Public Relations Strategy: Social Media

This essay provides a systematic plan to prevent early social media access for children and addresses the ethical implications. It focuses on target public, communication mediums, strategy and tactics, and monitoring and evaluation.

Running head: PUBLIC RELATIONS STRATEGY: SOCIAL MEDIA
PUBLIC RELATIONS STRATEGY: SOCIAL MEDIA
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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The essay is focused towards providing a systematic plan through which the early
social media access of children can be prevented. The study focuses on the problems that tend
to affect children resulting from their early access to social media which include emotional
abuse and privacy issues among various other negative effects. A systematic public
relationship strategy needs to be created in order to address the identified issues related to the
early social media access of children. Hence, the study focuses on providing a strategy to
reach out to the identified target audiences and spread awareness about the negative ethical
implications in regards to early social media access. In recent studies t has been found that
children between the ages of 10 and 12 in the UK have access to social media despite being
much under the specified age limit for having social media accounts. It was further found that
children born after 2010, also known as the generation alpha are increasingly using social
media and being inclined towards such practices (Jamieson 2019). Accessing social media at
such a young age raises serious ethical concerns as these practices can have wide ranging
social impacts that can create a negative environment for children. On a personal level this
can hamper the natural and effective growth of children as they might be exposed to content
on social media that is highly inappropriate for them to view at such a young age. A
systematic public relations campaign needs to be created to address the several ethical
concerns that are raised due to the children accessing social media at an early age. In order to
form an effective strategy the four significant areas that need to be considered are target
public, communicational factors, the strategy and tactics to be considered and monitoring and
evaluation. Especially, the ethical implications that concern the social media usage of
children are considered essentially.
Target public becomes an important consideration in this case as an effective public
relations campaign can only be formed if the right publics are identified. In this case the
target public forms a number of people. Primarily, the children can be said to be the target

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public. However, the target public are not limited to children as solely the children cannot be
made effectively aware about the ethical issues related to their early social media usage.
Hence, the campaign needs to integrate within the plan effective means to reach out to the
parents, guardians, teachers and other social groups advocating children’s rights (Vittrup et
al. 2016). It is important to look at the ethical dimensions of the problem as most of the
negative social impacts that can be caused by the issue are related essentially to the ethical
concerns. As with any other public relations campaign research becomes the important
primary part of the process for establishing an effective strategy in this case. Research would
include the systematic gathering, analysis and subsequent evaluation of the most important
and relevant data. To form an effective strategy considering research as an integral part the
RACE framework can be adopted. The focus of the RACE model is towards Research,
Action and Planning, Communication and Evaluation (Jelen-Sanchez 2017). This helps to
form strategies that can help to create effective public relations strategies that can have
optimally effective outcomes.
The target public need to be formed as it will help to identify the most important
stakeholders and approach them accordingly. The most important target audience in this case
are the children. In news article that were published recently it was pointed out that children
are increasingly ignoring the age limits to open their social media accounts. 10 to 12 year
olds were opening social media account, which was a serious ethical concern especially for
their parents. The most alarming news was the usage of social media by around three-fourths
of the children of primary leaving age. Early teens between the age of 13 to 18 years were
found to be around 96% using social media. Facebook was found to be the most widely used
social networking site by children below the permissible age of having a social media account
(Jamieson 2019). Hence, the age group that needs to be focused essentially can be considered
to be between 10 to 16 years. The second most important public are the parents or guardians

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of the children. This is the group that should be considered to be equal in importance to the
primary target groups. The major ethical concerns should be regulated by this group. Parents
are naturally focused towards raining their children with good levels of ethical standards.
However, accessing social networking at an early age can expose them to content that might
induce unethical behaviour among them. As these are the people concerned with guiding the
children and act as guardians it becomes very important to reach out to the parents. After
parents teachers are the next important targets. Usually, the children spend a long time of
their day interacting with their tutors. It is important that the awareness about the issue is
spread among teachers so that they can guide the children and take disciplinary actions if
required. The next target audiences are the children’s rights groups. These group form
important target audiences as they advocate rights of children as well as ethical standards for
the effective up brining of children. It is possible to reach a much larger audience through this
group. Their engagement in the PR strategy becomes important for success. Hence, the focus
should be towards integrating the children, the parents, the teachers and institution and the
children’s welfare groups for achieving the most desirable outcomes from the PR campaign.
Communication becomes an important aspect in regards to the PR program that needs
to be created. Hence, the important part is to consider the communications mediums that
would be the most important in reaching out to the public. Creation of a preventions program
would need to consider communication as an important factor. Communication becomes
important as it becomes central to research as well as creation of awareness. The important
factor is in this case is optimizing the communication mediums to reach out effectively to all
the target audiences (Macnamara et al. 2018). PR campaign cannot function without proper
communication as it is important to reach out to the people that form essential part of them.
Firstly, it becomes important to gather data that is relevant and necessary to move forward
with the program. Surveys are very important tools through which the opinions, behavioural

