COM4809 - Advanced Research Report - Arts & Humanities Assignment Help

Assignment Task

INTRODUCTION The role of public relations is to attain support from the publics or stakeholders on behalf of an organisation. They act as a mediator between the organisation and their constituents based on the organisations decisions and actions in order to maintain a positive relationship. Public relations professionals aim to assist the organisation by persuasively communicating the interests of the organisation in order to influence peoples’ attitudes and behaviour (Fitzpatrick & Gauthier 2001: 193-194). Media ethics is concerned with the actions of the media and whether they are morally correct or not. It assists media workers in determining what is right and what they choose as the best possible alternative. Ethics is a set of guidelines and principals that help people in making moral decisions that are done voluntarily and are not forced on or made to be compulsory for individuals. The choices that individuals make have an impact on their behaviour and the actions that they take in various circumstances. Professional media ethics focuses on what constitutes professional or unprofessional conduct in terms of journalism or public relations. It deals with the regulation of the conduct of its members and their adherence to stipulations by their code of conduct. (Oosthuizen LM 2002: 10-12).
Public relations and ethics have and always will intersect and this has been deliberated since the field of public relations had first come into its own standing (Emmons 2010; Grunig 2014). The free flow of information is valued globally and ethics codes for public relations, it has been characterised as a relativistic value. Public relations must also conduct activities that enhance transparency and trustworthiness. The role of the public relations practitioner can be considered to be an ethical counsel or guardian to the organisation that they serve, however, their role can also be considered to be contradictory ethical behaviour (Byrum 2017: 106). Not all public relations practitioners behave in a manner that is morally and ethically acceptable and this puts the entire profession in the spotlight.
The national and international public relations governing bodies have instituted ethical codes of conduct to assist practitioners and hold them accountable for their actions. The Public Relations and Communications Association (PRCA) is the world’s largest public relations professional body, and, according to its website, it has a professional Charter and Codes of Conduct to uphold the standards in the public relations and communications industry. The Public Relations Institute of South Africa (PRISA), represents professionals in public relations and communications throughout Southern Africa. According to their website https://www.prisa.co.za/accreditation/, they employ a code of ethics and professional standards for the practice of public relations and communication management. These ethical codes of conduct aim to assist and guide practitioners in their ethical behaviour. Unfortunately, not all public relations practitioners follow these ethical codes of conduct. An example of such a case is the public relations firm Bell Pottinger’s handling of their “economic emancipation” campaign for the South African organisation Oakbay Investments. In this proposed research, the conduct of this firm will be explored and described at the hand of the PRCA and PRISA ethical codes of conduct. This research proposal outlines the steps that will be followed towards this end as it situates the research problem within its specific context. The proposal moves on to offer definite research objectives and questions and discusses the theoretical and empirical methodologies that will be employed to answer them.

PRESENTATION OF FINDINGS
The data collected has been categorised into two themes: PR actions of Bell Pottinger and unethical behaviour of Bell Pottinger. The data is categorised into these two themes in order to answer the research questions which are:
RQ1: Per media reports, Herbert Smith Freehills report, and ‘leaked’ documents, what were the PR actions of Bell Pottinger in terms of the economic emancipation campaign?
RQ2: As weighed against the PRCA and PRISA codes of conduct, in what ways were the PR actions of Bell Pottinger unethical?
RQ3 In what ways should the PRCA and PRISA ethical codes of conduct be revised and/or elaborated upon so as to help discern the lines of ethical conduct for its industry and members?
The data collected from the media reports reveal that the actions of Bell Pottinger were not appropriately managed and monitored. The data also showed that they were not professional in their behaviour and that they were irresponsible in their duties as representatives of a public relations organisation. For example, the Herbert Smith Freehills report indicated the following, “Members of senior management should have taken care to ensure that the BP account team was structured appropriately for such a sensitive mandate. It appears to have been broadly accepted that the economic emancipation campaign work stream required a team with significant geopolitical expertise and yet the bulk of the work was undertaken by a team specialist in corporate communications and reputation management, rather than geopolitical environment”. The Herbert Smith Freehills report also indicated that Bell Pottinger did not have any processes in place to monitor work being done on the campaign, “Members of senior management with day-to-day supervisory responsibility failed to put into place policies and procedures to minimise the risks associated with this account, including any formal process for the ongoing monitoring of the account and the work being done.”
The data collected also revealed that Bell Pottinger were unethical in their behaviour, the Herbert Smith Freehills report indicated as such “Certain material that we have seen was created for the campaign was negative or targeted towards wealthy white South African individuals or corporates and/or was potentially racially divisive and/or potentially offensive and was created in breach of relevant ethical principals”. The report also detailed the following: “We have seen evidence that the BP account team used other tactics in relation to the economic emancipation campaign which arguably breached the relevant ethical principles, including taking steps which might mislead or undermine journalists who were asking questions in relation to the campaign.”
Data collected from the media reports also detailed the unethical behaviour of Bell Pottinger. Cave 2017a detailed, “The “economic emancipation” campaign that Bell Pottinger waged for the Guptas’ company Oakbay Investments succeeded only in stirring racial tensions in the nation.” Cave 2017 also detailed the following: “The firm, it was alleged, had attempted to stir up racial anger against 'white monopoly capital' that still controls most of South Africa's wealth and power to draw attention away from the claims of political interference and 'state capture' that were being made about the Gupta family's activities. The allegedly 'hateful and divisive campaign to divide South Africa along the lines of race' included creating fake Twitter accounts to target prominent white business people.” Data collected from Cave 2017a also detailed “Bell Pottinger was accused of inciting racial tension, and operating fake Twitter accounts to mount racially driven campaigns.”
Based on the above data, the campaign run by Bell Pottinger was clearly unprofessional and unethically run. There are a number of factors that needed to be taken into account, namely (1) South Africa, being a Postcolonial country with marginalised groups of people, Bell Pottinger should have taken into account the socioeconomic landscape of the country before deciding to run the campaign. (2) The actions of Bell Pottinger also seemed to be politically motivated as the campaign was paid for by Oakbay Investments, which is the holding company in South Africa for the Gupta family. The Gupta family was also, allegedly, involved in corruption scandals involving South African politicians, including the former President of South Africa. The economic emancipation campaign was also used to divert attention away from the Gupta’s and focus on racial tensions in South Africa.

INTERPRETATION OF FINDINGS
DISCUSSION AND RECOMMENDATIONThe categorisation of the data into themes has provided a summary of content for interpretation. Conclusions can therefore be drawn based on the literature review that has been done.
CONCLUSIONAs the role of public relations is to attain support from the publics or stakeholders on behalf of an organisation, decisions taken by organisations must ensure that they have the best interest of all stakeholders, including the community in which they operate. The outcome of the research is based on the research processes that are applied in conjunction with the research paradigm as chosen by the researcher. Various research methodologies could be used to assist the researcher in achieving the best or most accurate outcome. It must also be noted that the socioeconomic background and the personal experiences of the researcher, will by nature, influence how the research is conducted, the methodology used to collect the data, and how the data is analysed and interpreted for the creation of knowledge.

This COM4809 - Arts & Humanities Assignment has been solved by our Arts & Humanities experts at My Uni Paper. Our Assignment Writing Experts are efficient to provide a fresh solution to this question. We are serving more than 10000+ Students in Australia, UK & US by helping them to score HD in their academics. Our Experts are well trained to follow all marking rubrics & referencing style.