An Analysis of Governments’ Use of Interactive Media as a Global Public Relations Strategy

The existence of new media is an eye-opener to the Government to use the tools in communicating directly to the publics. Compared to traditional media, Internet-based interactive media have more advantages to incorporate visual and innovative items such as interactive maps, games, and Podcasts. In the context of national government websites, this research observed that governments develop many features on their online portals and utilize these features to communicate specially with foreign online visitors.

Dialogic communication is used as modern strategic of public relations. According to Mikhail Bakhtin, dialogue communication is informed and continual information of the previous or multiple works. Practically, public relations practitioners are expected to use dialogic strategies and to provide counsel. These fundamental discussions of dialogic communication have grown rapidly because of the development of the World Wide Web and other communication technologies.

The nature of Internet media has increased the interactions between organizations and home and host stakeholders, and interactive media enhanced the communication and relationship-building and functions of public relations practitioners. However, this research further illustrated, the online communication practices of national governments in every continent examining the differences by the regions of the world. Overall, Oceania and North America are the top-two countries for all three political and socioeconomic, followed by Europe, Latin America, and Asia. This result may imply that countries in developed countries practice global public relations more effectively than those in developing countries.

From a global public relations perspective, the empowerment of public opinion is the evolution of public relations as a strategic organizational function that aims at building relationships, gain understanding, collaboration, and community nationally and globally. In addition, this study is a further examination of the impact of cultural differences on the global public relations practices, as well as democratic values and principles. For example, participation, equality, and transparency based on pluralism and open-market systems are the essential elements of a democratic society; the enhanced two-way communication in allowing public opinion.

From the perspective of Malaysian Government, we can see the effort of the Prime Minister to apply the new media as a medium for two-way communication; by using Facebook, Twitter etc. Whether the usage of new media is giving a positive impact to the Government, share your opinion on this matter.

Source: http://www.prsa.org/intelligence/prjournal/documents/2011kimmolleda.pdf

Reviewed by Mirdalinie Bt. Mohamed

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