Analysis of Strategic Publics

Analysis of Strategic Publics
Purpose: Understanding for whom you are writing is an integral part of the process a successful public relations
professional must engage in before putting pen to paper (or fingertips to keyboard). This research paper is designed to
challenge your instincts and skills for identifying and knowing your audiences so you can optimize your written
communication with them.
For this assignment, you’ll identify an organization experiencing a public relations situation. Choose wisely and well, as
you will work with this “client” in subsequent assignments. The situation can be a problem (a negative situation) or an
opportunity (a positive situation) or both (a “probletunity”!).
Publics are groups of people – stakeholders, the “audience” – that an organization affects and vice versa. You’ll analyze
the public relations situation you’ve identified from the perspective of the organization’s most strategic (i.e.,
communication-worthy and/or potentially troublesome or useful) publics. Then, working from that perspective, you’ll
brainstorm about what and how to optimally communicate with them.
You must go through several steps on your way to completing your first deliverable.
Step 1: Carefully read pp. 107-112 and 194-207 of the Treadwell text.
Step 2: Read the lecture notes posted under Week One entitled Target Publics. (See below)
Step 3: Find a public relations situation covered in the mainstream media during the last 12 months that involves an
organization. You can choose a PR situation/organization at the local, state, regional or national level. However, read the
article(s) carefully to make sure the PR situation/organization is appropriate for this (and subsequent) deliverables:
Is the issue large enough in scope? Or could it be too large in scope? Check with your instructor ASAP if you are unsure.
Do the articles present the PR situation that the organization is involved in or somehow connected to?
Does the article directly state or imply that this PR situation/organization is having some sort of consequence/impact on
stakeholders or publics? The article does NOT need to mention specific entities. Figuring out what stakeholders and/or
publics are affected by the issue/organization is part of your task here. You should be able to determine at least three
stakeholders/publics that are affected and with which the organization should communicate.
If you cannot find a suitable PR situation/organization, your instructor will assign one to you.
Step 4: Your five-page (double spaced) analytical research paper will be completed in APA style and format. The cover page,
abstract, references or appendices are in addition to the five pages. Please include an abstract.
Paper Structure
Include a solid introductory preview paragraph and a concluding summary paragraph.
Make good and appropriate use of headings and subheadings.
Cover the following points (and not necessarily in this exact order; figure out what works best for your topic):
o A description of the PR situation, organization and general consequences or impact of the PR situation for the
organization.
o A description of at least three stakeholders or publics that you have reasoned are the MOST affected by this organization
and the PR situation and thus the organization would need to communicate with. Be specific in stating who/what they are
(i.e., don’t say “state government” when you specifically mean the employees of a certain department or those at a
particular level).
o Explain why and how these stakeholders/publics are affected and why you view them as strategically important. Identify
them as either latent, aware, active or activist and explain why you identified them as such.
o A discussion of what sorts of information or messages from the organization these publics might find useful, comforting,
satisfying, motivating, etc. In other words, what do you think these publics want or need to hear from the organization and
why? Remember, different publics likely have different concerns and thus would likely have differing information needs and
wants.
o A discussion of the methods you think the organization should use to best communicate with each of these publics. What
media or communication channels should the organization use to reach out to and communicate with these publics? Why?
Target Publics
Public relations focuses on developing mutually beneficial relationships between an organization and its publics. Knowing
who those publics are is seminally important to the work we do. There are a number of different ways to categorize our
publics. First, let’s make sure we share the same definition of the term.
While some argue that the “publics” is preferable to “stakeholders” and “audiences,” I tend to use them interchangeably.
What we’re talking about are the groups of people who have mutual concerns and who have the ability to influence
(positively or negatively) an organization, and vice versa. A public is
• Identifiable
• Homogenous
• Important to the organization
• Large enough to matter
• Reachable
Public relations generally rejects any notion of a “general public.” It is too ill-defined and serves no useful purpose for
us when we plan our communication strategies and tactics. We can’t target everyone, and not everyone is a constituent to
the issues and clients we deal with.
