Chapter 1 and 2

First Readings:
Chapter 1 - What is PR?
Chapter 2 - A History of PR in Australian
-------------------------------------------------

Reading chapter 1 I was positively surprised how easy the access to the topic was. In my studies in Austria, the concepts and theories of PR are always explained in a very broad and rather complicated way. Here, alltough English isn't my mother tongue, everything was explained in a very clear manner and a clear structure. However, the definitions were nearly the same, the core point in my mind is 'maintaining an organisation's relations with its various publics'. What I was missing a little bit were the emphasis on the terms 'communication' and 'dialogue' which are more frequently used in the literature I have read so far.

The definitions of the tasks very also very useful and easy to overview. The role of PR practitioners, divided in technicans and problem/solvers, was also very suitable. All the other stuff like activities, the borderline to marketing and advertising, publics, audiences, skills and stakeholders and academical education were really familiar to me. Only the concept of 'stakeholder' and 'stakeholder management' should be mentioned more detailed, I think, because that are good ways to understand organisations, their enviroment and the need for communication and dialogue. An interesting point was, that the trend to feminisation is also very strong in Austria and Germany...

uups, time is running out and I've only written about the first chapter :)

Chapter two was really interesting in the way, that the history of PR seems to be quite the same in Australia and Austria, which in my mind is above all due to he evolution of media, media technics and public sphere, which has been similiar in both countries. So it seems logical to me that everything has started with press agentry and that the boom of PR started from the 1950, both in a economic and an academical view.

The two greatest differences which came up to me where firstly the importance of the publicity for Hollywood movies, which was in Australia a big thing in the beginning of the 20th century. Secondly the greatest difference seems to be that PR in Australia from my point of view was never connoted in a negative way (I hope I didn't ignore anything...). In Austria and Germany it is a big part in PR history, that PR and all forms of persuasive communication was connoted in a really bad way due to the experiences with propaganda during the second world war. So the branche had a bad reputation in these years, whereas in Australia, the textbook mentioned, the 'World War II becomes the catalyst to allow public relations to develop into a fully fledged profession' (p.40).


Ok, now time is definitely over...