The Role Played by Public Relations in Building Good Image

This literature review examines the significant role of public relations (PR) in shaping the image and reputation of politicians, particularly in the digital age. It begins by defining public relations and its core goal of upholding the image of individuals, organizations, or products, emphasizing the importance of understanding public sentiment and strategic campaign planning. The review traces the development of political PR, highlighting key traditional concepts such as relationship management, reputation management, stakeholder engagement, positioning and segmentation, and rhetoric and persuasion. It discusses the evolution of political PR theories and the need to bridge the gap between general marketing PR and political PR. Furthermore, it explores the impact of digital media and social media marketing on political campaigns, emphasizing the importance of mass communication in disseminating relevant content and maintaining public relations. The review also touches upon the different types of publics and their roles in political campaigns, as well as the impact of digitization on political PR strategies. It references case studies and research to illustrate the practical applications and benefits of effective political PR.

Running head: THE ROLE PLAYED BY PUBLIC RELATIONS IN BUILDING GOOD IMAGE AND REPUTATION FOR
POLITICIANS
THE ROLE PLAYED BY PUBLIC RELATIONS IN BUILDING GOOD IMAGE AND
REPUTATION FOR POLITICIANS
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1THE ROLE PLAYED BY PUBLIC RELATIONS IN BUILDING GOOD IMAGE AND REPUTATION FOR POLITICIANS
Table of Contents
LITERATURE REVIEW...........................................................................................................2
Introduction............................................................................................................................2
Concept of public relations....................................................................................................2
Public relation through the internet and understanding Online Reputation Management...10
Advantages of Public Relations for reputation management...............................................11
Disadvantages of Public Relation promotions using the web..............................................11
QUALITATIVE RESEARCH.................................................................................................14
Abstract................................................................................................................................14
Introduction..........................................................................................................................14
Case study – Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, 2008...................................................16
Data analysis........................................................................................................................19
Takeaways............................................................................................................................24
Summary and conclusion.....................................................................................................25
References................................................................................................................................27

2THE ROLE PLAYED BY PUBLIC RELATIONS IN BUILDING GOOD IMAGE AND REPUTATION FOR POLITICIANS
LITERATURE REVIEW
Introduction
Over the course of time, public relations has been proven to be a very important factor
which can be tapped in order to reap maximum benefits as far as using crowd popularity is
concerned. Understanding public sentiments and strategically planning a particular campaign
based on the needs and interests of the public is what the primary building block of a
successful PR management task is (Fawkes 2013).
The main goal associated with a Public Relations campaign is upholding the image of
the individual, organization or the product concerned. In fact, the UK Chartered Institute of
Public Relations, in their definition of Public Relations, places reputation under the key
spotlight. According to them Public Relations is all about reputation. It is the result of what
one does, says and what others say about said individual (Bailey 2018).
This review focuses entirely on politics and political campaigns and how a good PR
can boost the image and reputation of politicians. It takes the internet into account as the
main medium of information resource, processing, generation and transmission to the public.
Keeping in mind the widespread utility and accessibility of the internet since the advent of
WEB2.0, PR campaigns would stay incomplete and unfruitful if the web is not given its due
importance (Waters, 2014).
Concept of public relations
As stated by Austin and Pinkleton (2015), public relations is the systematic and
strategic manner of managing information distribution between an individual or an
organisation and the general public. With advertising recently being considered a part of PR
activities, a larger group of audience is being reached and influenced (Singh 2017).
Politicians rely on their PR team when it comes to building rapport with the public and

