The Importance Of Political Public Relations

2.2 Previous Research

2.2.1 Political Public Relations

In the world of politics, political public relations practice is very important. Without seriousness in implementing political public relations, it is difficult for political actors to convince the people and alter their perception. Political public relations comprising three components; which is (1) politics, (2) public relations and (3) communications. Based on the journal ‘Political Public Relations: Old Practice, New Theory-Building’ by Jesper Strömbäck and Spiro Kiousis (2013), the authors stated the political public relations can be well-defined as the management process by which an organization or individual actor for political purposes, through purposeful communication and action,

These concepts not only stress on the individual skills and expertises, but also involves on the best and actual ways in handles the political party that they belong to.

Based on the book; Introduction to Political Communications by Brian McNair (1995) outlines the four main concepts involved in packaging politics. These are Media Management, Image Management, Internal Communications, and Information Management.

Media management is indispensable for the political parties in order to keep up a party’s visibility through the eyes of the media and keep the public cognizant of the party’s existence and actions. Based on Brian McNair (1995), it means that “the wide variety of practices whereby political actors may seek to control, manipulate or influence media organizations in ways which correspond to their political objectives.” Embrace actions projected to maintain and sustain a positive relationship concerning the politicians and the media involved in the media management. For politicians, they need to fulfill the media organizations on what they wants such as news, information or entertainment and at the same time utilizing their influence over on how that something is interceded or presented to the

The advantages of the media is that, all information that has been arranged by the political parties can be distributed directly to the people. So therefore, it can easily affect people's minds to think just what the political parties want them to think. Based on the journal ‘Political Public Relations on the Net: A Relationship Management Perspective’ by Michael Karlsson, Christer Clerwall and Ulf Buskqvist (2013), the journal focuses on the political public relations activities in Sweden.

The overall view of this journal shows that the advent of social media makes it plausible for political parties to participate with constituents on their own terms.

It is said here, digital media offer an extraordinary opportunities for political actors to create and develop relations with constituents through long-term commitment and interchange on their own unfiltered media platforms.

But, in the journal stated that, however, it looks like the user participation in the political parties’ social media entirely is somewhat low. Out of the 7 million Swedes who have an Internet connection and the opportunity to vote, signifying that traditional political public relations is still more important, not only to the parties but also to the