Electronic and Internet Public Relations Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Electronic and Internet Public Relations - Essay Example It has now become a necessity to integrate computer-mediated communication (CMC) with the PR mix of an organization. In the field of PR, internet makes it possible to communicate with various key constituencies without the message being altered by the media. The traditional channels are eliminated and direct communication with the audience is possible. The proliferation of the internet has allowed easier and faster access to information by the people as more than 50% homes in the US and the UK are internet-connected (Holtz, 2006). The internet has moved beyond a one-way channel for information and the speed of the internet, interactivity and the crossing of national borders make it highly attractive to public relations practitioners as a communication strategy tool (Hurme, 2001). Internet is different from World Wide Web (WWW) because in the WWW it is possible to place the advertising material like the company balance sheets or annual reports or new releases (Jo & Jung, 2005). WWW can be used as a distribution channel to reduce or eliminate distribution costs for products. Consumers can browse through the website and extract information before purchasing a product or service but this is only a one-way communication. The Web has been bifurcated into three different braches due to the social and technological changes that have taken place. These include the reference web which typically gives out information to the surfers, the collaborative web – through which the users share information and becomes a publisher on the net. The third is the broadband web which has turned the web into an audio and video venue (Holtz, 2006). Internet has thus been exploited in different ways to build and enhance the PR that an organization wants to build. Internet as a tool for PR can enhance media relations, employee communication, government relations and customer relations, due to its interactive function

The Arab Spring Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

The Arab Spring - Essay Example The anti-government protests and demonstrations were made not only by Arabs but also Africans. The word â€Å"spring† is an allusion or reference to water being a welcome development in the mostly arid geography of the MENA (the Middle East and North Africa) region. Other similar protests, uprisings, and rebellions were termed as â€Å"The Velvet Revolution† and the â€Å"People Power Revolution† (depending on the degree of peacefulness or violence) in other countries. Arab Spring started innocently enough in Tunisia when a street fruit vendor immolated (burned alive) himself to protest the lack of jobs for poor people like him. This vendor named Mohamed Bouazizi was reportedly a college graduate who could not find any decent job for himself to feed his family. Soon other protesters took up his cause and led to the downfall of long-time Tunisian president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. The events in Tunisia were soon copied by people in other countries like in Egypt (ousted two presidents), in Libya (where Gaddafi was eventually killed in the civil war with foreign military intervention), in Yemen (where its president handed over power to a national unity coalition), and still on-going in some places like in Syria (a full-scale civil war), street protests in Saudi Arabia, Mauritania, and Sudan, in demonstrations against the governments in Bahrain and the UAE (United Arab Emirates), or constitutional reforms implemented in Jordan, Lebanon, Oman, Kuwait, e tc. to stop protests. Historians, academicians, political scientists, and media practitioners are offering their own opinions and theories on why the Arab Spring had taken place in the MENA region at a particular time in this region's history. There is a real danger of civil uprisings turning into a full-scale civil war with the result of the country becoming a failed state like that in Somalia where there is no central governing authority and the country becomes a lawless place. Another risk is the Arab Spring could also be hijacked by other extremist or Islamist groups that will integrate themselves in the uprising and then later on grabbing the leadership of the movements when they think it is already right to do so and move it away from the original objectives of trying to obtain liberal democracy. The Arab world is known for its historical democratic deficit because of so many long-standing institutional control structures that hinder the introduction of meaningful changes in a nation (Chaney et al., 2012:363). The influential social, political, and religious structures had been in place for many centuries already since the Arab armies conquered these countries and to also introduce Islam wherever they went at that time in history. Many of these historical events are still exerting influential and enduring effects so that introducing change is very difficult.