3THE ROLE PLAYED BY PUBLIC RELATIONS IN BUILDING GOOD IMAGE AND REPUTATION FOR POLITICIANS
perspective voters. They in turn help them keep up an image and a reputation among the
target audience.
Public relation experts need to study and understand target audience properly based
on their needs and demands. It is crucial because the message generated for the target
audience needs to be relevant to overcome low visibility, lack of public understanding,
critical opposition and funding issues (Demetrious 2013). Public relations experts thus need
to be highly skilled in media relations, marketing, branding and consumer requirement
understanding (Esser and Stromback 2014).
Development of political Public Relations
The concept of political public relations is almost as old as society and politics itself
(Martinelli, 2011; Strömbäck & Kiousis, 2011). Traditionally speaking, political Public
Relations is founded on various key traditional concepts. The five most important ones are
highlighted as –
1. Relationship management and cultivation: This concept prioritizes the organization
– public relationship management in order to ensure that the interests of both are
equally balanced (Ledingham 2003). In this perspective, Cutlip, Center and Broom
(1994) states the role of Public Relations as the function of management that
“establishes and maintains mutually beneficial relationships between an organization
and the publics on whom its success or failure depends” (P.2)
2. Reputation management: This concept refers to the practice of influencing,
controlling and managing the reputation of an individual or a group (Van Riel &
Fombrun 2007). This includes putting communication at the centre of all activities
and building positive image friendly content for the stakeholders in order to affect
their perceptons regarding the individual or the group. In the present context, Online

4THE ROLE PLAYED BY PUBLIC RELATIONS IN BUILDING GOOD IMAGE AND REPUTATION FOR POLITICIANS
Reputation Management coincides directly with the traditional concepts of Reputation
management.
3. Stakeholder engagement: This is the process through which an organization
incorporates people who might be influenced by the organization’s decisions or might
potentially influence the implementation of the decisions an organization makes. De
Bussy (2010) states that Public Relation campaigns are heavily influenced by the
stakeholders involved, which requires PR professionals to prioritize successful
stakeholder engagement through appealing dialogues that would ensure benefit for
both parties concerned.
4. Positioning and segmentation: This is a marketing strategy that prioritizes
segmentation of market based on consumer appeal, identify the characteristics of
specific market segments, target consumer sets and develop product positioning for
the selected segments along with building a marketing mix for the selected segments.
Davidson and Binstock (2012) implements this strategy in political public relations by
identifying similarities between the concept in terms of political marketing through
targeting specific voter groups and building campaign strategies based on the criteria
that the groups find appealing.
5. Rhetoric and persuasion: Political rhetoric concerns the building of arguments in a
political debate (Health & Toth 2013). It directly coincides with the concept of
political persuasion by urging argument builders to focus more on making the
arguments as persuasive as possible in order to appeal to target consumer/voter groups
(Pfau & Wan, 2006).

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Development of new political Public Relations theory
The practice of Political PR, despite being old, the newer approaches involve more
dedicated efforts to apply the traditional PR theories in contemporary political contexts and
build advanced theories in the political Public Relations theories (Strömbäck & Kiousis,
2011, 2013). However, it must be noted that most theories concerning Public Relations still
apply to business, marketing and corporate engagements, making the disconnect between
political PR and general marketing PR theories more prominent.
Strömbäck & Kiousis, (2011) mentions several reason which elaborate why it is
necessary to remedy this approach. Firstly, in order to build theories based on the cumulative
knowledge of the extant PR theories in the corporate marketing sector, bridging the
categorical gap between theories and research in political PR, political marketing,
communication and science is a necessity.
Secondly in order to establish a mutually beneficial relationship between practice and
theory, developing theories and research in political marketing is crucial.
Thirdly, application of general public relation theories in political PR contexts can
help understand the viability of theories in spheres outside the corporate marketing category.
This in turn helps in building and developing theories and practices in public relations in
general.
Contemporary political Public Relations.
Grunig & Hunt, (1984) state that Political Public relations is both about
communication as well as action and not just about communication as certain other
definitions emphasize. It is also about maintaining relationships between candidate and
stakeholder. Maintaining beneficial relationships is crucial to determine the success of a

