All good things come to an end...

Group 4 hopes you have found our blog interesting and useful. Perhaps this will sink into the endless abyss that is cyberspace, only to be rediscovered decades later having acquired some kind of nostalgic charm...probably not. Either way, it'll be here if you need it!

Here is our final presentation, which sums up our thoughts and findings on PR in former Soviet Union countries.

Post Soviet Pr

View more presentations from group4blog.

Corporate social responsibility – a challenge for Russian PR professionals

by Nina Kinnunen

VTsIOM is one of the biggest and most well-known Russian public opinion research centers. On their site one can find many interesting poll results about what Russians think of different themes, especially about politics and economics. The center has not conducted polls directly about PR practices or PR’s image (at least could not find any), but I was able to find this opinion poll conducted in 2007 about corporate social responsibility. (Even though there is an English version of the site, unfortunately this particular poll is not available in English, nor are some other contents).

According to the results 61 % of respondents said that Russian companies cannot be described as socially responsible actors. 39 % of respondents thought that the state is more socially responsible than companies (vice versa only 14 %). 29 % thought that neither the state nor the companies can be said to be socially responsible. The respondents were also asked to mention companies they thought to be socially responsible ones. The five most often mentioned companies were: Sberbank, Lukoil, Gazprom, Russian railways and Aeroflot. However, none of them gained a considerable percentage. (The poll was conducted in 150 different spots in 39 regions, amount of respondents 1600, margin of error 3,4 %.)

There seems to be a significant gap between Russians’ expectations and the perceived reality on corporate social responsibility. Majority of people were not happy with how governmental or business organizations took care of their societal responsibilities. And I do not think this situation has significantly changed within two years. This means a huge challenge for PR practitioners. Undoubtedly CSR has and still is badly despised in many Russian organizations. Working as the "corporate conscience" can be thus really hard. But even if the organization does put real effort on being a socially responsible actor and communicating about it, people in general are very distrustful and skeptical. So it is hard to work as a “consensus creator” between the organization and its stakeholders, even if the PR professionals have the organizational support they need in communicating about CSR.

Ok, this is it then, my last post for our blog. I already want to say thank you for the interesting comments I have received (but this does not of course mean that you could not still send them!). I hope I have been able to offer some interesting bits and pieces about how PR has developed in Russia within the last 20 years or so. I also want to thank all course participants for your interesting blog entries.

Writing this blog has been an interesting experience. I have learned about the development of PR in Russia and some other ex-Soviet countries, and also some things about blogging too. It is always rewarding to understand not only what is going on at the moment, but why the things are the way they are now, and what the paths have been that have led to the present situation - and that will also have an effect on the future. Trying to gather the “big picture” of some former Soviet Union countries’ PR field’s development has been quite a task. Tomorrow (24.11) in our presentation we will try to show you what kind of a picture our group has been able to gather. See you then!



USED SOURCES:

VTsIOM start site in English.
http://wciom.com/

VTsIOM. Rating of socially responsible companies. 14.5.2007.
http://wciom.ru/arkhiv/tematicheskii-arkhiv/item/single/8167.html?no_cache=1&cHash=777429e427

Cultural aspect on PR in Russia

Suvi Hurri

Last week Päivi wrote about cultural differences and how they affect PR. A study about the emergence of public relations in the Russian Federation (Golitsinski,M. 2000) opens this subject more. This study was published almost ten years ago, but reading it gives a good picture why western style PR has had problems in Russia.

Sources Golitsinski’s referres in the study say, for example, that western style PR is too rational for Russia and doesn’t fit in the “mystical peculiarity of the Russian soul”. Another statement is that notion “honesty”, which is necessary in public relations dialogue, doesn’t mean the same thing for Russians and for example Americans. In America it means “return your debt on time,” but in Russia it is “something more spiritual”. (Golitsinski 2000, 12)

Cultural differences may appear in many ways. Recently I read from Kauppalehti that Finnish companies still can’t create networks in Russia. The reason is simple according to this article. Finns make contacts mainly by e-mail, while Russians value personal meetings. (Eerola, A. 2009).