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tendencies and outlooks of the target audiences can be recorded and measured subsequently.
Through surveys the target audience can be made aware of the problem. Subsequently, it can
be used to gather their opinion and other important data related to the subject. The survey
sheets can be distributed among the children, parents or teachers. The information gathered
could point towards the social media usage, time spent on social media, effect on studies and
development and effect on behaviour of the children. Other forms of important
communication mediums that can be used are audio-visual messages, newspapers,
community programs, school sessions, online communication and even social media
campaigns. Each of the mentioned communication mediums can be effective in spreading the
message about the nature of the problem to all the essential target audiences. The message
also becomes important as a clear and easy to understand and relatable message need to be
provided.
Media, technology and platforms become important in both creating the message and
sending the same to the target audience. Audio-visual medium can be very effective in
reaching out to all the identified target audiences. Videos can be created and viewed to the
audiences through TV, smartphones, computers and projectors. Audio visual messages can be
shown in community programs. Projectors can be used to show the same audio visual
messages in classrooms. Additionally, an important form of communication is online
communication. Online social media platforms can be used to make the parents and other
legitimate social media users aware about the presence of children in social media (Valentini
2015). This can ensure vigilant and responsible attitudes from the internet literate publics.
The ethical consideration in this case is that children may be drawn to negative aspects of the
social media. They may join groups that engage in self harm, pornography, blackmailing or
sexually explicit activities. The message should clearly point out these ethical aspects.
Community programs and school sessions can be used effectively to make the students

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understand about the harm that can be caused by social media. Responsible behaviour needs
to be projected through all the communication mediums. The school session can be used to
target both teachers and children. The community programs can be used to target children,
parents and the child welfare groups. Newspapers can be used to reach an even larger
audience than the actual decided target audience base. Online platforms that can be used are
social media sites such as Instagram or Pinterest. Youtube is also an important platform for
sending the important messages. Images, videos, short films can be made to make people
more and more aware of the issues concerning the subject. It is important that the message
remains consistent throughout the communication process across all the channels that are
used. Social media campaigns can be created against the access of the children below the
permissible age. The negative influences on social media needs to be highlighted.
Strategy and tactics become very important for the effective implementation of the
plan. Since the entire value and effectiveness of the program would depend on the
implementation of the planned strategies and tactics, it becomes very important that the right
strategies are taken. Primarily it becomes very important to consider the type of organization
that would be effective in making the program successful. The social nature of the issue
makes it feasible and effective if the program is implemented by any non-profit organization.
However, the program and campaign need to be large scale and any single non-profit
organization might not be able to effectively handle the entire process. It becomes important
that a coordinated approach is taken involving the engagement of a large number of
stakeholders (Jelen-Sanchez 2017). The major stakeholders need to be the government and
the larger non-profit organizations. The government ministry of women and child welfare can
actively participate in the initiative and provide help and all necessary resources to the non-
profits. Children that have been exposed to social media have on a majority basis reported
some kind of abuse or hate that they have come across in the social media (Chassiakos et al.

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2016). Non-profit organizations in this case would have the necessary information available
to work on in favour of the program. Additionally, one of the important target audiences that
have been identified are the children’s welfare groups. Hence, the alliance of a significant
number of non-profit organizations can actually help to create a wider network as these
organizations would have essential coordination and knowledge sharing activities with the
children’s welfare groups. In view of the same it becomes important that the non-profits are
related to some of the other kind of work concerning children, women and social welfare.
The intervention of the government would increase the acceptability of the campaign among
the target public.
The intervention of the government would create a sense of security and trust among
the target audiences. This would inevitably contribute towards the better acceptability of the
campaigns. Goals or objective settings become very important aspects of public relations
strategies. The partnership between the government and the non-profit alliance would help in
the creation of shared goals that can provide even better results for the program. The merit of
a coordinated approach is that the targets can be set in accordance with the wider value that
can be generated from achieving them. Moreover, in terms of resources, the organizations can
help each other effectively. In this case coordination of the non-profits and the government
can create a much larger area that can be addressed in relation to the early social media acces
of the children. The target publics perceive both non-profits and the government to be more
credible as these organizations are less likely to work for profitable goals. Rather they are
focused towards bringing about social changes. Hence, their credibility is better than the
corporate organizations. The target public can be sure that the government support can
provide the effective financial framework that would also be very much required for the
purpose. Communication tactics can be very effective in resonating with the target audience.
TV ads, slogans, bumper stickers can be effective to attract children, parents, teachers and the