6THE ROLE PLAYED BY PUBLIC RELATIONS IN BUILDING GOOD IMAGE AND REPUTATION FOR POLITICIANS
political campaign. Political PR thus emphasizes the efforts to influence, establish, build as
well as maintain beneficial relationships and reputations.
Hutton et al. (2001) mentions that political Public Relations is critical for all stages of
stakeholder engagement.
Political PR includes all kinds of models pertaining to public relations (Grunig &
Hunt 1992). These include the following
a. The publicity model – The Public Relations expert prioritizes enhancing the image
of the individual or organization among all its stakeholders through positive
marketing and rendering Search Engine Optimization tools.
b. The public information model – Builds upon the publicity model by maintaining
and enhancing the image of the candidate by passing relevant information to the
public.
c. The two way asymmetrical model – This revolves around two way
communication between the parties but the information transmitted to both the
sides are not perfectly balanced.
d. The two way symmetrical model – the most ideal way of maintaining image and
reputation, this model relies on equivalence of information transfer on both sides.
This includes relaying information about the individual to the stakeholders and
using the feedback provided by the stakeholders to develop and advance campaign
strategies.
Cancel et al. (1997) states that the preferred model of public relations depends on a
variety of factors that ranges in a scale from total support for and organization to total
accommodation of public.

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Political PR and the public
According to Dewey (1927), in order for a group to be considered a public, it should:
a. face a similar problem
b. recognize that the problem exists
c. organize to do something about it.
Based on this Grunig and Hunt (1984) developed the situational theory of publics, according
to which 4 types of publics can be distinguished.
The situational theory of publics defines that the context to which a group is aware of
a certain problem and the extent to which the group is willing to do something to fix the
problem, are the criteria under which publics can be identified and classified.
The four types of publics as identified by Grunig and Hunt (1984) are
a. Non-public: People in a group who do not face a similar problem, do not
recognize the existence of the problem, and do not organize to do
something about it.
b. Latent public: While people in this group face a similar problem, they do
not recognize that it exists or organize to do anything about it.
c. Aware public: Only when groups of people both face a similar problem
and recognize that the problem exists does it become an aware public.
d. Active public: If they in addition organize to do something about the
problem, it becomes an active public. Active public plays a significant role behind the
success of a political PR campaign by proactively taking part in organizing
independent campaigns and promotional events, conducting localised fundraising and
generating awareness through positive promotion. They can either be volunteers or
have connections with the main campaign team and work on their behalf.

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Mass perspective differs public from society by considering society as a wholesome
unit comprising of different cultures, ethnicity and impersonal social institutions. A mass,
against a public is identified as a group with multiple social ties that are either strengthened
or weakened by governing factors such as democracy or bureaucracy (Macionis 2009). Based
on such factors, a general consensus of mass ideology is usually identified as a key factor
while determining strategies for building campaign strategies for political public relations. A
detailed understanding of the types of public helps generate consumer satisfactory content
and messages that propel a campaign towards success (Box-Steffensmeier 2013)
The most significant impact of mass perspective lies in the collective benefit of all
mases through the political campaign
Digital Political Public Relations
Digitization of public relations has been a key propellant in PR campaigns since the
advent of digital media. Gurevitch, Coleman & Blumler (2009) expand upon the concept of
digital political campaign by iterating the influence of televisions and radios in shaping
political public relation communications since their introduction as a mainstream media for
digital entertainment. Furthermore, they also elaborate upon the displacing effects of internet
and how the internet has been fundamental in shaping the digitization of political marketing.
The most vital contributing factor when it comes to digitization of Political Public
Relations is the usability and benefits of Social Media Marketing. Dimitrova and Matthes
(2018) explain how the expansion of media platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Reddit in
particular and their incorporation in the daily lifestyle of billion, have reshaped the way
politicians relay information to the public. The range of information can vary from detailed
articles, newsletters and blogs posted on platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook and Medium to

