An Examination of Persuasion Techniques in Modern Public Relations

This report examines the critical role of persuasion in public relations, discussing its ethical dimensions and practical applications. It explores how persuasion influences communication strategies, relationship building, and crisis management. The report delves into the psychological principles of persuasion, such as liking, reciprocity, social proof, authority, consistency, and scarcity, and illustrates their use in media relations, social media, and community building. Furthermore, it highlights the legal and ethical considerations that PR practitioners must navigate, including the importance of truthfulness and adherence to professional codes of ethics like the PRIA Code. The report also touches upon the evolving legal landscape and the influence of media agenda-setting on public discourse, concluding that persuasion is a fundamental element of effective public relations, impacting everything from building relationships to managing reputations and communicating with the public.

Running head: PERSUASION IN PUBLIC RELATIONS
PERSUASION IN PUBLIC RELATIONS
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There has always been a raging debate among the scholars and researchers regarding
the role played by Public Relations (PR) in society. On one hand, the critics of PR like Ewen,
Stauber and Miller, have claimed that PR in both past and present, undermines democracy
and at the same time, distorts the debates. Whereas, the defenders of public relations like
Gregory and Dozier on the other hand tend to minimise the historical roots of public relations
in the propaganda. Excellence project has the commendable aim of improving the PR practice
by means of emphasising on the best and at the same time, demonstrating how other people
can improve. Notwithstanding this fact, there has been a long tendency of marginalising the
role played by persuasion in this regard. Most of the people consider public relations to be
inherently unethical and to be honest, most of the public relations practises are actually
unethical. Persuasion plays a significant role in this context.
Public relations is widely regarded as the well-planned persuasion of the people in
order to make them behave in the ways that further the objectives of its sponsors (Ferguson
2018). Persuasion refers to the process of communication that is designed for influencing the
actions and judgements of other people (Kelman 2017). According to Chari (2016),
persuasion is an ‘anathema’. It is something that is considered to be a slippery slope which
skids through the publicity and ends up with the propaganda. Most of the academics of PR
claim that persuasion is the goal of majority of the PR programmes and therefore, it forms its
dominant practise. As per Perloff (2010), “Persuasion is “a symbolic process in which
communicators try to convince other people to change their attitudes or behaviours regarding
an issue through the transmission of a message in an atmosphere of free choice”.
Communication is the key of PR function. According to Baylis, Smith and Owens (2017),
“Stripped to its fundamentals, public relations means communicating with others”.
Expanding on this view, “PR people also use the process of persuasion, compromise,
bargaining and negotiation in search of compliance and problem solving”. Although the

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persuasive communication processes often co-habits with the propaganda and all its implied
connotations, the pivotal element of the ethical persuasion is actually “truthfulness”. It is to
note that truthfulness needs action and intentions that does not deceive, mislead or misinform.
As stated by Evans et al. (2017), ethical persuasion is “the attempt through communication to
influence the knowledge, behaviour and attitude of the audience through presentation of a
view that addresses and allows the audience to make voluntary, informed, rational and
reflective judgements”. The definition provided by Braddock and Dillard (2016), further
highlights the overlapping in between the public relation and propaganda as the process that
attempts to manage the symbolic control over the environment claiming that both effective
public relations and effective persuasion are synonymous to each other. Notwithstanding this
fact, the modern PR practise have sought for making itself different from that of propaganda
because it has become significantly claimed as unethical.
According to Thompson (2018), in the field of PR, persuasion is a very important
element of everything that the PR Practitioners do. Right from building relationship,
managing the crisis and reputations in the work place, creating compelling content, public
speaking to media and blogger outreaching, getting clients and colleagues to support the
strategies and connecting with social media, everyone make use of liberal doses of
persuasion. There are individuals who regard persuasion to be a form of art, whereas, there
are others who consider it to be a science. According to Fitch (2016), there are a total of six
psychological principles that are considered to be the integral pieces of the process of
influencing. They are- the principle of liking, the principle of reciprocity, the principle of
social proof, the principle of Authority, the principle of consistency and the principle of
scarcity.
PR Practitioners make use of the concept of liking in the blogger and media relations
in order to build online communities as well as for working for organising the event