Golitsinski puts a question: should Russian PR be different from western PR because the whole culture is so different? According to Golitsinski Russian company executives have difficulties to separate propaganda from PR and many journalists think PR professionals lie all they can. Should this be accepted and let propaganda and bribery be a part of Russian public relations?

If Russia could flourish independently from the surrounding world this might even work. But as long as Russia have commerce with western countries it cannot have totally different PR system than the surrounding countries. Gotlinski makes the same conclusion. He claimes that “there is a distinction between culture-spesific public relations and unethical (as it is recognized by the international community) public relations." I couln't agree more.

Source: Golitsinski, S. 2000. A study of the emergence of public relations in the Russian Federation. Research paper.

Building the reputation of PR in Russia

by Nina Kinnunen

While surfing on IPRA’s website I found this article. According to it PR has clearly suffered from a negative image in Russia since it first emerged in the end of 80’s. Most of the population’s knowledge of PR was limited to political conflicts for a long time. And political PR widely used dirty techniques and mud-throwing. Thus the reputation of PR-specialists became associated with lies and bribery. In business PR "zakazukha”, (meaning bought-and-paid-for news articles) became a standard practice and main business of the newly-formed Russian PR agencies. Throughout the 90’s there was little understanding of the term PR and its role in the modern business environment.

But the article is also a proof that something has been done – and quite successfully even – to build up better practices and consequently a better reputation for Russian PR. The article is quite long, so I’ll try to summarize it for you here.

IPRA has the annual Golden World Awards (GWA) that recognizes the best in Public Relations work from around the world. It contains numerous award categories covering the whole range of public relations activities. In 2004 Russian SPN Granat Communications Agency was selected as the winner in the category “Recovery from Crisis”. In partnership with its client, the Russian Public Relations Agency, it had developed and implemented a program in 2003 in order to address the negative reputation of Russian PR and unprofessional practices within the industry. The 12 month program was based on three major international public relations events: PR days in Moscow, Baltic PR Weekend and PROBA Awards.

The Mission:

To rebuild the reputation of Public Relations in Russia, to identify the causes and incidents of unprofessional practices (Black PR), to bring the PR practices to the international level and build partnerships across all interested parties.

Objectives:

1.Drawing public attention to the PR profession
2.To determine the leaders, separating civilized PR practices from amateurish ones
3.Contributing to working out criteria for professional qualities in PR
4.Bringing together PR specialists and representatives of business, culture, politics and social sphere who are interested in creating favorable image in development of PR services area.

Accomplishments:

The arranged events reached both extensive geographical and media coverage. The efforts for strengthening the professional position of PR practitioners also paid off. Consequently, in September 2003 the profession of “Public Relations specialist” became officially recognized by the state and was entered in to the Russian Federation Professions Register.

There were also other more general changes listed on the site (not only related to this particular program, I think)

Changes in the structure of PR services in Russia:

1.For many, the first (and for a long time only) real sign of PR in Russia was the press release. So-called "carpet-bombing" of the media with press releases was almost the only activity of the PR specialist in the early nineties and beyond. Face-to-face media interaction was almost non-existent. Now other parts of the media relations tool set were utilized (press tours, press conferences, interviews, special events for media representatives): Russian executives and Russian journalists learned how to talk to each other!

2.Growing understanding of diverse audiences – companies and organizations, government and interest groups, customers and investors – which all required a different approach and a different form of dialogue.

3.The role of efficient internal communications became increasingly appreciated.

4.Economy leaders started to care about their public images, sponsorship and charity work for promoting the companies as responsible corporate citizens.

5.Establishing of the environmental PR: Learning from the international best practices, Russian oil, gas, pulp-and-paper and steel companies are investing in environmental programs and communicating these changes to the industry and the general public

6.Establishing of financial PR, investor and analyst relations.