9THE ROLE PLAYED BY PUBLIC RELATIONS IN BUILDING GOOD IMAGE AND REPUTATION FOR POLITICIANS
microblogging using twitter (Nulty et al. 2016). These in turn heavily impact the political
campaign by influencing millions of Social Media Users around the world.
McQuail (2010) in his book ‘Mass communication theory’ builds the importance of
mass communication in transmission of relevant content across the domains of public and
individual in terms of maintaining public relations. “The Internet breaks through traditional
communication barriers, time and space, both horizontally between citizens and vertically
between the authorities and citizens” (Karlsson, Clerwall & Buskqvist 2013. p.3).
Importance of two way communication and relationship management
The two way communication model uses communication in order to negotiate, resolve
conflicts and promote mutual understanding and respect between the organization and its
stakeholders (Grunig 1992). This is divided into the symmetrical and the asymmetrical
models. The symmetrical model has been found to be of utmost importance in maintaining
better communication among the party and the stakeholders. It relies on equivalence of
information and feedback in order to build and develop campaign strategies.
Digital media has been highly influential in making sure that the two way
communication model functions with high accuracy and efficiency enabling the party and the
stakeholders to engage in seamless interchange of information and review (Ledingham, 2006;
Ledingham & Bruning, 2000).
Baines et al. (2011) illustrates a case scenario of the 2010 British general election
where he highlighted the various factors in communication channel that influenced the PR
campaigns. This elaborates the efficiency of the two way communication model in achieving
campaign goals.

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Public relation through the internet and understanding Online Reputation Management
Internet, more specifically with the advent of WEB 2.0, has made PR more engaging,
interactive and organized with feedback which is highly valued as we shall see in the case
study of Obama’s successful 2008 presidential campaign (Cogburn and Espinoza 2011).
Social Media Marketing plays a very crucial role when it comes to PR campaign allowing
direct communication with the public (Kent 2013). Political identity is crucial for the
candidate to attain a victory and present scenarios indicate that the internet is the best hub for
generating image and reputation (Doorley and Garcia 2015). It is not an entirely new
approach to PR campaigning, since PR professionals have always relied on television, radio
and magazines as media for transmitting their content. Digital media is an evolved extension
of the non analog process of marketing strategies that PR professionals used to employ. We
shall look at Barack Obama’s campaign for the 2008 presidential run to gain a better insight
into how the internet was used as a medium for a successful campaigning by his PR team.
Online Reputation management, also referred to as rep management or ORM is the
task of attempting to modify perception of an organization or a person by the public, by
influencing available information about that organization or person, primarily online
(Doorley and Garcia 2015). The specific task of the ORM is to intercept public opinion about
the said entities online, monitoring their reputation on the internet, addressing content that
might pose potential damage the reputation of the entities an using consumer feedback to
modify the content generated to prevent further damage to the online reputation of the entities
(Dreher 2014). A major role of online reputation management is to suppress detrimental and
degenerative search results, and highlighting the positive ones.
The important elements to a successful online reputation management are review
monitoring, review response, capturing positive reviews, showcasing positive reviews, and
generating more reviews (Dijkmans, Kerkhof and Beukeboom 2015)

11THE ROLE PLAYED BY PUBLIC RELATIONS IN BUILDING GOOD IMAGE AND REPUTATION FOR POLITICIANS
Advantages of Public Relations for reputation management
Public Relation strategies are mainly considered the most credible form of promotion
(L’Etang 2013). When it comes to political campaigns, the general evolution and
incorporation of modern PR techniques offer more benefits to the candidate than the
traditional PR techniques (Cutlip 2013). Here are some of the advantages that the modern PR
techniques in collaboration with the Digital Media Marketing or the Social Network
Incorporation provides its beneficiaries.
To begin, PR promotions can offer more details about the campaign and its workings.
It can offer the public instant news and updates about even the very minute shift in the
campaigning policies(L’Etang 2013).
It allows for a cleaner interaction between the public and the candidate where the
public can post about their feelings and needs and provide critical afterthought to the
politician’s statements.
Information is usually spread far and wide really fast, thus covering more ground in a
shot span of time. This can prove to be a huge advantage in favour of the candidate as they
find more time in their hands to analyse their stand points and re-evaluate their objectives
based on the feedback.
Cost of promotions is also brought down significantly. If properly executed, the
returns on this type of PR promotions can be quite high, as indicated by Obama’s 2008
campaign (Doorley and Garcia 2015).
Disadvantages of Public Relation promotions using the web
No amount of preparation can get someone ready for the fallouts of one failed
political campaign especially when a PR promotion with social media is kept under
consideration. For one thing, the information is openly available for all users but the release
of information can prove to be unstable because of the following factors.