Chinese public relation policies leave much to be desired: Communication expert

April 28, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Columbia, Apr 28 (ANI): The public relations policies of China leave much to be desired, said Ernest Zhang, the China program coordinator at the University of Missouri School of Journalism and an expert in international communications.

According to a study authored by him, the PR policies adopted by China’s Health Minister Zhang Wenkang during the SARS outbreak were of a poor standard, if not unworkable.

“In China, as with many countries that were previously pure Communist societies, there was no PR, just propaganda,” Zhang said.

“Propaganda doesn””t work sometimes. PR is much more effective, but it has taken the Chinese Government a long time to realize this. The SARS crisis was a learning process for the government,” he adds.

In his study, Zhang applies William Benoit””s comprehensive theory of image restoration to analyze Minister Zhang””s public relations methods.

This theory involves five strategies: denial, evading responsibility, reduction of offensiveness, corrective action, and mortification.

When applying this theory to Minister Zhang””s strategies, Zhang found the attempt of image repair to an abject failure.

“Minister Zhang””s arguments were based on lies or inaccurate information. Public opinion surveys indicated Minister Zhang””s discourse actually hurt the Chinese government””s image, rather than helping it,” Zhang observes.

Zhang believes that Wenkang’s public relations failure was the primary reason for the Chinese Government removing him.

“The Chinese Government is doing much better now, but they need to do more. There are still some cases and issues where they are still falling short,” Zhang said. (ANI)

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Facebook fans find searching for pals best

April 24, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Washington, April 24 (ANI): Facebook users enjoy searching for friends the most, a new American study has found.

Kevin Wise, an assistant professor of strategic communication at the University of Missouri School of Journalism, examined people”s habits when they navigate Facebook.

Wise says previous studies on social networking sites involved merely surveying study participants. Wise conducted his study differently.

He said: “Rather than asking people to report their uses of Facebook, we wanted to see them in action.

“We wanted to see if there is a way to categorize Facebook use, not based on what people say about it, but what they actually do when they are using it.”

During the study, participants were seated at a computer and told to navigate Facebook for a determined amount of time.

Participants could view anything they wished during that time, as long as they stayed on the Facebook website. Using screen-capturing software, Wise was able to view every action that each participant made while on the site.

The researchers attached sensors to various parts of the participants” bodies to measure potential emotional responses as the participants navigated Facebook.

Wise categorized participants” actions into two different groups: social browsing and social searching.

He defines social browsing as navigating the site without a targeted goal in mind.

Wise says people use social browsing when they survey the general landscape, such as their newsfeed or wall, without looking for specific information.

Wise defines social searching as searching the social networking site with the goal of finding certain information about a specific person, group, or event.

He found that participants tended to spend much more time on social searching than social browsing. Not only did participants spend more time on social searching, but they seemed to enjoy it more as well.

Wise said: “We found a more positive response from participants during social searching, or when they had homed in on a particular target.

“Ultimately, it appears that Facebook use is largely a series of transitions between browsing the environment, then focusing in on something interesting or relevant.”

Wise says that this was an exploratory study to move past how people say they use Facebook in favour of studying their actual behaviour.

He says that there are many more questions about how people use social networking sites that he hopes to study in the future. (ANI)

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Consumers blame organization for crises more when customers are injured

April 17, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Washington, Apr 17 (ANI): Consumers tend to blame organization for crises more when the injured party is a consumer, rather than a member of the organization, according to a University of Missouri (MU) study.

When crises such as the recent Toyota recalls occur, public relations practitioners develop strategies to minimize damage to company images.

Researchers have found that consumers blame an organization for crises more when customers are injured, as opposed to when members or employees of the organizations are injured.

In the study, researchers also concluded that the identity of the injured in a crisis is more important to consumers when determining blame than the actual seriousness of the crisis.

“These results provide important practical insights to public relations practitioners who manage crises. Specifically, the results show that people hold an organization responsible in cases where customers are injured rather than when company employees are injured, regardless of the degree of crisis severity. Thus, organizations should perform appropriate crisis response strategies immediately when consumers have been injured from a crisis,” said Sun-A Park, doctoral student at the University of Missouri School of Journalism.

The researchers gave 123 study participants various news stories about plane crashes that differed in severity, whether the injuries were to consumers, such as passengers, or members of the company, such as the pilots or flight attendants.

After reading the articles, participants overwhelmingly blamed on the airline for the crises when passengers were injured, regardless of the severity or the number of people injured.

Apart from the identity of the injured party and the severity of the crisis, the size of a company and its control of the market are also significant factors concerning how consumers place blame, said Park.

“The bigger the company, the more blame the public puts on it. There was a case in which people blamed Apple because they thought the iPod caused hearing problems, even though research shows that iPod audio levels aren’t any louder than other MP3 players. Apple is the number one company in the MP3 player market, and there is no evidence that the iPod actually caused a hearing loss problem, but since it is such a large company, people chose to blame Apple instead of taking responsibility themselves to control the volume,” said Park.

The research was published in The Handbook of Crisis Communication. (ANI)

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Traditional media gives more comprehensive news than citizen websites and blogs

April 9, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Washington, April 9 (ANI): Researchers from the University of Missouri School of Journalism have found that despite financial troubles and cutbacks, traditional media Web sites are more comprehensive and technologically advanced than citizen media and bloggers.

“We found that legacy sites offered almost double the percent of news (89 percent) in comparison with citizen news sites (56 percent) and three times that of blogs (27 percent),” said Margaret Duffy, faculty chair in strategic communication in the Journalism School.

“The topic coverage on blogs and citizen new sites is generally narrow and the sourcing is light,” Duffy added.

Working in collaboration with researchers from Michigan State University and the University of North Carolina, Duffy and colleague Esther Thorson analysed citizen news sites in 47 towns and cities across the US.

The researchers found an average of fewer than two citizen news sites per city.

According to them, Two-thirds of the sites were blogs, and the other sites contained news content.

“One of the biggest surprises we found was that mainstream media Web sites were almost as welcoming to citizen participation as citizen journalism sites, and they were far more welcoming than blogs. Many industry professionals hope that citizen sites will democratise news media, but that hope has yet to be realized,” Thorson said.

The second phase of the study showed that many of the citizen sites and blogs examined in the first phase had become dormant or disappeared.

Even though some citizen sites and bloggers were found to be doing well, many were struggling to survive and support their efforts, said Duffy.

The researchers also found that blogs were less likely than citizen news sites to permit posting comments or emailing the site.

They said that the majority of mainstream sites provided rules and policies for contributing stories and photos.

They further revealed that blogs and news sites were more likely than legacy media to post links within stories to outside sources.

However, citizen sites linked to legacy news sites twice as often as legacy sites linked to citizen sites.

Citizen sites were also found to use legacy sites as news sources.

The study was recently published in the State of the Media 2009 report by the Project for Excellence in Journalism. (ANI)

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