Peer blog review

According to the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor (2006), Spain holds an “active and independent media with numerous newspapers, television, and radio stations at the local, regional, and national level.  Access to the internet is unrestricted” (p.1).  I found this information very interesting because of the last sentence.  It noted that access to the internet is unrestricted.  That would never be said in information regarding the United States.  Americans do not even understand the concept of not being allowed to access information.  It is always something we have at our fingertips.  This is clear by the abundant social media topics in the blogs of my peers.  It is overwhelming how many countries are undergoing changes because of the changes in media.  It affects everything, especially the public relations practices.  It is of utmost importance to the future of PR to understand the importance of these social media sites.  This is stressed in Kevin Mahoney’s blog.  All areas of public relations can be practiced with the help of social media, including crisis management.  We saw this with the Toyota car dealership crisis earlier this year. 

Another peer’s blog, showed how public relations is not only used in many ways, but all over the world.  She explains how the scientific experiment found in her article actually has a lot to do with public relations.  It is interesting to find how often public relations is used.  Often times we do not even take the action to be one of pr.

Experimental Research

For this week’s blog, I found an article discussing how international public relations firms are starting to become more professional.  In order for this to be successful, public relations professionals especially those in governmental areas, have been conducting more experiments.  In order to conduct the experiment, several researchers studied the opinions of certain countries abroad according to newspaper articles.  In this article, the researchers collected data through an interrupted time series design, which is a quasi-experiment.  This type of design discusses the changes that occur over time.  They discovered how to change the images of nations across the globe.  How countries are viewed in the media, makes all the difference.

Peer blog review

I read my classmate Katerina’s blog for this week’s assignment.  It very much interested me how she related qualitative research to social media. It had never occurred to me that the discussion section of facebook would contain so much qualitative data.  Qualitative data can be found anywhere.  This led me to wonder what I would come across on Spain if I was to search for it on facebook.  I found a few different Spanish public relations firms pages, but none of them sparked any discussion.  This shows how big of a part social media is in America, but how it has not seemed to flourish too much in Spain so far.  If I were to get an internship while studying abroad, I would try to incorporate social media into the daily life of the company.

Keeping with the social media theme, I decided to read my classmate Kevin’s blog, entitled “Social Media Breakfast: The Present and Future of Social Media” .  He discusses how it is important to know that media itself has not changed.  He stresses the importance of changing how a person gets a message or news to others.  The present and future of the media is social media.  Facebook and Twitter are social media tools that all public relations practitioners should familiarize with.  If Spain wants to connect internationally with Americans, the importance of social media must be stressed.  Products would be able to reach a further audience if they expanded their use of social media.

Qualitative research

Research is conducted all over the world, although it does not play as big of a role in Spain’s public relations practices. In class, we have discussed the importance of qualitative research.  Observational research helps a researcher gain better insight of the participant.  I found research that described a researcher’s attempt at finding out more about the migration policy and the reactions of Spaniards.  He wanted to understand the ups and downs of becoming an immigrant and discovered the best way to accomplish this would be to observe them.  He conducted his research at Oficina de Extranjeros in Madrid, Spain

The purpose of this study was to discover how to break the negative connotations associated with immigrants.  He thought it was important to discover the problems in the country’s immigration system, in order to break the disconnect between the people.  The researcher was able to figure out more by conducting a study where he could really get to know the thoughts of the immigrants.  If they were to fill out a survey, he would not be able to get such reliable information.  It is important to know what exactly a researcher is trying to figure out, before he or she conducts a study.

Peer blog review

A lot of countries struggle with public relations because of its accessibility to information and research.  Social media is an important part of public relations across the United States and is also an important factor to public relations in Spain.  Casey’s blog post entitled “Unobtrusive Research” explained how the number one job of a public relations practitioner is to keep up with changing media.  The video she used in her blog explained how social media is not only a trend in the United States, but in other countries as well.  Public relations professionals should be able to agree that technology is something that will always be very busy to the practice of public relations.  It is what is important now and will continue to be important for years to come.  It is important for public relations firms to establish a strong technological background.  Building social media in Spain should improve the perceived professionalism of the public relations practitioners, which is something that Spain is struggling with at the moment.

Practicing ethics in public relations is something that I would specifically advise to public relations practitioners in Spain.  This would help to improve the level of professionalization, that according to many studies, Spanish pr tends to be lacking right now.  Lisa Perez’s blog entitled “Research Ethics in the Media”, had a case study that dealt with mistrust of a company’s publics. It explains why people tend to mistrust public relations professionals.  The mistrust comes from professionals often trying to push the limits.  In order to gain credibility, it is important to tell the truth and let the people being researched know what they are really getting themselves into.  If practitioners are honest with their clients, there is no way that public relations will receive a bad name.

Crisis Management in Spain

A case study entitled, How should a company respond to a product harm crisis? The role of corporate reputation and consumer-based cues, deals with crisis management public relations in Belgium, France and Spain.  In this study, it reveals how high Spain and France rank when it comes to the uncertainty avoidance dimension.  According to the researchers, children in Belgium got sick from drinking Coca-Cola and Belgium, Spain, and France boycotted all products from the company.  The researcher goes on to say that perhaps people from areas with high uncertainty avoidance index react more strongly and quickly in blaming the company, than having the ability to see other possibilities from where there could have been error.  He is able to conclude this because other countries such as Denmark and Sweden did not completely ban Coca-Cola products.  This just shows further how different cultures will react to scenarios in different ways.  PR practitioners must know the country and culture they are dealing with, in order to react properly, especially during times of crisis.

Every public relations course has taught us that we need to know our target audience.  This cannot be stressed enough when practicing public relations internationally.  Public relations professionals must be aware how public relations differs greatly from country to country.

Reviews of Classmate blogs

It was very interesting to find out the similarities in the Public Relations interests of my peers.  The following blogs helped me to understand more on my research topic about the public relations practices in Spain.

Mara Yamnicky has been working on a blog dedicated towards global experiences with public relations.  She wrote about a United States article in PR week, which discussed the difficulties public relations practitioners encounter during a campaign. It explained how PR professionals are not willing to spend the time and money they need to in order to conduct legitimate research.  Spain is dealing with this very concept now. She also mentions another article from the UK that discusses how most large Public relations companies do not believe that measurement should be used for a large part of the budget.  In fact, the practitioners believed that measurement should only account for somewhere between one and ten percent of the budget.  Her blog relates to mine because it shows the outstanding differences from the way pr is practiced in the United States, compared to places around the world.

Another blog also took a spin on international public relations.  Vam88’s blog is entitled, “International Ethics: Difficult to Define” and its main focus is the ethical practices of France.  The information she uncovered from her research is very similar to what I have been learning this semester in my both my public relations research course and my international pr course.  When conducting public relations on a global scale, it is important to realize that people from different countries conduct themselves differently than we are used to in the United States.  It is important to do research on the country before launching a campaign.