Ajakirjanike ja suhtekorraldajate rollid, vastastikused arusaamad ning hoiakud ajakirjanduse ja suhtekorralduse suhtes

Date

2005

Journal Title

Journal ISSN

Volume Title

Publisher

Tartu Ülikool

Abstract

Description

The bachelor work “The roles, mutual understanding of journalists and public relations officers and the attitudes towards journalism and public relations” focuses on the research of mutual understanding and attitudes of the speciality and roles of journalism and public relations. In addition to that, the work gives an answer to the question how often journalists and public relations officers professionally contact with each other, how the information sharing is happening, what kind of conflicts arise between the two partials, how much do they know about each others` speciality, how the future collaboration should develop and what would help the journalists and public relations officers to become more professional. The reason for writing about given subject was the fact that the relations between journalists and public relations officers and attitudes towards each others` roles have not yet been researched. The main reason for this could be that public relations officers have been working only for 10 years in Estonia. The research carried out among journalists and public relations officers contained 84 Estonian and Russian journalists working in the written media (daily newspapers, weekly newspapers, county newspapres), television and radio and 45 Estonian and Russian public relations officers from public sector and private sector firms. In addition to those the author has made 4 in-depth interviews with journalists and public relations officers. The bachelor work is divided into five parts. In the theory part the main characteristics are discussed which have affected the beclouding of the line between journalists and public relations officers - the commercialisation and the emergence of the interactive media. In addition to that the author has focused on comparing the roles of journalists and public relations officers, the development of the ideology of profession, the defining and professionalism of both specialities. In the second part of the work, an overview is given of the research questions, method, respondents and data analysis. In the empirical part the results of questionnaires and in- depth interviews are analysed and main findings are brought on. The fourth part of the work contains the discussion over given matter and the fifth contains the conclusion. The results of the research show that although most of the journalists and public relations officers consider each other partners in cooperation, their work tasks differ. They have a lot of common interests, but just as much they have their own interests, and according to this they have oppositional roles, interests, goals. While the journalists` task is to represent public interest and give objective information, the public relations officers` task is to protect the interests of an organisation and give biased information. Little knowledge of each others` roles causes professional conflicts and prejudices towards each other and create the opinion that the information shared is inadequate. This could be the reason why journalists do not trust the information given by the public relations officers and say that they rarely use press releases as information sources. Public relations officers on the other hand assure that they give information to journalists every day that journalists use in their stories. Both partials accuse each other in giving false information and in incompetency. Both journalists and public relations officers share the opinion that the collaboration should be more intensive, because both the quality of the results of the work and the efficacy of the achievement of goals depends on that. It seems that today the bridge between journalists and public relations officers is ready which helps to make the collaboration on both sides more effective.

Keywords

H Social Sciences (General), bakalaureusetööd, ajakirjandus, ajakirjanikud, suhtekorraldus, suhtekorraldajad, koostöö, hoiakud, eelarvamused, rollid (sotsiol.)

Citation