Robert B. Albritton

Changing National Images: International Public Relations and Media Agenda Setting

Research within the agenda-setting framework has generally ignored the potential influence of purposive efforts by external actors (those outside the political system) to manipulate media coverage related to their interests. The present study uses interrupted time-series analysis to examine one such set of manipulative efforts, those undertaken by professional public relations consultants to influence the images of foreign nations as portrayed in the United States press. Data represent New York Times coverage of six nations that signed public relations contracts with American firms during the period from 1974 to 1978, and one nation that expressly rejected such a contract. The analysis identifies consistent patterns of improvement along two primary dimensions of national image, visibility and valence, which are associated in time with the public relations contracts.

News of Rhodesia: The Impact of a Public Relations Campaign.

b Analysts of public policy-making have identified two distinct levels of agendasetting that influence, or are influenced by, the news media. The first, termed the formal agenda, refers to that set of issues and options that are actually under consideration by policy-makers. Most of these arise from a variety of internal (governmental) mechanisms which are seldom directly and heavily influenced by news coverage per se. The items on this agenda are relatively explicit, often narrowly defined and generally well-documented by non-media sources. They become the objects of legislative or administrative action which is in turn reported in the press and may thus enter upon the second, or public, agenda. This latter set of concerns tends to be more ambiguously stated, more broadly defined and less well-documented than the former, and the public agenda itself usually assumes its greatest importance not in the actual making of policy, but a t the front end of the decision-making process (through the articulation and organization of political demands) and at the tail end (in the generation of publicacceptance of policies once adopted). Here the media play a

Insurgent Violence Versus Image Management: The Struggle For National Images in Southern Africa

The authors examine the countervailing effects of two forces on external news coverage of Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and South Africa during the 1970s. The first is purposeful government efforts at news management and information control undertaken by each of the two regimes. The second is the civil unrest which was present in the region during that period. They conclude that these effects and the policy consequences that flow from them are functions of the pre-existing image environment of each country in the foreign (US) press and of the character of its domestic unrest.

Public relations in the public eye: Two case studies of the failure of public information campaigns

Abstract The authors examine two instances in which public relations efforts undertaken in behalf of foreign governments became the subject of public attention or controversy, finding in each case that the news image of the client government worsened. Comparing their results with other research that has identified more positive public relations outcomes, they conclude that public awareness of the manipulative efforts distinguished these cases and contributed to the observed effects.