As I mentioned in the previous two blog posts, Public Relations is used to get ultimate goal by changing the attitude of public with different ways. Public Relations can maintain in private corporations and settle crisis. How about using it to help government?
Certainly…Yes ! A government have to face different kinds of issue and crisis from any part of society everyday, and also have to communicate and get support from different parties in political decision-making in order to run the government smoothly. Government do need Public Relations to be the problem solver, persuader to public by their professional field, relation and communication work.
Government Public Relations is a specific field and different but similar with Political and Corporation Public Relations. In Government Public Relations, the focus point is how to make communication to beneficial to run the government, in every part. Also, Government Public Relations practitioner have to promote to persue policy objective by government information officer (Stockwell, 2014).
Different with Corporation Communication we explored about last time, Government Public Relations requires more public involvement and community work because a government is serving public and have to be close and transparent enough to the community in order to gain ultimate effect with the highest efficiency and lead the usage of capital to the campaigns or other Public Relations work from tax payers are appropriately. Also, Government Public Relations will face many of challenge and crisis such as reaction from the public expectation of the government, lack of community involvement and two-way communication, protests during campaign, failure when coordinating with different parties and so on.
The following is the well-known example of Government Public Relations. Let’s explore what the government did:
Act Now (2010)
from hkdesigncritique (WordPress blog)
Act Now is a series of campaign that to promote about the proposed electoral reform in 2012 which was a big controversial issue that time. Donald Tsang, the former Chief Executive went promotion in district under the campaign with his team. However, the reaction from public, the performance of the team such as wrong of pronunciation and no unified action gained bad feedback like the second-creation of “All Wrong” with the campaign graphic.
This case had shown the Government Public Relations work that time needed a big improvement. As the related practitioners, when handling such big controversial issues that required community support, the preparation works should be done as perfect as possible. For example, good coordination such as unify what they going to do with the promotion team include the Chief Executive and legislators. This is able provide an image to public that the government have passionate in the reform in order to change the public attitude towards the reform from the government which is the ultimate goal of the Government Public Relations that time.
“All Wrong” – from Chonghead.net
Since a government is facing to the public they serve and also the international scope, Government Public Relations is very important to the image of the government. If the public relation works did well, the international image will be increased; if not, it will be an international joke or even bring the government into a crisis.
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References
Stockwell, S. 2014, ‘Government and political public relations’ in J. Johnston & M. Sheehan (eds), Public relations theory and practice, 4th edn, Allen and Unwin, Crows Nest.
https://designcritique.wordpress.com/2010/07/
http://chonghead.net/2010/06/02/%E8%B6%85%E9%8C%AF%EF%BC%81/
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