Briefing Paper

Topic
The impact of social media for public relations will be analysed and how digital technologies and social media are changing the way the organisation communicate with the public will be discussed in this briefing paper.
Background
In the past, organisations were often engaged with publics through traditional media such as newspaper and TV, which provided information for public relation when issues were first emerging. With the development of the Internet, the organisations’ ability to gather information and public opinions has been strengthened by collecting data from the Internet.
Nowadays, Social media are increasingly gaining popularity when the organisations interact with the key public. The new environment today is that organisations

These groups of people can communicate with the organisation by capturing the contact information on the website and Facebook offers them opportunities to interactive with KTOK through three different levels of engagement: Like, Share, and Comment. Publics directly respond to organizational message via Facebook and we can give feedback immediately (Cho & Haase, 2014). The organisation embraces social media to promote conversations, but at the same time they cannot avoid the negative reviews from online public (Fitch, 2012). Though more channels and platforms are accessible for publics to enhance interaction, KOTK is also easily affected by negative comments so the reputation of the organisation is becoming more important and the competition between nonprofit organisation increases. In order to gain reputation and promote the organisation profile, some nonprofit organisation, for example, UNICEF gets a lot of celebrities and influencers endorsements and supports to strengthen their own

Information can be produced and distributed directly to the public without the permission of journalists or the media checks. PR practitioners do not depend on journalists to create the news anymore, and they assume that their role is of equal value to journalists, but the fact is that may result in less effective message and lack of credibility. The organisation should aware of the relationship with journalists, and a successful relationship between two professionals makes it likely to impact the public agenda by effective information (Wilson & Supa, 2013). Professional journalists are able to control the timing of dissemination and the content of the message, which can be helpful to the organisation. It is good for KOTK to keep an eye on the news outlets to build a relationship with relevant journalists, and also consider media relations as part of their online strategy (Bajkiewicz & Kraus & Hong,