DIALOGICAL COMMUNICATION
Introduction: Social media is one of the cyber tools that enhance public relations effective dialogue between an organisation and its various publics as a result, for the purpose of this paper, an effort will be the focus on social media and how it has enhanced effective dialogue between an organisation and its various publics. Also, due to the rise in the use of cyber technology most especially social media among consumers and the publics around the world, there has been an increase in the use of social media as a tactic for many public relations practitioners to track their consumers and publics among other.
Because we are in the cyber era and consumers satisfaction is necessary due to heavy competition no wonder organisations are looking for ways to keep their customers close to the. The major concern of this paper is to ascertain how cyber era most especially social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram etc. has influenced the practice of public relations especially in creating and maintaining a mutual understanding for better interaction within internal and external publics.
Meanwhile, the earliest forms of tardo-media, interpersonal and group forms of communication had the benefit of being easy to use and did not necessarily need complex technologies. The weaknesses of not being able to communicate to a large audience led to the development of mass media such as telegraph, newspapers, magazines, radio and television and to the recent Internet/ICT/ which has helped in broadening the scope of digital public relations (Olayinka, 2016).
Advancement in modern technology has revolutionized all facets of communication during the past decades. Access to people and information practically anywhere and anytime in the world has been quicker, cheaper and easier. Kur (2014) in Awake magazine (2002) posits that the dynamic nature of the 2ls century and more centuries to come rests on technological revolution. No wonder, Marshall McLuhan, a Canadian English Professor in 1964 propounded the concept of “Global Village” regarding the entire globe as having the potentials of becoming a “global community” where information and news about anything and anywhere in the world would be readily available for anyone’s consumption in any part of the world and without mincing word, the impact of International Network (Internet) in achieving this feat cannot be underestimated.
This new technology has compressed the whole world into a single electronic to where information about far and near can be exchanged and shared with just a click of mouse or touch of the screen (Olorede, 2011). Adepoju, et. al (2009), observe that the internet is the host of many other media tagged socio-media like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, Whatsapp etc. making information distribution faster, cheaper and easier especially for public relations practitioners whose job is to build, maintain and polish the image and integrity of company facilities two-way communication.
Public relations use social media to maintain effective dialogue between an organisation and publics by sharing the organisation’s views, opinions, seeking the opinion of publics, make feedback easier and faster.
