Public Relations Roles

In recent decades, the practice of public relation has been largely explored yet areas within the field still remain uncertain. This essay aims to evaluate the roles of public relations within the current framework of a liberal democracy. In particular, five roles of public relations are being examined in order to understand the relationship between public relations and liberal democracy: conversation diversity, external subsidies, issues management, private politics and social marketing. This essay found that public relation results in positive outcomes for social pluralism when practitioners express diverse commercial conversations. Meanwhile, it showed a diminished positive outcome when public relations involve private politics. Public relation

The significant characteristic of modern liberal democracy is affected by two forces: nationalism and capitalism. The liberty component in liberal democracy pushes absolutist government to the cliff of politics whereas the development of liberal democracy might be hindered by wealth inequality in capitalism. Thus, liberal democracy usually features equal representation, in which reflects on the universal suffrage, every person in a society can vote regardless of gender, race, religion and status (Cameron, 2012, Defining liberal democracy). Another important feature is the separation of power in judicial system from the executive and the legislative. Thereupon, the judiciary has the absolute responsibility to deal with any illegal political activities (Cameron, 2012, Pros and cons of liberal democracy). A state with liberal democracy is a typical civil society along with the freedom for citizens to express their opinion on a political party or government’s operation, individually or through interest groups and public assembly, without breaking laws and risking safety. Therefore, the rise of advocacy groups is another significant characteristic in a liberal democracy society (Clemens, 1997, p,

Fact Based Communication (FBC), a former London based production company formed at 2009, was one of the lobbyists related to the government of Malaysia. According to the Independent (2011, TV & Radio), the FBC was commissioned by the British Broadcast Corporation (BBC) to make a documentary on the future of Egypt during the height of Arab Spring on 2011. Meanwhile, other than BBC, the FBC’s client also included the president of Egyptian Investment Ministry (GAFI). Thus, other than reporting on the current situation of Egypt, the FBC also ‘unintentionally’ inserted a 30 seconds commercial featured Egypt as an ideal investment location. A local media revealed the truth that this production company was actually led by Najib Razak, the current Prime Minister of Malaysia and has been funded 17 Million Euro, to produce programmes feature Malaysia and favourable to the Malaysian ruling party. The company was under suspicious due to its commitment on investigating the leader of the opposition party, Anwar Ibrahim. The BBC has ended its relationship with FBC immediately after the news. Tench & Yeomans (2014, p. 42) also states that the changes had taken place in contemporary public relation where experts transform knowledge to capital rather than exert their influence by persuasion conduct in public. The positive influence of lobbyists on