7.Growing trust of PR agencies as professional in solving PR tasks

Even though the implementation of the program was clearly successful, there has been and still is a lot improvements to do, of course. Russian PR agencies have also won IPRA awards after the year 2004. I saw that one Russian PR Agency was also awarded this year, the PR Department of Slavinsky Art Gallery for launching the new gallery. You can see all the award categories here and check, whether your home country or any of your blogs’ countries were awarded this year.



USED SOURCES:
(Same links also in the text)

IPRA. 2004 Frontline Award: Building the reputation of Public Relations in Russia.
http://www.ipra.org/detail.asp?articleid=141

IPRA. Awaiting the Golden Age – Launch of Slavinsky Art Gallery.
http://www.ipra.org/detail.asp?articleid=1264

IPRA. Current Golden World Awards. http://www.ipra.org/currentawards.asp

Transparency in Former Soviet States... or lack of?

Recently Transparency International released it's annual list of the most and least corrupted countries, the Corruption Perceptions Index 2009. The Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) measures the perceived levels of public sector corruption in 180 countries and territories. A composite index, the CPI is based on 13 different expert and business surveys. (For more on the Corruption Perceptions Index, check the Transparency International website.)

The scale is from 0-10, from high to low perceived corruption. Here are the scores of the former Soviet States:

Armenia 2.7               Azerbaijan 2.3

Belarus 2.4                 Estonia 6.6

Georgia 4.1                Kazakhstan 2.7

Kyrgyzstan 1.9            Latvia 4.5

Lithuania 4.9              Moldova 3.3

Russia 2.2                  Tajikistan 2

Turkmenistan 1.8        Ukraine 2.2

Uzbekistan 1.7                                                     

Overall average: 3.02

What does all this have to do with Public Relations? Well, I would argue than in countries where corruption is high, the level of PR professionalism and education is low. This idea is based on simple logic: if you can buy your way ahead, you need not spend money building an image, managing your reputation etc. With the right connections and the right bribes, who needs communication management?

The numbers seem to agree with me. For example, in Estonia PR is a growing field - and it's score is the highest in this group - while our bottom trio of Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Kyrgyzstan probably don't have many communication practitioners, apart from those working for the [corrupted] governments.

I cannot say that I was surprised by these results. In many poorer countries (ie. the majority of the world) money talks, and cash is often exchanged between business folk and the authorities, be they police, municipal and local government or ministers and higher officials. Most of the corruption is practical, and hardly malicious - a few extra dollars gets the permits a bit faster - but as you go up the chain, it becomes evident that organizations that are successful have gotten their hands dirty. For example, if two companies are bidding for a town's road building contract, the one on better terms with the major will probably get the job, and nothing makes good "terms" in a poor country than gifts and large sums of cash. A favor gets a favor.

Public relations may not grow in these countries as it has in the West, mostly because the overall climate is quite different. Then again, thinking back 50 or so years, even the now squeaky clean countries (like Finland) were poor, war torn and corrupt. Perhaps, having these things pointed out will encourage former Soviet States to work harder towards transparency and free flowing information, thus creating a solid ground on which PR can blossom.

How does this work with other countries? Find yours on this map.

Sources:

Transparency International. 2009. 
-Methodology.
http://www.transparency.org/policy_research/surveys_indices/cpi/2009/methodology 
-Corruptions Perceptions Index 2009. http://media.transparency.org/imaps/cpi2009/

PR changing in Georgia

Suvi Hurri

While I am writing this text, PR history is made in Georgia. Today and tomorrow certain organizations organize a special training program about corporate social responsibility (CSR).

The training provides basic knowledge on CSR, its strategic development and organizational ethics. Trainees gain skills of analyzing the organization’s current CSR strategies.

This progress comes just the right time for corporations and PR professionals, I think. Only a few years ago nearly 40 percent of people in Georgia lived below the poverty line. At the same time public economy grows rapidly and government seduces foreign investors in the country. In World Bank listing Georgia was the 18.th easiest country for business.

