Media Essay: Global Media and Cultural Landscapes

Global Media and Cultural Landscapes
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Introduction
Public relations (PR) involve the maintenance of a good public image by a public figure or an organization. It can also be defined as a distinctive management function that helps establish and maintain mutual lines of communication, understanding, acceptance, and co-operation between an organization and its publics; involves the management of problems or issues; helps management to keep informed on and responsive to public opinion; defines and emphasizes the responsibility of management to serve the public interest; helps management keep abreast of and effectively utilize change, serving as an early warning system to help anticipate trends; and uses research and sound and ethical communication techniques as its principal tools (Hutton, 1999, p. 200). The Public relations society of America (PRSA) have redefined the PR as a strategic communication process that builds mutually beneficial relationships between organizations and their publics (Dragilev, 2020). Notably, the definition of PR has changed over time due to changes and advancement in the society brought about technological shifts and globalization, hence there is need for experts in the field to redefine PR in a bid to continue serving its role in modern society.
The PR industry has rapidly advanced since the beginning of the 21St century. The field has evolved and matured to an advanced level. Currently, PR are being adopted in many major organizations, government corporations, and trade unions across the world. It plays a significant role in the strategic management of relationships between these organizations and the general public. PR is aided by the use of communications to achieve understanding and realize the organization's goals while meeting the public interests (Seaman, 2009, p.3). In modern society, institutions use PR as a means to set up a two-way dialog to actualize mutual understanding between them. It plays important functions both in business and within organizations, such as it can be used to resolve conflicts between two organizations. It performs a significant role in accomplishing organizational goals. It is used to build and maintain the reputation of an institution. It can also help in the selling of products and services in a business (Wilcox, 2006, p.68).
Evolution of Media in Public Relations
In the past, PR was viewed as a one-way approach to communication. It was a tool used by organizations to manage their communications and has often been a reactive function. However, recently there have been huge shifts in regards to the role of PR, thus having impacts on the practitioners. The current thinking and theories of PR focus on the two-way relational communication model, of which the purpose of PR is to create a dialogue between an organization and its respective publics and establishing mutual understanding (Berkowitz, 2007, p. 120). To date, the sole purpose of PR remains to get our story out of an organization.
In the 21st century, the major advancement in PR is the use of the internet. As of October 200, Statista reported 4.66 billion people as active internet users, which account for 59 percent of the global population. The internet has become such a powerful tool that is increasingly being used to enhance communication between an organization and publics (Bourne, 2016, p. 174). Globalization has become a reality, thus making the world look like a small village. The three main areas that have explored the use of the internet are; blogs, podcasts, and social media.
Blogging
Blogging is the ability to continually post one’s opinions and ideas. The significance of blogging is to invite individuals to engage in conversations about topics (Berkowitz, 2007, p. 124). In blogging, specialists in PR do not depend on reporters to promote the company instead, they present how they want it in blogs. The blogs provide a platform whereby customers or potential customers are effectively involved in an organizational brand more than the traditional ways. By the use of blogs, the staff of an organization can view who enters their site in search of information through Google Analytics. It is used to track traffic, referrals, and which of the post are seen well. In this case, the PR is solely responsible for the image of the company (Teodorescu, 2016, p. 102).
Podcasts
Another powerful tool in PR is podcasts. Podcasts can be deployed to establish relationships and develop dialogues with the publics and the stakeholders of an organization. In June 2020, the Oberlo website reported that 850,000 people are active podcast users with 30 million podcast episodes. A podcast is a way of disseminating information by multimedia files through audio or video files on the internet. In comparison to blogging, the podcast is viewed to be a bit traditional, as it only facilitates one-way communication. Podcasts have the advantage of timeless streaming all over the internet (Berkowitz, 2007, p. 126).
Social Media
In the recent upsurge in modern technologies, social media has become such a powerful tool used for PR purposes. The PR campaigns can be assessed through platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, and more. With the help of social media, the PR teams can easily gauge the reputation of a company and how information reaches the public domain. Through social media, PR teams can adopt good strategies for increasing the credibility of a company (Teodorescu, 2016, p. 102).
Need to redefine public relations
Cultural Theory
The cultural and social aspects have contributed to the redefining of PR. The cultural approach is significant to human communication and relationship building. Culture affects communication, and PR is fundamentally a communication activity, so it is logical to say that culture affects PR. This means that PR deals with various contexts of culture both at the social level and at organizations.PR and cultural practices are integrated into the societal, organization, and perspective thus influenced by national and organizational expectation demanded values. The societal culture and corporate culture influence the work of PR in the promotional industry. Cultural intermediation, which influences the consumer market, provides a background understanding of PR experts as promotional workers (Edwards, 2018, p.39).  
PR acts as a cultural intermediary that shapes taste and dispositions and creates identification between consumers and producers (Ihlen & van, 2009, p.125). Promotional intermediaries help in identifying marketable products and potential audiences using different channels of communication for circulating messages to the right audiences and perfect timing. But societies are changing rapidly in the digital age and the emergence of networked societies has all resulted in deep shifts in the fabric of society and culture. And with the changing customer preferences, businesses are continuously seeking the trust and reliability of consumers from different cultural backgrounds. This forces PR experts to be innovative and look at various means that enable the business to globalize to gain a competitive edge in new markets. Therefore, Experts have to find innovative strategies that will meet the specific local market conditions and cultural demand (Edwards, 2018, p.39).
Gender is one of the sensitive topics in PR that needs to be addressed. Research indicates that women face significant challenges in the field eve...