MY TAKE ON LIBYA and the arab revolutionary world

HARLOW’S PUBLIC RELATIONS DEFINITION AND WHAT IT IS

Rex Harlow, considered by many in the public relations world as one of the best things to happen to the profession defines

Public relations as the distinctive management function which helps establish and maintain mutual lines of communication, understanding, acceptance and cooperation between an organization and its publics; involves the management of problems or issues; helps management to keep informed on and responsive to public opinion; defines and emphasizes the responsibility of management to serve the public interest; helps management keep abreast of and effectively utilize change, serving as an early warning system to help anticipate trends; and uses research and sound and ethical communication as its principal tools. (CCB, p.4, Harlow)

Critiquing and relating this definition to what public relations is all about, words such as distinctive, management function, establish, maintain, and mutual will be interrogated in the perspective of Public relations..

As per the definition, the word distinctive goes to give credence to the fact that Public relations even though correlates with other fields, it stands out because its core and nature is like no other of the allied professions.

Public relations as a management function as in Harlow’s definition and any other public relations template shows that public relations should be embedded in the management of a company without hindrance from any bureaucracy whether internal or external. The public relations department should have direct input in the management of the company.

Picking on “establish and maintain”; These  words lay importance to the fact that public relations people need to create relationships and go on to keep them intact for the benefit of the organization and its publics which is a mutual stand.

Zooming into what public relations is all about, it is the conscious creation of a mutually beneficial relationship between an organization and its publics for a two way continuous flow of information.

ADINKRA- IMPORTANT COMMUNICATION TOOLS

Communication is the sending and otherwise receipt of messages (information) from an identified source to a receiver for shared meaning to be attained. By virtue of this blanket definition, communication is an everyday occurrence as human existence cannot operate in a vacuum.

The more people keep interacting with each other and expect to gain responses to inform their actions, communication is said to occur.

Put in a more scholarly context, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ defines communication as the activity of conveying meaningful information. Communication requires a sender, a message, and an intended recipient, although the receiver need not be present or aware of the sender's intent to communicate at the time of communication; thus communication can occur across vast distances in time and space. Communication requires that the communicating parties share an area of communicative commonality. The communication process is complete once the receiver has understood the message of the sender.

The adinkra symbols are very perculiar. They are visual symbols that originated from the asante people of ghana and also the Gyaman of Cote d'Ivoire in West Africa. These symbols have been (and still) used to represent concepts and convey messages.

Adinkra are used extensively in fabrics, pottery, logos and advertising. They are also incorporated into walls and other architectural feature
As the ultimate aim of communication is to convey  messages and attain a shared meaning, Adinkra symbols can be classified as an important tool of communication.
These symbols are employed a lot by large outdoor advertisers to send out clear cut messages to their target audiences. For example in ghana, Vodafone ( a multinational moble phone Company) uses a lot of adinkra symbols in their outdoor advertising just to

convey the message that they share the ghanaian values of their local customers.  Also huge achetectural buildings incorporate them in their designs not only to convey a message of beauty but to convey a message of being indegenous.
Adinkra symbols such as Gye Nyame, Sankofa, owuo akwedie are also used in the fashion industry,religion and culture. In the fashion industry these symbols are inscribed on cloths to convey specific messages. For example the ‘Gye Nyame’ which means except God  symbolises the wearer’s believe in the supremacy of God.  It is also common to see ‘Owuo akwedie’ (death ladder) imprinted on  funeral cloths just to send the message that every human being will one day climb the ladder of death.
In culture, they are used as symbols of greatness and identity of clans and other groupings. By their very nature, they convey instant messages and are a great tool of communication. The very word ‘NKRA’  that holds the word ‘adinkra’ together means ‘message’ so it is by no accident that it is a very important communications tool.


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