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participation. They ask their media communities some open-ended questions and at the same
time, monitor and evaluate the answers for highlighting the similarities and then, offer some
authentic praise. Secondly, the use of reciprocity in the field of PR is showcased by the word-
of-mouth referrals, sharing, coverage, favours and re-sharing the content of the other people
and at the same time, by means of building offline and online communities and networks of
people who are well aware of the fact that they can count on one another (Thompson 2018).
Thirdly, the principle of social proof is something that is always consistent in Public
Relations as the PR always try to evaluate the importance of the accomplishments,
experience, Practitioners connections and publications of the PR Practitioners. Along with the
emergence and growth of social media, majority of the people now-a-days look for the social
proof as the markers like the total number of followers and friends, the total number of
retweets and the things mentioned in the online search engines. In PR, people always try to
showcase the social proof by means of developing and sharing the contents, which has some
genuine value for their audiences and acknowledge the ones, who communicate with them
directly and by sharing their content with the communities and networks (Braddock and
Dillard 2016). These contents include many different forms of communication and traditional
vehicles like articles, books, public speaking, papers etc.
Furthermore, in PR today, the PR Practitioners put the principle of consistency in
many different ways. As an integral part of their communication strategies, they remind their
readers for signing in for receiving the newsletters and to be capable of commenting on the
blog posts. They also ask their readers to donate and to make some public commitment for
supporting their cause or organisation or client. However, everyone looks forward for experts
to show directions, particularly in the areas where they feel they know less that they should.
In the contemporary world, people keep on searching for their experts online, sitting at their
home. The PR Practitioners showcase an expertise for winning the buy-in for the campaigns

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and strategies that are to be taken seriously as a part of the top level planning. They make use
of both online and offline platforms for showcasing and highlighting their expertise along
with the white papers, books and articles that answer the vital questions and in-depth
knowledge. However, according to what claimed by Haines, Deaux and Lofaro (2016),
“items and opportunities become more valuable when they become less available”. The
principle of scarcity is used for generating the sense of urgency for taking actions. The PR
Practitioners make use of special offers for their services and products or the admission to
their events with the availability limited by the quantity or time. More often, scarcity is
experienced as availability and in the field of PR, people are more or less very strongly
motivated to be included in the communities and groups that they perceive to be exclusive. It
is to note that both exclusivity and scarcity are effective while persuading people for
purchasing, downloading and participating, for the fear of losing the opportunity to grab the
product or service. However, it should be noted that ethics do apply in their use as in every
areas of life, dishonest strategies work only for short time.
Notwithstanding the above mentioned facts, it is to note that both the practices of
public relations and law are continuously changing. PR is becoming more strategic and at the
same time, law is becoming more open to understanding the broader problems for an
organisation. Respect and understanding of one another’s point of view is important if an
organisation’s and its publics best interests are to be achieved ‘by fellow professionals
working together to fulfil that common aim. As per the Australian media law and journalism
academic, the Australian legal environment and PR can be described as the Laws regulating
public relations in Australia can be made by judges (which is known as common law) or
parliament (known as statute law) at the federal level, or at a state or territory level (Johnston
and Wallace 2017). Regulations, such as the Broadcasting Regulations or council by-laws,
occur where administrative arms of government are given authority to enact laws.

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Regulations have the same authority as judge-made or statute laws, but they are more easily
revised. This means that public relations practitioners are governed by laws at local, state and
federal levels. The legal environment of public relations is dynamic with the laws and
government regulations pertaining to the industry constantly changing. For example, with the
increase in information technology the courts are continually reinterpreting, broadening and
redefining aspects of the law. Therefore, practitioners should have some knowledge of the
rights and responsibilities relating to the field of public relations but should also be in close
consultation with specialists in the legal profession on matters which might require a more
thorough understanding. They should seek advice when necessary. Allied to acting within the
law, is the need to also act ethically. PRIA (Public Relations Institute of Australia) Code of
ethics is one of the professional bodies that is serving the interests of its members (Fitch
2016). It is very mindful of the responsibility that the PR professionals in Australia owe to
the community and their employers and clients. There are a total of fifteen code of ethics that
binds all the members of the PRIA and it requires all the members to adhere to the highest
standards of the professional competence and ethical practice.
An emerging area that impacts the PR practitioner is legal responsibilities and risks in
the online environment. While it can be tempting to ‘post’ a message or a photograph on a
website or blog, consideration needs to be given to the legal implications. For example,
before posting a photograph on a website ask: who owns the copyright of the photograph and
the rights to use it? Consider too that comments on websites and social media sites such as
Facebook, blogs and Twitter may be defamatory, leading to litigation. Media play an
important role in public discussion – from the ‘everyday’ happening to the high impact crisis.
The concept of ‘agenda setting’ was first proposed by two US academics, Maxwell
McCombs and Donald Shaw in the 1970s. Agenda-setting theory is defined by Tymson and
Sherman (1987) as ‘a theory that suggests that the agenda of topics or issues for public