When foreign money floods in the country it is important that the whole country benefits from it. Here I see an opportunity for PR professionals to intervene and function as corporate conscience. When operating in a country with vast poverty corporations should always ask themselves: should we participate developing the community or is it ok just to collect the profit and run? If no-one else asks these questions, PR professionals should.

Sources: Veide, L. 2009. Corporate social responsibility workshop for Georgian companies. Georgia today.

Do cultural backgrounds have an effect on PR?

By Päivi Jauhiainen

Soviet Union was a vast country in which the different states did not share the same cultural, religious or linguistic backgrounds. Still, everyone in the country was supposed to live by the same ideology which was spread around the country with the help of propaganda. Everyone was supposed to think the same way and was fed the same ideology by the goverment regardles of their backgrounds.

In my opinion, the old states of Soviet Union are facing a new challenge now. Earlier they were not seen as individual nations but as a part of "one big family" with same ideologies, the Soviet people. I think it is going to be interesting to see how these countries are going to project themselves to other countries as independent nations with their own beliefs and attitudes. For example, Estonia is a part of Europe and in my opinion, its communication has focused on the western countries. But I have no idea what is happening in Asian countries such as Tajikistan or Kyrgyzstan and I am quite confident to say that neither do many of my course mates. For example, most of the people in these countries are Muslim and they are geographically located quite far from the "West", i.e. Europe or United States etc. If I compare these countries to my example Estonia, I think the two Asian countries have not had such massive PR efforts of their countries as Estonia has. One example of this is that as I googled Tajikistan and PR the results were e.g. There are currently no listings in PR Consultants category or www.pr.com said There are currently no press releases listed in this industry (with Tajikistan). What is positive is that the European Comission is trying to train the countires with PR to help them strenghten their financial position in the global market.

I mentioned above the cultural, religious and liguistic differences between the former Soviet states. Perhaps this has also something to do with the differences in the PR actions between the countries. Because Estonia is a European country, it wants to project itself to its neighbours as a "real" European country but the Asian countries do not have the need to do that and perhaps therefore have not used such PR efforts as their European counterparts. Also, because Estonia is a European country, perhaps it has been easier for it to learn and use western PR because of their European identity.

Antoher reason could be that because countries such as Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia are part of Europe, their European neighbours have helped them more than they have the Asian states by educationg and giving them resources to more effective PR. If I think of e.g. Finland, I think we have been happy about the independence of Estonia as it is our loved neighbour and our goverment and media have tried to help them as much as we can, but I doubt whether we have given so much help to Tajikistan or other Asian former Soviet states.

Bearing all this in mind, I wonder whether the Asian states want to adapt the western PR system? If they have no cultural or religious link to the western countries, why would they want to do PR in the western way? Or do they even feel the need to communicate and project themselves to the western countries? In my opinion, it would sound logical if they wanted to commuicate with Islamic countries or other Asian countries with same traditions, beliefs and attitudes. I am not saying that this is how it should be, as I think everyone should be able to communicate with each other, but what I am trying to say is that perhaps our way of doing things is not the best way everywhere.

In addition, because the previous Soviet states were always thaught to think the same way, it must be difficult and challenging to start creating one's own message to the world and to find the right channel to do that. I can only hope they area able to find a proper channel to do that and to project themselves as they really are, not as they have been thaught to be.

Public relations in Estonia nowadays
by Tuomas Muhonen

In this blog post I try to answer to next question: Are there any signs of two-way symmetrical communication in Estonian organisations? Firstly I have to remind that there are not studies of the overall situation nowadays. Anyway I found some material related to the subject.

Responsible Business Forum in Estonia (Vastutustundliku Ettevõtluse Foorum) has studied practices related to Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in small and medium enterprises (SME) in Estonia. CSR can be seen as a sign of open organization and two-way symmetrical communication because its purpose is somehow dialogic and mutual understanding. According to Responsible Business Forum in Estonia (2007: 29) about 35 % of respondents claim they have been implementing some CSR activity. The most important interest groups for SMEs were shareholders and clients. Here is the short summary of CSR in Estonian Companies.