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welfare organizations. An important tactics would be to give the program a distinct name,
entity, logo, mission, vision and perspective (Valentini 2015). A new organization needs to
be created in regards to the program. Both direct and indirect communication mediums
should be used. Hence, the focus should also be on arranging meetings, community programs
and school sessions. Audio-visual messages, newspapers, community programs, school
sessions, online communication and even social media campaigns can be effective in
spreading the message about the nature of the problem to all the essential target audiences. It
is important that the messages are created in consensus of all the essential stakeholders.
Utilization of optimal communication tactics is required.
Monitoring and evaluation of the program becomes very important it helps to
maintain the effective progress of the program. The public relations program would need to
continue for a specific period of time that might even be prolonged depending on the success
rate of the events and activities. Monitoring and evaluation would help to understand if the
campaign is going in the proper direction. Essentially, the program is focused towards
understanding. Monitoring and evaluation tools need to be effectively utilized towards
helping the effective understanding of the processes and make changes accordingly if
required (Gregory 2015). There is a need to understand the key research methods that can
help in the development of the monitoring process. Budget is an important consideration. The
planned activities would require financial backing if proper resolutions are to be provided.
Hence, creation of a budget can help in the effective monitoring of the financial processes.
Firstly, participant observation would be selected as an effective monitoring tool. Observing
the participants without interference can help to understand whether the awareness has been
created among them. Additionally, real time data can be gathered. Participants can be
observed in accordance with the kind of attitudes that the organizers want to create among
them. The roles, rules and the routines of daily life can be set. Essentially, this monitoring

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process can provide real time data in regards to whether or not the participants have been
touched in the ways in which the program organizing team would have liked to. There were
survey tools that were proposed to understand the nature of the problems that affected the
children that accessed social media. In this case a post campaign survey can be taken as a
monitoring and evaluation tool. This means that after the session are over surveys, preferably
online can be provided to the audiences where there awareness of the issue can be tested. The
usefulness of the survey tool is that a large number of populations can be used. The exact
kind of questions that can help to understand the effectiveness of the programs can be asked.
Large amount of information can be collected through this process. Online surveys have been
preferred as they are much cheaper than the other forms of survey resources.
The participant operations and online survey tool can be very important towards
evaluating the effectiveness of the campaign. Hence, it can become clear at an early stage
whether the campaign and the programs are going in the right directions. Amendments can be
made subsequently to the process if the necessary changes are unable to be brought forward.
This makes the program very flexible and suitable for being implemented over long periods
of time. The ethical implications of the monitoring process concern understanding the value
that is generated in terms of awareness about the negative impact of social media on young
minds. More children are getting addicted to social media and being exposed to crime, cyber
bullying, malevolent groups, sexual predators and other forms of criminal activities. The
monitoring process helps to understand how far the awareness has been created among the
young minds and their parents and teachers (Vittrup et al. 2016). Essentially, it becomes
important that the children lead better lives. The survey tool can help to understand their
needs and wants. The entire process of evaluation and monitoring becomes very important as
the ground level success of the program can be effectively measured through this process.
The monitoring process can set benchmarks that can be used to make the future researches.

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They can help in the formation of better objectives and goals for effectively enhancing the
ongoing PR program.
The study has been able to point out the various activities that can help to enhance the
prospects of a public relations program. It became evident that the target publics are not only
the children but all the people that interact with them on a daily basis. The communication
mediums that have to be used are large in number since the gravity of the issue necessitates
the usage of different communicational techniques to reach out to the target audiences. The
tactics required are coordinated activities of the non-profit coalition and the government. The
monitoring and evaluation process was found to be effective only if it utilized the
observational techniques and the survey processes. It becomes important that all these areas
are effectively managed towards creating an optimally effective plan for addressing the issue.
The constant social media access of children and evidence of them being exposed to violence
and abuse online makes it necessary that proper steps are taken by PR agencies, NGOs and
the government towards improving the social and online lives of children and bring back
normalcy in their developmental process.

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References
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<https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/health/children/12147629/Children-ignore-age-limits-by-
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