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discourse is set by the news media’. It is contended that mass media play the role of agenda-
setter, influencing people what to think about but not necessarily what to think (Cushion et al.
2018). Mass media, through the selection of issues for coverage, can often trigger public
discussion of certain issues. The media, however, can also play an opinion formation role for
those people who have no predispositions or prior knowledge of the issue. In that case the
passive person will probably form his or her opinion based on the viewpoint of the
publication or the author of the article. The persuasiveness of the media, according to most
studies, is counterbalanced by peers and informal opinion leaders.
Hence, from the analysis it is to conclude the persuasion plays a significant role in
PR. Everyone wants to be liked and it is human nature to want to return the favours when
someone does something for us. In the field of Public Relations, the favour is handing out a
story to the reporters and placing a press release along with a right publication for any peer or
colleague. Right from building relationship, managing the crisis and reputations in the work
place, creating compelling content, public speaking to media and blogger outreaching, getting
clients and colleagues to support the strategies and connecting with social media, everyone
make use of liberal doses of persuasion. However, the practices of public relations and law
are continuously changing and PR is becoming more strategic day by day as the law is
becoming more open to understanding the broader problems for the organisations.

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References:
Baylis, J., Smith, S. and Owens, P. eds., 2017. The globalization of world politics: An
introduction to international relations. Oxford University Press.
Braddock, K. and Dillard, J.P., 2016. Meta-analytic evidence for the persuasive effect of
narratives on beliefs, attitudes, intentions, and behaviors. Communication
Monographs, 83(4), pp.446-467.
Chari, P.R., 2006. Parsing the Separation Plan. The Indo‐US Subsidiary Deal.
Cushion, S., Kilby, A., Thomas, R., Morani, M. and Sambrook, R., 2018. Newspapers,
impartiality and television news: Intermedia agenda-setting during the 2015 UK general
election campaign. Journalism Studies, 19(2), pp.162-181.
Evans, N.J., Phua, J., Lim, J. and Jun, H., 2017. Disclosing Instagram influencer advertising:
The effects of disclosure language on advertising recognition, attitudes, and behavioral
intent. Journal of Interactive Advertising, 17(2), pp.138-149.
Ferguson, M.A., 2018. Building theory in public relations: Interorganizational relationships
as a public relations paradigm. Journal of Public Relations Research, 30(4), pp.164-178.
Fitch, K., 2016. The Professionalization of Public Relations. In Professionalizing Public
Relations (pp. 1-28). Palgrave Macmillan, London.
Haines, E.L., Deaux, K. and Lofaro, N., 2016. The times they are a-changing… or are they
not? A comparison of gender stereotypes, 1983–2014. Psychology of Women
Quarterly, 40(3), pp.353-363.

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Johnston, J. and Wallace, A., 2017. Who is a journalist? Changing legal definitions in a de-
territorialised media space. Digital Journalism, 5(7), pp.850-867.
Kelman, H.C., 2017. Processes of opinion change. In Attitude Change (pp. 205-233).
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Perloff, R.M., 2010. Introduction to persuasion. The dynamics of persuasive: communication
and attitudes in the 21st century, 4th edn., Maddison Avenue, New York: Routledge, pp.3-39.
Thompson, E.E., 2018. Public relations education in an emerging democracy: the case of
Ghana. Journal of Communication Management, 22(4), pp.476-489.
Tymson, C. and Sherman, W.S., 1987. The Australian public relations manual. Millennium.