INTRODUCTION TO COMMUNICATION STUDIES

Introduction to Communication Studies

Introduction to Communication Studies

Since humans first used sticks and charcoal to augment the human voice as a medium of communication, technologies have shaped the form, content, and dissemination of communications. Today, technology has become an increasing important topic for public relations practitioners (Hallahan, 2001, 461-470), who have available to them an increasingly wide array of tools to communicate ideas. The advent of every new technology brings important changes to how public relations is practiced. The advent of printing with movable type, books, newspapers and magazines, the telegraph, photography and new illustration reproduction technologies, the typewriter, the telephone, the motion picture, radio, and television have altered the nature of advocacy, promotion, and persuasion over time. “New” communications technologies, such as the Internet, brought yet further changes.

Computer-Based Technologies In The Workplace

Most organizations, including the public relations units within them, now use mainframes, workstations, and personal computers connected in local area networks (LANs) for a wide range of activities, including accounting and data processing, database management, and word processing and graphic production. Computer networks are used for management reporting and for work group collaboration (e.g., using groupware and group decision support systems [GDSS] software). As result, hierarchical structures have become flattened and reporting relationships splintered. Work production itself has reentered around computer screens. (McLuhan 1964, 8-15)

Similarly, many organizations and functions have become decentralized. Work units in dispersed geographic locations and individuals working in remote locations (e.g., telecommuters) share information via wide area networks (WANs) in real time. Web technologies have facilitated this process by creating Intranets using graphical interfaces that integrate text, images, and sounds. The latest enhancements now permit Webcasting and Webconferencing. Meanwhile wireless technologies have extended these capabilities by providing even more mobility.

As a result, workers in public relations and other fields have had to become more computer savvy. In an effort to reduce costs, many routine tasks have become automated with the advent of voice mail, e-mail, automated telephone response systems, and Web interfaces to database information. Critics argue that organizations have become more impersonal as a result; others suggest employees, customers, and others find it more difficult to make sense of events in organizations today. Thus, changing communications technologies have posed new challenges for public relations as it strives to establish and maintain mutually beneficial relationships on behalf of organizations.

How Technology Impacts Public Relations

Technology had impacted public relations in several ways by the beginning ...