Week 2.

Hello! This is my first blog ( blog is such a horrid word isn't it?).
Now thats out of the way, time to get down to the first and second chapters of Public Relations: Theory and Practice.
The first chapter, 'What is Public Relations?' begins by discussing the various advancements on defining the term 'public relations.' Consequently, I believe that this is an essential point to remember from this reading because it clearlys informs us about what we are studying.
The definition by Grunig and Hunt particularly interested me as they defined this term as "the management of communication between an organisation and its publics." (Johnson & Zawawi, 2004, pg 6). This grabbed my attention because it was similar to the definition I created to describe my own belief of what public relations is in the first lecture.
The key points to remember from this reading are under the sub-heading of 'The role of public relations practitioners.' These are, that according to Johnson and Zawawi (2004), public relations practitioners hold two primary roles.These are: technicians- people who produce publications such as news releases and problem solvers- people who ask senior management to clarify problems.
This information was new to me and therefore made me think more about public relations practice, in that I learnt that there are a multitude of tasks PR practitioners need to be able to undertake skilfully. PR is not all about parties and champaigne.
Finally, reading about data mining also made me think more about public relations practice.
Johnson and Zawawi (2004) do an excellent job in explaining this concept. They state that data mining is the process where computer software allows information, for example, a person's orders for pizza to be stored on data bases to be used by a company to influence its marketing campaigns in order to gain consumerism. Personally, I believe that although this has been extremely effective for marketers, as
according to the Commerial Ecomomic Advisory Service of Australia, data mining allowed the amount of money spent on direct marketing in 1999 to overtake mainstream advertising, this process is extremely intrusive. Due to the fact that our own personal information is being collected without our knowledge and marketing campaigns are being constructed for us to like, I believe that we are losing our freedom of choice. Does anyone else agree?
Within the second chapter of this book titled, 'A History of Public Relations in Australia,' I found many facts that i believed were interesting. The one i found most intriguing however, was that journalists who became PR practitioners were described as "abandoning a low-paid but honourable job to become a well-pain mercenary of business," (Johnson & Zawawi, 2004, p.33), by those who remained in Journalism.
I also did not know that the Packer family bought and closed down the last Labor Party owned newspaper, the World in order to begin the production of the Australian Women's Weekly.
Thus, overall i learnt alot this week as the readings clearly presented many interesting ideas. Stay tuned for more exciting discoveries! haha.
Note: I critiqued Alex Norman's blog this week.
References: Johnston, J., & Zawawi, C.(2004). What is Public Relations? In Johnston, J. & Zawawi, C. (Eds.),Public relations: theory and practice. (2nd ed). (pp. 3-22). Crows Nest: Allen & Unwin.
Zawawi, C. (2004). A History of Public Relations in Australia. In Johnston, J., & Zawawi, C. (Eds.),Public relations: theory and practice. (2nd ed). (pp. 23-42). Crows Nest: Allen & Unwin.