Subsequently, I tried to find out in which level PR-practioners work in organisations. Managers see public relations mainly as a technical function (Jänes 2005: 122). Main service area is media relations while other areas are quite small (Soone 2007: 2).

The biggest trend in governmental level are online information services. Use of information technology is also a very developed field in Estonia. Anyway, problem is how to use this new technology progressively. (Anton & Rannu 2005: 100.) Use of information technology has a lot of possibilities on the way to open society and organizations.

According to the source material, Estonia has not reached the stage of open society. Organizations have not really understood how they could use public relations to build mutual understanding with stakeholders. However, there are small signs of dialog in Estonian organizations.

USED SOURCES:

Responsible Business Forum in Estonia (2007). CSR in Estonian SMEs.

Anton, R & Rannu, R (2005). Eesti Vabariigi valitsuse suhtekorralduse areng taasiseseisvumise järel. In Praktiline suhtekorraldus: Eesti kogemus. Tartu Ûlikooli Kirjastus.

Jänes, K (2005). Juhtide arvamus suhtekorraldusest: Juht hindab suhtekorraldust, kuid mitte suhtekorraldajat. In Praktiline suhtekorraldus: Eesti kogemus. Tartu Ûlikooli Kirjastus.

Soone, I (2007). Estonian PR Market Overview.

Some remarks on the Russian Public Relations Association (RPRA)

by Nina Kinnunen

I have been surfing on the web pages of Russian Public Relations Association (RPRA, or RASO in Russian). (Unfortunately, the pages are in Russian only.) The association was founded in July 1991, so pretty soon after the collapse of Soviet Union. RPRA is the first Russian professional and non-commercial organization that unites Russian and foreign specialists of public relations. It has established co-operation with international PR organizations, such as CERP (European Public Relations Confederation) and IPRA (International Public Relations Association).

On the association’s website one can find e.g. news on Russian PR field, lists of Russian PR agencies and the Russian Codes of ethics in PR. The Code of ethics was formulated in 2001 and it resembles a lot the models set by international organizations. There is also a forum for discussion. I scanned through the forum topics when one thread made me stop and I started reading it. The headline was “PR – a profession or a calling?” This thread had started in 2007 and last posts were from this year. There was one thing that caught my attention: almost all writers expressed dissatisfaction towards how PR is being taught at universities or said that formal education is not needed at all, or is not that important in order to become a successful PR practitioner. At first I was a little surprised of the dismissive attitude towards formal education but maybe it is not that odd after all. There may still be quite many Russian practitioners who started in the field in the beginning of 90’s, learned all they know in practice and perhaps, succeeded. It may still have an impact on how people see the field and the way it can be entered. Otherwise I think that Russians in general appreciate higher education a lot. (Guess I should also remember that this “sample” of PR students and practitioners with this kind of an attitude is very limited.)

Then something else I also noticed. Apparently, the association has even its own hymn (!) which can be read and downloaded here. They say that it is supposed to be sung in RASO meetings and gatherings in order to create a feeling of togetherness. I found the lyrics interesting so I decided to share them with you. I have bolded the parts I find especially interesting. My Russian is not that good and this is a quick translation, but the words go something like this:

All know, that the star in the horizon
does not come up without the efforts of outsiders.
And we together always remember that,
and work and work, of course!

No matter what are the brands, cities, artists
politicians, events, heroes:
correctly, easily, brightly and purely
we build the history of this country and the world.

chorus:

Community of pragmatics and sceptics,
practitioners and theorists,
talented and progressive,
together we are powerful!

