Public relations definition?

People often define public relations by some of its most visible techniques and tactics, such as publicity in a newspaper, a television interview with an organization's spokesperson, or the appearance of a celebrity as a special event. What people fail to understand is that public relations is a process involving many subtle aspects. It includes research and analysis, policy formation, programming, communication and feedback from numerous publics. Its practitioners operate on two distinct levels-as advisers to their clients or to an organization's top management, and as technicians who produce and disseminate messages in multiple media channels.

A large number of definitions has been formulated over the years. Preoccupied by this problem, Rex F. Harlow, one of the most renowned theorist and practitioner of the domain, has initiated in 1975 a broad study on public relations definitions. In co-operation with other 65 specialists from all over the world, Rex F. Harlow studied all the definitions written between 1900-1975, in the attempt to identify and classify it major elements. In 1976, he scoured through 472 definitions of public relations to come up with the following paragraph:

Public relations is a distinctive management function which 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.

(Harlow, quoted in Harrison 1995:3)

Although it is useful as it contains many key concepts, it describes what PR does rather than what it is. Since then, of course, there have been many more attempts to capture the essence of public relations.

At its meeting in Mexico in 1978, the World Assembly of Public Relations Associations agreed that:

Public relations is the art and social science of analyzing trends, predicting their consequences, counselling organization leaders and implementing planned pragrammes of action which will serve both the organization's and the public interest.

The words “art” and “social science” are helpful in explaining the permanent tension between understanding PR as a measurable, science-based application of communication tools, and the affection of many practitioners for the looser, more creative, aspects of the work. In the USA the social science elements dominate the understanding of PR, as is reflected in their education and texts about the subject. In the UK , PR is largely – though not exclusively - considered a management function and is taught in business schools. In both countries it is sometimes found in schools of journalism.

The Institute of Public Relations (IPR) is the UK 's leading professional body for public relations practitioners and was established in 1948. The definition framed by the IPR in 1987 is still useful:

Public Relations is the planned and sustained effort to establish and maintain goodwill and understanding between an organization and its publics.

There are several key words worth noting here: “planned” and “sustained” suggest these relationships are not automatic or effortless. Indeed, they have to be “established” and “maintained”. Public relations work exists in time – it is not a series of unrelated events. We should also note that the aim is not popularity or approval, but goodwill and understanding. Many think that PR is just about promoting an organization, whereas most PR work involves ensuring publics have an accurate view of the organization, even if they don't like what it does. (Theaker 2001:4)

The definition also raises the word “publics”, which implies the two-way communication and the feedback from audiences and will be discussed more comprehensively in chapter IV. It is important, however, to stress here that one of the key concepts of PR is the idea that publics have different information needs and exert different demands on organizations. Understanding these differences is a very important skill of PR practitioners.

In the following year the Public Relations Society of America published a report on the terminology including terms as corporate communications and public affairs. The report concluded that there is no satisfactory alternative to the term “public relations”, definitions of which are given as follows:

Public relations helps an organization and its publics to adapt mutually to each other.

Public relations is an organization's efforts to win co-operation of groups of people.

Public relations helps organizations effectively interact and communicate with their key publics.

A recent trend is to look at public relations in terms of an organization's reputation.

The I P R's definition admits that:

Public Relations practice is the discipline concerned with the reputation of organizations (or products, services or individuals) with the aim of earning understanding and support.

This is sometimes simplified further to:

Public relations is about reputation – the result of what you do, what you say and what others say about you.

Even if there are no universally accepted definitions of public relations, this is probably the most satisfying of the current definitions: it is simple and doesn't attempt to catalogue all the tasks involved in managing reputation.

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