Hello There,
So in my previous post about my daily tasks as a Public Relations intern, I highlighted on the role of Public Relations personnel as communicators and mediators between an organization and its publics or stakeholders. It is safe to say that this role is the most important one as although all the individual tasks I encountered during my internship were vast and varied, they all collectively led back to serving this specific role.
The most common execution of this role can be seen when looking at how an organization relates to its community or the general public. During my internship, this manifested itself as the relationship between the Ministry of Energy and Minerals and the general Tanzanian public. As a Public Relations practitioner working for the Ministry, my primary role was to communicate important information to and fro the two parties.
On one hand, this was done through the media releases that I would write on behalf of the Ministry, that would be relayed to the public through the media. Inversely, by summarizing the daily mentions of the Ministry and briefing it to the Ministry's officials and staff, I was communicating to the Ministry what was being said about it in the public. Furthermore, the media releases were put on the Ministry's official website and in its weekly news bulletin that is open to the public, to reach a wider audience, and so relay information to more people.
A new relationship I got to explore however, is that between the government and its partners; financial and otherwise. For the second half of my internship I was put in a team in charge of preparing an implementation report (more on this in my next post) on behalf of the Ministry to be submitted to one of its financial partners. Again, this is an example of the vital exchange of information between the organization and one of its stakeholders managed or facilitated by Public Relations personnel.
Lastly but definitely not least, it is important to note the Ministry's relationship with the media. The Public Relations department was in charge of contacting all the media in case of any events as well as sending media releases to the media for publication, so once again we see that Public Relations people are responsible for maintaining and facilitating these relationships.
It was really interesting seeing a concept learnt in class play out in real life.
I hope this was an interesting read.
Until next time.
Latifah Mzee Hamis Salim Boma
17223946/ 7E3A1749
Curtin University, Sarawak Malaysia
1 comment:
Hello Latifah,
In fact, I can relate to what you wrote!
I was not assigned to the specific role of Public Relations as well.
I carried out several other tasks which has in turn helped me to understand the broad nature of a business and i did the best that i could to implement PR in almost every task. I did my internship in a tour operator and i had to communicate messages from the reception to my guests, which includes PR as well. I look forward to be involved in more PR activities in the future as it is a flourishing industry and the prospects seems really interesting!
All the best and good luck for your future endeavours.
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