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STC 501 Professor Place 25 September 2017 Reading Reaction Three Through the readings I found that there are many different definitions of what a public is. For instance, in Hallahan’s study on The Dynamics of Issues Activation and Response, he writes that a classic definition of a public is that the public evolves from the process of discussion. Yet he follows by saying that Dewey (1927) defined a public as a group whose members face a problem, recognize the problem, and organize to take action. One definition that stuck to me that I read in multiple readings though was that a public is the key group an organization wants to build a relationship with. In relating these definitions of publics to public relations, like Wyatt, Smith, and Andsager wrote, these professionals traditionally “occupy the middle ground between journalists and the public” serving the public’s and the organization’s needs (1996, p.132). However in order to do so organizations and professionals need to understand who their publics are. Another key theme I took away from this week’s readings was that theory development is a constant process of testing and formulating sets of concepts believed to explain how things operate (Littlejogn, 1989), therefore it is either always developing or adding new concepts. Not only do I think this is a key theme from this week, but also from other weeks. As society continues to grow and the world continues to change there will always be ways to develop or add to already existing theories and definitions. Something I also found interesting through the readings is how publics are a key to public relations since they are a source of power in societies. The continuation of research and attention

to these groups is extremely important in order to truly tap into the success of organizationpublic relationships, and all of the readings gave information on how to determine and reach various publics. I enjoyed reading the “Complications in Segmenting Campaign Publics” study by Tindall & Vardeman-Winter because it really explained how public relations, an all communication campaign designers, use messaging to persuade its publics. Something that I was reminded of from reading this was that culture can mean a variety of things, including gender, race, geography, class, generation technology use, and occupation. With that in mind, a study by Heath & Palenchar from 2009 pointed out that “publics are growing more culturally integrated, geographically dispersed, and informed via a variety of information sources, and social problems are becoming more complex,” and therefore communicators and public relations professionals need to continually research their publics and ways to efficiently and affectively grasp them. Publics come from a variety of places so it is important to understand that there is not one uniform group....