1) this is a challenging and an interesting learning experience for me
2) I hope to be able to give you my readers a bit different case.
Today still a bit of a background information - a few general points about PR media in developing countries and some of my thoughts about the challenges PR in developing countries may mean. I have a very good reason to believe that these challenges concern also the PR in Ethiopia.
According to Baines, Egan and Jefkins there are three ways of looking at public relations media in developing countries:
1) the dearth of Western-style mass media
2) the limitations of the existing mass media
3) the problems, special needs and special techniques of communicating with illiterate people and those, often remotely located, of different ethnic groups, languages, dialects, religions and lifestyles.
In addition to television and print media Baines, Egan and Jefkins list other medias of PR. They include:
1) Radio
2) Other mass media: pictures, diagrams, leaflets, posters, cartoon drawings
3) Folk, traditional and other localized media: i.e. market gossip
4) Open-air events
5) Video, DVD, CD-rom, Internet
6) Conferences (sponsors)
7) Seminars
8) Exhibitions
Today we learned at Kaja Tampre’s lecture (Old lecture slides:Grunig-and-his-theoretical-ideas) about the importance of creating trust in PR practices. I think that PR practices in Ethiopia may be challenging for at least three reasons concerning creating trust:
1) organization’s stakeholders are very divers (communicating skills, languages, location etc.) and thus it is hard to send univocally understood messages
2) there are often many intermediaries delivering the message, thus the message may change along the way and the intermediates can influence on the message
3) due to propaganda and the government’s control people may already lack trust on the received messages.
A friend of mine who works in Ethiopia told that relationships are the key to everything. I guess this is also partly about trust – it is easier to trust the messages you hear from people you know. So one might say that PR over there is not so much public relations as it is private relations.
-Anna-
Photo: PR at a market place in Konzo village
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4 comments:
I think your decision to continue with Ethiopia is a good choice. It really does present us readers "a bit different case" of PR. At least to me, because it brings up challenges that I almost can't even imagine living in such a homogenous country as Finland is. One has to be really creative while launching a PR campaign if part of the target group is illiterate!
i agree with Nina: it is very challenging to make PR with such a target group. What is interesting that a PR tool is market gossip.. Amazing information.
In Africa pr practisioners could try to send messages trough pictures like comics, or are they already doing that? I was remembering that this kind of information mode has been used for example in Venezuela..
Nina: Great to hear that you find new points of view. I think that Baines', Egan's and Jefkins' list of other medias of PR is a pretty good start for the campaign you mentioned. :)
Group 3: I agree that market gossip is an interesting PR tool, but then on the other hand we shouldn't ignore it in our PR practices either - people do gossip here as well. :)
Sanna: I would assume it is used in Ethiopia. At least cartoon drawings are on Baines', Egan's and Jefkins' list of other medias of PR. Maybe we can find fresh ides to our developed PR practices from the very basics of PR... :)
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