Transforming the city: The potential for urban ethnographies for PR. The case for Latin America / Caroline E.M Hodges, Janice Denegri-Knott

I read the article today. I found interesting ideas. I would like to find more information about cities and PR. Like that topic the urbanization, the culture and historical aspects are very strong and they have to be studied from PR practitioners.

Arabs, the West and public relations: A critical/cultural study of Arab / Ali Al-Kandari, T.Kenn Gaither

Very interesting article. Reading about the cultural aspect in PR in Arab world was good experience.

The article identifies the cultural value orientations that influence Arab world. It shows the commitment to religion, the strong family connection and resistance to change.


Public relations can play very useful role to rectify misinformation between Arab cultures and the West. The paper illustrates examples how PR can bridge differences between cultures.
The scholars’ opinion is that to define the term Arab is not easy. An Arab student declared in a conference that ‘ all who are Arab in their language, culture and loyalty ( or national feeling) are Arabs.’
After reading the article I realised that Arab culture is rich and complex.

The family as a unit and religion in the Arab world are very strong. The article is about Muslim Arabs, because not every Arab is Muslim. Arab Muslims are proud people, they are proud of their faith, tradition and language. The paper explains that every message sent to Arab Muslims has to be linked to their god – Allah, or the Koran to be easy for people to assimilate the new information, to accept it and to believe in it. My personal opinion is different.

 

Globalization and public relations: An overview looking into the future, Sriramesh

I read with pleasure Sriramesh's essay and I am going to make some notes on the most interesting points  for me . The cultural aspect of PR is one of my favourite topics, that is why I am planning to use Sriramesh's article in my future researches.

''Rapid globalization has created new opportunities and challenges as well to PR practice. The cultural aspect in PR could be defined with a view of the future.

In the past decade big number of PR scholars has contended that PR like practice had been in existence even in pre-biblical times. Other example is that in the Middle East PR can be traced back at least 4000 years. German scholars have traced the roots of ‘modern’ PR in Germany to the mid-nineteenth century.

            The early days of theorising PR was focused around two major streams of scholarship:

·         PR at the organizational level

·         Individual practitioner roles

The body of knowledge of PR had been largely ethnocentric until the middle 1990. After that scholarships started to study the practice in other countries.

Globalization is the reason of moving the PR body of knowledge toward greater cultural relativism.

The essay gives an overview of PR in the global sphere and provides a definition for PR.

Defining PR and linking it with globalization:

‘’PR is strategic communication that different types of organizations use for establishing and maintaining symbiotic relationships with relevant publics many of whom are increasingly becoming culturally divers’’   

There are three principal factors that put globalization on a different scale:

1.      The elimination of trade barriers among nations of the world

-          World trade organization – cultural diversity – consumers, employees, activists, members of media

2.      Media and Communications – need for global public relations

3.      The human race needs to come together and address common problems like – pollution, terrorism, etc

Moving PR scholarship to the ‘International arena’

Ø  The Excellence project - $ 400.000 research study

Ø  The growth of non-US graduate students studying PR in the US.

Thanks to the project was edited volum by Grunig and in it there was proposed culture as a variable that affects PR practice.

Internationalising the body of knowledge of PR:

Framework from the Excellence project:

1.       10 generic principles of PR – can be adopted by PR in different cultures

2.       Environment for PR

Ø  Culture

Ø  Media

Ø  Political system

Ø  Level of development

Ø  Activism


Future

The books used for teaching PR around the world came from US and UK. The need of global examples is very big.  The books from US and UK should contain more ‘global’ cases.

There are some scholarship in countries such as France, Germany, Brazil their studies has been limited by language. English language continue to be the ‘universal’ language of choice.