Week 2

1. I think the key points to remember from this week's readings were...
that public relations has many different aspects to understand. It would be quite easy for someone to confuse public relations with media and advertising if they didn't understand the different dimensions of public relations.

There is a strong link between marketing and PR. Many areas of PR have actually been identified as overlapping with areas of marketing. This may cause confusion, but an easy way to distinguish between the two is to think in monetary terms. In marketing, a firm has to purchase advertising space and choose the time an adverstisement will be displayed. Marketing is considered to be controlled . Whereas PR publicity space is free, but the practitioner has no control over whether the material is used, therefore publicity is considered to be uncontrolled.

The role of a public relations practitioner is quite diverse as there are many different areas one can go into including events management, communication, publicity, politics and many more.
It was also interesting to note the history of public relations and how the industry has changed today to be more female dominated.

2. The readings made me think more about public relations theory/practice in that …
before starting this course I thought that I had a good knowledge base of what public relations is, however I am starting to realise it is much more interesting than I thought. As I've only just started the course, the readings have helped to define public relations in different ways and open up my mind to the different areas of public relations, as well as the different career paths that a PR practitioner can take. Understanding the history of PR in Australia also helped to get a bit of background on the area.
I also feel that there is a lot to learn about PR and it is a professional area that would require hands on experience to polish one's skills, however this is an introduction for further study to be built on.