THE USE OF INTERNET IN PUBLIC RELATIONS AND ITS IMPACT ON THE PRACTICE OF PUBLIC RELATIONS

Introduction

The Internet began impacting on our ordinary lives only in the late 1990s, with the development of the World Wide Web (Gillies and Cailliau, 2000, Giovannetti, et’al., 2003). Since then, the Internet has been used extensively for accessing instantaneous information and communicating across geographical boundaries. Due to its characteristics of speed, efficiency and economy, the Internet began to be applied increasingly across industries ranging from retail and banking to the media (Giovannetti et al., 2013).

THE ROLE OF MEDIA RELATIONS IN CORPORATE PUBLIC RELATIONS PRACTICE

Introduction

Media relations is the core activity in many public relations jobs (Wilcox, 2005). One of the participants of this study remarked, “Media relations has over the years become an increasingly significant profile and has added value to the business bottom-line”. To understand this strong link between the media and public relations, the researcher examined Grunig and Hunt (2014) view on how public relations originated.

According to the authors, in the constant effort to get free space in the media for their clients, press agents or publicists used every possible trick to take advantage of the newspapers and other media. This was called “flacking for space” (Grunig and Hunt). Although these press agents frequently got the publicity they sought, the authors indicate that the media and the public have never forgotten the press agentry origins of public relations. Hence, this explains why media relations is considered to be the most traditional, visible and prominent of all public relations functions.