PR: Public Relations in Society Research Paper

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Coombs and Holladay (2007)

Coombs and Holladay use the support of the professional literature to find an explanation to the importance stakeholders came to play in their role with the management. Their next movement is back to history, this time deeper to the times where there was no such field as public relations. They start in their investigation with the Anti-Slavery Society, formed by Arthur and Lewis Tappan in 1831. They were among the first to discover the role of using various ways of disseminating information to the public they targeted by using the printed word or by assembling in "meetings, sermons and public lectures." Coombs and Holladay (2007, p. 62). Further examples show how tools specific to the PR industry nowadays were discovered and put to use by simple people who succeeded to start major changes in society: Carry a. Nation, the first woman who made an "event" in order to gain notoriety she would put to further use and whose actions eventually led to "Kansas to become the first state to outlaw the sale and production of alcohol." Coombs and Holladay (2007, p. 64). Another important players the two authors mention in their support of the important role PR plaid and still have in society are the muckrakers. They were the reasons Ivy Lee, one of the first leading figures in PR was used by Rockefeller who needed someone to counterattack the negative voices in the media. Ida Tarbell and Upton Sinclair are two of the muckrakers the authors use as examples of journalists who used the printed word in publications that were to change the public opinion and that finally led to the birth of new laws or the dismantling of the Rockefeller oil empire.

Coombs and Holladay (2007, p. 67) Thus, the authors establish the dawn of the use of mass-media as the most effective tool in public communication.

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They show how people like Tarbell and Sinclair managed to " raise awareness of various causes and rallied people to them" Coombs and Holladay (2007, p. 68) by a specific mean of what is known today as PR.

The conclusion of the authors is that stakeholders have the power to influence and make people ally to their cause so that they can influence an organization's actions by using the government to force changes or can "work with an organization to instill change." Coombs and Holladay (2007, p. 103)

Coombs and Holladay dedicate the last chapter of their book to the global effects of the PR. They have proved so far the key role PR plays in society today and they go further to prove how PR is used at a global level by governments in diplomacy and international relations generally. Globalization works on PR, too. Coombs and Holladay (2007) the authors compare the relationship between organizations and stakeholders to that between people and their countries or internationally, between countries. The weapons or tools used at an organizational or regional level are also used at a larger scale, on a global level, by governments. Activists act in private voluntary organizations (PVO) and the authors show how they try and also succeed sometimes in influencing organizations such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

Coombs and Holladay (2007).

The two authors succeed in their declared intentions to explain and support the importance of public relations in the world today, as a consequence of the bad media coverage of the notion during the last decades. They will use history and economics to show how "a society cannot function effectively if the….....

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https://www.aceyourpaper.com/essays/pr-public-relations-society-28700