And you’re right friend, we can do even miracles,
build a legend, make a fairytale into a true story,
make much ado about nothing, transform a donkey into a camel
and put negative into the dust of the street

But the one who says … and cynically
that the end always justifies the means
is not ours (not one of us) at all, we follow god manners
and in that way strive for perfection


I did not quite understand the idea of the first strophe, but the other ones were more understandable. There seems to be one theme I keep running into all over and over again, also in this hymn: the ethics. It is apparent that while this hymn is an effort to build up professional pride, it also reminds of the importance of following ethical practices - even though they could “do miracles” also with unethical ones. Still I find it quite odd - even though honest - how openly this hymn refers to the “black practices” in the field. What do you think?


USED SOURCES:

http://www.raso.ru/

Animated Soviet Propaganda

Many of us have seen the old posters used for propaganda, but there was a whole range of media being utilized in the spread of Soviet propaganda. One of these was cinema, and animated features were also a popular medium.

Animation had several advantages. Firstly, it is an audio and visual tool. Strong and vibrant colours and dramatic music could be used to portray an emotion, while leaving an image or melody in the memory of the audience that will make the message more likely to stay. This also provides a large range of styles, genres, and even references known to the audience to be made (e.g. a man with a tall hat with the American flag is clearly Uncle Sam, and not just a random fellow).

Secondly, it gives the artist freedom. When filming with real people, there are limits to what can be done - back in the black and white error there was a lot of things that could not be done in a movie. In animation, there is no limit. Plot, setting and character design indeed vary from more realistic styles (e.g. Ave Maria, an anti-Vietnam clip) to the pure caricatures (The Millionaire, the story of how a bulldog becomes rich and powerful). This enabled Soviet artists to portray they're idea of America, without ever having been there - it needn't be truthful since it's not meant to look real anyways. This made it a powerful propaganda tool.

A third advantage is that animations have the appearance of being innocent and child-like, being something for children. Thus, they could be watched by the young who are more easily influenced, and the ideas planted in them through the images could take root and grow into beliefs and "understanding" as they themselves grew.

From my understanding, the reason propaganda is so effective is that it plays to your emotions, rather than logic. I for one was touched by the images in Ave Maria, but I know that the Soviets were not mere bystanders in the war, and hardly saints.

I have thrown in a few links to some propaganda animations (plus two links above!), and while watching, you can ask yourself How does this make me feel? Try looking at the whole package first - the music, the colors, the mood, character - as this will probably shed light on how it is that propaganda works.

Similar tactics can be seen today, e.g. in music videos and advertisements - are they propaganda as well?

Animated Soviet Propaganda Part 1 - American Imperialists 27:20 

Part 1 of this documentary. Includes Mister Twister, A Strangers Voice, The Millionaire, Ave Maria, The Shooting Range and commentary.

Segments from the same documentary

Cinema Circus 3:37

The Bright Future, Communism 10:01

Capitalist Sharks 4:32

Others

A Lesson Not Learned 5:16

What Hitler Wants 8:13

Mashenkin Concert 9:11

Access to paradise

Do you desire to end up in paradise after your death? For a Finnish Christian this is a difficult task, because we have to try to live all our lives well without harming others.

If you happen to live in Turkmenistan this goal is much easier to achieve. Late president of Turkmenistan, Saparmurat Niyazov had a very practical solution: you just have to read the book he wrote, Ruhnama, three times a day.

This is not a joke. In March 2006 dictator Niyazov was recorded as saying that he had interceded with God that any student who reads the book three times a day automatically gets into paradise.

This powerful propaganda epos is a bizarre combination or controversial history, stories, poems and autobiography. It gives spiritual and moral guidance to the nation, and many people consider it as a stone base of art and literature of Turkmenistan. Some think it is an addition to the Koran.

Before Niyazov died in 2006, Ruhnama was implemented in school teaching and it was an obligatory part of driver’s license. This was possible, because after two decades in authority president Niazov had built a personality cult with odd regulations. He for example forbade ballet and opera as foreign vanity, and banned car radios in the name of traffic safety.

But why should Finnish or any other countries’ PR professionals know anything about Ruhnama? Answer is: because this book can bite you in your ass if you aren’t careful. Turkmenistan has been one of the most closed countries, and any foreign company that wanted to make business with Turkmens and get hands on the vast oil and gas reserves, had to translate Ruhnama into their own language.

