Public Relation

• Delphi process - a method of polling an audience to reach a consensus. It begins with a questionnaire designed to allow open-ended responses.

• Pretest - pilot study - questionnaire are used to gauge the initial reasons and the validity of doing a particular investigation. It can be translated into another language to be sure that the intended meaning is conveyed by word choice.

• Public
- any group of people tied together by some common bond of interest or concern and who have consequences on an organization.
- divided into nominatively, demographically and psychographically

• psychographics refers to the various lifestyle, ie VALS (values, attitudes and lifestyles)

• external public - exist outside an institution

• internal public share the institutional identity

• audience -people who are recipients of something (message or performance)

Issues:
• Identification
-first step in monitoring an organization's socio-economic and political climate for developments.
-helps foresee when opinion is likely to hold
-creates opportunity to avoid a crisis and engage in beneficial communication.

• Management
-sensing the problem: research
-defining the problem: setting priority
-deriving solutions: selecting strategies
-implementing solutions
-evaluating outcomes.

Mahon's issues strategies
• choose appropriate strategy depending on life cycle of issue (create good image, good perceptions)
• contain an emerging issue
• shape an issue that has media attention and is on the public agenda
• cope with issues that face legislative, regulatory or interest group action.

Convincing management to address an issue
• state the issue specifically and describe specific effects
• identify adversaries and friends
• develop a strategy that includes deciding whether to take the initiative
• determine whether to involve coalitions it go it alone.

Image and Perception
- the organisaion's image in the publics eyes
- based on what