Opportunities and constraints of the internet as a public relations platform: a multiple case study of selected organizations in Kenya

Abstract

Public relations (hereafter, PR) is defined as a set of communications techniques designed to create and maintain relations between an organization and its publics. PR has gained increasing organizational importance in recent times, as it has been emphasized in various platforms. Despite the Internet being increasingly used by organizations as a platform for PR, its Opportunities and constraints have not been empirically established. Further, a review of current literature shows that the use of the Internet for PR in organizations has been empirically investigated mainly in other contexts – especially in Europe and America – but not in Africa. However, most of these investigations focused on specific components of Internet and not the holistic use of the Internet for PR. Therefore, this study sought to investigate how organizations utilize the Internet as a PR platform. The following specific research questions were addressed: How does internet as PR platform offer Opportunities to organizations? What are the constraints of Internet as a PR platform in organizations? How do stakeholders perceive the Opportunities and Constraints of Internet as PR platform in organizations? The study adopted the relativist-interpretivist research paradigm and a qualitative approach utilizing the multiple case study method. A total of 45 participants were selected. These comprised respondents each from a financial, telecommunications, insurance, PR Agency and online shopping business. The organizations involved in the study were sampled purposively. In-depth interviews, observation and document analysis were used to generate data. Data analysis was done thematically. Public Relations Theories guided the interpretations of the study’s findings. From the study findings, the key Opportunities or opportunities of the Internet for internal and external communication included customer feedback, social interaction, and information sharing at low cost and high speed. The Internet was also said to enable organizations to obtain goods and services at the most convenient time and enhance brand awareness by ensuring large coverage at low costs. Among the constraints of Internet as a PR platform in organizations were security and trust concerns, content mismanagement, lack of tools of monitoring and evaluation, ineffective utilization of the platforms, lack of expert knowledge, experience and poor role specification. The stakeholders perceived the Opportunities and constraints of Internet as PR platform in organization as useful tools for immediate feedback, easy access of goods and services and organizational communication. On security, most of them said the Internet tools used were secure because of the security checks and logging in processes involved. From these findings, it was concluded that the Internet is a vital platform for PR in organizations, despite the many constraints to its application in PR. Therefore, the study recommends that organizations or business models formulate unique Internet strategies and policies based on its capabilities to realize its potential while minimizing constraints