Over four years ago a Finnish electrical engineering company Ensto almost did that. At the last moment Ensto changed its mind and refused to translate Ruhnama. It lost a very profitable deal.

If you don’t believe, look at the YouTube sample from home page of Finnish rewarded document Shadow of the Holy Book.

Here is an ethical question all PR professionals should ask themselves. We are taught to adjust into host country’s circumstances and teach tolerance to managers, but where is the line when circumstances become impossible to tolerate? Can our company prop up an arbitrary dictator because that is a national custom?

Nowadays Niyazov’s book’s translation is no longer demanded, because he died and Turkmenistan has a new president. New president, Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov started a reform which doesn’t progress very fast.

Turkmenistan is still one of the most closed countries in the whole world. There is no free press. There is a very limited and controlled internet access all over the country. Students who want to study abroad may never get further than the airport. Does this sound like a country in which you would like to operate? I don’t know about you, but for example our national jewel Nokia does.

Some of the sources I used for this article:

Turkmen President Fails to Fulfil internet Pledge. Institute for War & Peace Reporting.

Sajari, P. 2008. Nokia käy kauppaa Turkmenistanin diktatuurihallinnon kanssa. Helsingin Sanomat 27.2.2008.

Halonen, A. Personal opinion in Helsingin Sanomat 4.3.2008

Niemi, K. 2006. Diktaattorin oikuissa oli myös johdonmukaisuutta. Helsingin Sanomat 22.12.2006.

Ukrainian PR: is there one?

by Päivi Jauhiainen

Today is my turn to write our blog but unfortunatelly I'm having a terrible migraine. I'll try to write something but my eyes are not "fit" at the moment to look at the screen for a long time, so I will keep my comments short. Hopefully there will be at least some sort of reason and logic in my text...

I was searching the internet and also aour university's library web pages for information about Ukraine and PR. I found nothing from our university library and also the internet results were quite poor. In my opinion, this is because PR is a relatively new matter in Ukraine. One webpage ( http://www.ukraine-today.com/business/pr/index.shtml ) told that some critics say that Ukrainian PR is nonexistent and others say that " it does exist and has its own schools, principles, theories and 'national peculiarities'". In any case, there are only few Ukrainian PR companies and they are still relatively young. In addition, many Ukrainian companies and organisations rather use international PR companies than domestic ones. For example, the webpage shows how the "oldest" PR company in Kiev was founded in 1993 so the industry is new in Ukraine.

All this can perhaps explained by their history as a part of Soviet Union, where there was no need for PR in a form as we see it. Ukrainian PR industry is apparently trying to learn from its western counterparts and to build up a PR culture of their own. On the other hand, it would seem to me that they are now at the learning stage rather that making their own new theories about the matter. We can only hope that the western way of doing PR is the best to work in Ukraine too and that it fits their communication culture. On the web pagfe of The European Public Relations Confederation (http://www.cerp.org/news/news/pdfs/PRcongress_engl.pdf ) is information about a conference which was held in Ukraine in 2006. The page tells about the young state of Ukrainian PR and how it has been possible only from 2004 for Ukrainaian PR specialists to make qualification degrees in PR. The page also tells that Ukrainian PR is very young but very dynamically growing industry.

Sorry, this is all I am able to write today. I promise i'll be better next week. Now I'm off to bed to cure my headache. I hope this not an early stage of the "oink, oink" flue...

Public relations in the transition society – Estonia
by Tuomas Muhonen

The process of change in Soviet Estonia began during the Singing revolution in 1988 and 1989. Estonia became independent again on the 20th of august in 1991. The Soviet occupation had lasted for 48 years. The time of totalitarian Soviet communism affected very deeply to Estonia's society and culture. Therefore, also public relations in Estonia have changed fundamentally during 20 years after singing revolution.

