MGMT2: Public Relations Analysis of The Sydney Morning Herald

This report provides an analysis of public relations challenges and solutions, focusing on The Sydney Morning Herald. It begins with an executive summary, table of contents, and an introduction to public relations as a strategic communication process. The report then delves into a situational analysis of the company, including its mission, customers, competitors, and collaborators. Key communication problems, such as indirect information delivery and character attacks, are discussed, along with their consequences. The report also examines reputation problems and their impact on the company's goodwill, financial status, and market share. Furthermore, it identifies future communication needs, highlighting the role of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning in addressing communication challenges. The report concludes by summarizing the key findings and emphasizing the importance of AI in future communication strategies.

UNDERSTANDING PUBLIC RELATION
STUDENT DETAILS
STUDENT DETAIL

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Executive Summary
Public relations functions are designed to help build truth and credibility with groups.
Effective public relations aspects help the company to improve their functions. In this report,
it is discussed that communication problems also incorporate because of the level of
understanding of the listeners. For this report, The Sydney Morning Herald is the selected
company. Apart from this, the aspects of Artificial Intelligence that will help in solving major
communication challenges will also be discussed in this report. As reputational challenge of
the company impacts their customer case and every company incorporate various measures to
stable their reputation in the market.

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Table of Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................................3
Situational analysis.....................................................................................................................3
Communication problem and consequences..............................................................................3
Reputation problem and consequences......................................................................................4
Identify future communication needs.........................................................................................5
Conclusion..................................................................................................................................5
Reference ...................................................................................................................................7

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Introduction
Public relations are a strategic communication process that allows an organization to
build mutually beneficial relationship with their targeted audience. This report will
incorporate discussion about “The Sydney Morning Herald”. The company was founded in
1831 as the Sydney Herald. In February 2016, there was 104,000 average circulation of the
paper. “Good weekend” is a lift out magazine that is distributed with the company
(Britannica.com, 2019). In this report, there will be discussion situational analysis,
communication problem and consequences, reputation problem and consequences; and future
communication need will be identified in this report.
Situational analysis
Company: In this section, mission of the company will be discussed. The company operates
with the mission to seek the truth and help people to understand the world.
Customers: There are about 2.5 million customers of the company (Britannica.com, 2019).
Competitors: The competitors of the company are The New York Times, Theaustralian and
WSJ (Britannica.com, 2019).
Collaborators: They include agencies, suppliers, distributors and partners.
Climate: The operations of the company majorly influence through the external environment
and internal environment. The include agencies, suppliers, distributors and partners
(Buhmann, Paßmann & Fieseler, 2019).
Communication problem and consequences
Delivering indirect information and attacking character rather than behaviour are the
two primary problem that are relating with the communication. Delivering indirect
information implies that when people or media houses tries to deliver any information then

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information mis-matches out of the real scenario. It is because of two primary reasons, first,
we as an audience interprets information in the different sense as per our knowledge. Second,
while delivering information media houses incorporate the use of high vocabulary words to
make the content more effective. Delivering indirect information is the major challenge of the
communication process. However, the different level of understanding of the audience also
plays a major role in analysing information (Cooney, Mosonyi & Wilde, 2016).
Apart from this, attacking on character rather than behaviour of an individual is
another communication challenge. It is noted that attacking on the behaviour mainly implies
while describing the news of the politicians. News media generally attacks on their character
but the appropriate way will be to analyse their behaviour or work instead of explaining
negativity about their character only. Moreover, communication problem can have the
negative impact on their morale, productivity and interdepartmental working relationship of
the people. Although ongoing communication problem can also resultant in decreasing
productivity of the employees. Communication alone do not create major problems,
communication with level of understanding of other person create a major problem (Dörner,
Cammerer, Hoydis & ten Brink, 2017).
Reputation problem and consequences
Reputation loss adversely affects the goodwill of the company. The consequences of
the reputation loss are financial loss to the company, decrease percentage in market share,
adverse impact on their goodwill, etc. When a bad news spreads in the market about the
company then it impacts its goodwill. Resultant, the company started incurring the loss of
customers. When any bad news spreads in the market then it directly causes loss to the
customer base to the company. However, losing customer base directly implies with losing of
profitability. The company adopts various measures in their operations and primary reason of

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incorporating all the measures is directly linked with enhancing their reputation in the
effective and efficient way (Farsad, Yilmaz, Eckford, Chae & Guo, 2016). The management
of the company also undertake various measures to maintain and sustain their reputation in
the market because goodwill helps them in getting more market shares. Moreover,
reputational damage impacts the major functions of the company and it also minimizes their
market share percentage. It can be said that whenever any company makes their vision and
mission statement then their primary objective always centred around maintaining and
sustaining reputation in the market. Apart from this, share prices of the company also
fluctuates on the basis of current news about the company (Gelman & Carlin, 2017).
Identify future communication needs
It can be analysed that utilization of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning
will play a major role in the future communication process. AI is enabling people and
companies to approach creative endeavours in the effective and efficient way. According to
the scientists, Hybrid thinking will be best supportable AI for fulfil communication need from
the future perspective (Olivella & Siciliani, 2017). As, machine intelligence will also become
much smart as compare to the human intelligence. Through AI in communication, it will
become smart to measure and tracks human behaviour in various ways. Apart from this, AI
will also help the leaders to communicate with their team members. Although, it can be said
that major problem regarding communication will be solved when AI will become capable to
add the aspects of better communication with better understanding. Currently, wrong
interpretation is a major way that is arisen various communication problems (Miklaszewska
& Kil, 2016).

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Conclusion
In this study, it is concluded that reputational challenges put adverse situation in front
of the company. Apart from this, the purpose of company’s vision and mission is indirectly
related with the values that will increase their reputation in the future. As a consequence,
reputation damages first put adverse effect on the customer database of the company.
Moreover, it is also concluded that understanding of the other listener is also the major
communication problem because it is been observed that listener generally concluded wrong
interpretation of the statements. Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning will be the
future of the communication.

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Reference
Britannica.com. (2019). The Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved from:
https://www.britannica.com/topic/The-Sydney-Morning-Herald
Buhmann, A., Paßmann, J., & Fieseler, C. (2019). Managing algorithmic accountability:
Balancing reputational concerns, engagement strategies, and the potential of rational
discourse. Journal of Business Ethics, 1-16, 90-110.
Cooney, T., Mosonyi, M., & Wilde, M. M. (2016). Strong converse exponents for a quantum
channel discrimination problem and quantum-feedback-assisted
communication. Communications in Mathematical Physics, 344(3), 797-829.
Dörner, S., Cammerer, S., Hoydis, J., & ten Brink, S. (2017). Deep learning based
communication over the air. IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Signal
Processing, 12(1), 132-143.
Farsad, N., Yilmaz, H. B., Eckford, A., Chae, C. B., & Guo, W. (2016). A comprehensive
survey of recent advancements in molecular communication. IEEE Communications
Surveys & Tutorials, 18(3), 1887-1919.
Gelman, A., & Carlin, J. (2017). Some natural solutions to the p-value communication
problem—and why they won’t work. Journal of the American Statistical
Association, 112(519), 899-901.
Miklaszewska, E., & Kil, K. (2016). Reputational risk: problems with understanding the
concept and managing its impact. Bezpieczny Bank, (4 (65)), 96-115.
Olivella, P., & Siciliani, L. (2017). Reputational concerns with altruistic providers. Journal
of health economics, 55(1), 1-13.