Intro to Public Relations
Professor Z
30 September 2014
Journal Entry 5
Q1: I believe that it would be quite easier to persuade smaller groups then larger groups of people. Subjects become issues when the subject catches the attention of the group one is speaking to. Debates, discussion involving opposing points, will lead to agreements. This is known to people as public opinion. According to our book, public opinion, is the predominant attitude of a community. It says in our book," public relations practitioners need to keep their fingers constantly on the pulse of public opinions."(pg. 149) In my mind, this means that these practitioners need to keep an eye on these opinions to make sure that what they are doing is going to keep the group working with them happy. Practitioners are the leaders of the organization through the times that get rough. My example of what public opinion is, is something like bowling. There are the people who absolutely love bowling, it is their entire world. Then there is the group of people who thinks bowling is a joke and not a sport at all, then you have people who do not even know that bowling is considered a sport, not just a recreational activity that families do for fun. This leads into the fact that there are three different types of public opinions. One is, Latent public opinion. Latent is the outcome of people having different interests in a subject. Then, there is active public opinion, which is when people act to persuade opinions and the actions of other people. Last is aware public opinion; it is when a group becomes aware of a growing issue. I do feel that these practitioners should influence public opinion. Reason being, is because it is their job. Their job is to persuade the audience to make the group they are working for as good as possible.
Q4: The mass media industry does in fact influence people. There is a large amount of people in the would that lets what the media says influence their thinking and decision making. Then there are those people who could not care what the media says, it is their decision, not the medias. Older generations do not let the mass media of the world control their thinking, because when they were kids, they did not have the social media, and access