Dr. James Grunig developed the situational theory of publics (STP), a segmentation theory, that provides a way to segment,
or divide, a larger group of people into smaller groups, called “publics” (Grunig, 1997; Grunig & Hunt, 1984, Ch. 7). As
Broom (2009) noted, demographics, sociographics, and/or psychographics are standard methods of segmentation. Grunig
surmised that these variables, although useful, were not optimally useful for the purposes of public relations.
At its most basic, Grunig’s STP proposed segmenting publics based on three variables:
• Problem recognition: The degree to which someone recognizes a problem.
• Level of involvement: The degree to which someone feels connected to that problem.
• Constraint recognition: The degree to which someone feels they can do something about that problem. (Note: This is an
inverse relationship: the higher the constraint recognition, the less someone feels they can do something about it. This
variable can fluctuate on factors including self-esteem (“My vote doesn’t count.”) and logistics (“I can’t find a
babysitter so now I can’t go to that town-hall meeting.”)
Simply, publics can be segmented (and thus more effectively communicated with) based on the degree to which a person
recognizes a problem and feels involved or connected to it, plus the degree to which the person feels that he/she can get
involved to do something about this problem. Therefore, a public that feels high degrees of problem recognition and level
of involvement and a low level of constraint recognition is a public that an organization should wisely engage and
communicate with as a high-priority “active” public.
When looking at Broom’s (2009) discussion of publics and the STP (see pp. 201-203), you might wonder, “Gosh, Grunig’s four
standard types of publics seem really useful from an academic standpoint, but what about in the real world?” Here is
Grunig’s typology:
1. All-issue publics – active on all issues
2. Apathetic publics – inattentive and inactive on all issues
3. Single-issue publics – active on one or a limited number of related issues
4. Hot-issue publics – active after media exposure and there is widespread social conversation (p. 202).
In the real world, this typology doesn’t necessarily work very well: Who is active on all issues? Who isn’t aware of at
least one issue? The following typology is much more useful for practical PR purposes. What PR people need to understand
and watch out for are latent, aware, active and activist publics.
• Latent publics are comprised of people who have low degrees of problem recognition and level of involvement. Constraint
recognition isn’t a factor yet. Latents can evolve into aware publics.
• Aware publics are comprised of people with moderate degrees of problem recognition and level of involvement. Constraint
recognition still really isn’t a factor yet. Awares can evolve into active publics.
• Active publics are comprised of people with high degrees of problem recognition and level of involvement, plus a low
degree of constraint recognition (meaning, they feel empowered and can/will do something). Active publics are the people
with whom organizations should communicate and engage in a relationship, because when active publics are ignored and become
ticked off, they may likely evolve into activist publics.
• Activist publics are comprised of the people who can present many challenges to organizations, and — because no prior
positive relationship exists — can really be quite troublesome.
Grunig’s four types of publics as presented in Broom (2009) gives us a more robust way of thinking about who our target
publics (or audiences) are for a particular issue, product, service or problem.
However, it isn’t enough to know whether one is aware or unaware. To really understand who your target audiences are, you
need to know as much about them as you can. Here are some of the variables to consider:
• Age
• Gender
• Race
• Geography (urban vs. rural, east, west, north, south, local, national, international, etc)
• Education
• Political orientation
• Cultural differences
• Sexual orientation
• Religious affiliations
• Married, unmarried, with or without children
• Profession
• Health condition (good health? Chronic condition? Insured? Uninsured?)
• Internal vs. external
• Attitudes, wants, needs
• Level of knowledge
• Media-use habits
Not all of these will be important to every issue, and you may identify other variables as you explore a particular issue
or situation. The whole point of really understanding the publics is that it informs everything else you do: what
strategies you pursue, what tactics you use, how you write, what media outlets you select, etc. Knowing your audience is
critical foundational analysis.