According to Tampere (2003: 132; 2005: 21), there are five types of stages of change in a totalitarian society and organisations. At the first stage of change, a society or organisation is closed and secret. The public communication of an organisation is asymmetrical and usually propagandistic. These organisations view their environment as irrelevant and even disturbing. At the second stage, organisations face up the new ways and code of a society. At the middle stage, organisations come face to face with financial conflicts and new interest groups. At the fourth stage, organisations start a real change. They start to plan strategically and analyse interest groups. The final stage would be an open society and organisation, which is still coming. (Tampere 2003: 132; 2005: 20–21.)

A Communist propaganda made people passive and unresponsive. People had some kind of immunity to information. Organisations send messages to interest groups but they don't receive the messages and vice versa. (Tampere 2005: 25.) This kind of attitude can affect unconsciously even nowadays.


USED SOURCES:

Tampere, K (2003). Public Relations in a Transition Society 1989-2002: Using a Stakeholder Approach in Organisational Communication and Relations Analyses, Doctoral Theses, Jyväskylä University Press (Finland)

Tampere, K (2005). Väike teoreetiline sissejuhatus Eesti praktilisse suhtekorraldusse. In Praktiline suhtekorraldus: Eesti kogemus. Tartu Ûlikooli Kirjastus.

The Development of Public Relations in Russia: part II

by Nina Kinnunen

In the beginning of 90’s they did not have educated PR professionals in Russia. There were other communication professionals of course, but no specific PR practitioners, since PR as a professional field and a university discipline had not yet been established. The first ones who started working in the field of Russian PR were former journalists. This is why Alexander Goregin and Alexandre Nikolaev (1996) call the years 1989-1992 “the journalism stage” in the development of Russian PR. Former journalists had to serve their employer’s interests of course, but they also brought along some principles and ideals from their previous occupation. They had respect towards the public and its need to be informed. These professionals wanted to create a tradition of open communication. During the early years of Russian PR these new professionals also seemed to have high hopes of changing the communication culture rapidly. But as we already know, the change has not been that quick or easy.

According to Goregin and Nikolaev, soon many organizations wanted to return to the past methods with their media relations. They should have cooperated with mass media representatives in an open manner, but they were still heavily burdened with the communication culture from the past. The managers wanted to gain back some control over the messages the media representatives would send about their organizations. (Goregin & Nikolaev 1996.)

Government agencies reacted by bringing in people with administrative or Communist party backgrounds into their PR departments. These groups were chosen because they were more likely than former journalists to put their employers' interests over society's or public’s interests. They were more willing to withhold or distort information that caused trouble for their institutions. Consequently, a PR practitioner with a journalism background was often viewed as a professional troublemaker. (ibid.)

So, it seems that the first years full of hope and promises of quick change was followed by some kind of a backlash reaction. Two steps forward and one step backwards - that’s the way transition processes often evolve, not linearly.

During the first few years the PR practitioners concentrated on political public relations because the media’s and society's interest was concentrated on the radically changing political institutions. At first media had no real interest in business. State-run industries had not traditionally communicated about themselves, and new businesses were more preoccupied with simply surviving. This changed in 1991 after economic reforms brought media's interest into the economic sphere. As business demand for public communication grew, business people got interested in PR. At first their interest was limited mostly to the search for cheap publicity, though. Russian businesses wanted to use PR as a substitute for advertising, which was becoming more and more expensive. (ibid.)

This development described above has left a significant impact on how PR is understood and taught today in Russia. It was journalism and business scholars who began to define and discuss the conceptual frameworks, principles and methods of teaching PR in Russia. As a result two schools emerged: “journalism-type public relations” and “business-type public relations”. Business scholars have concentrated on the management and marketing functions of PR whereas journalism scholars have focused on the management-communication function. Nowadays the PR education in Russia has a strong orientation either to journalism or to business depending on the specific university. (Tsetsura 2009, 602.)

I noticed this in practice while trying to find some contact information from Russian universities’ web-pages. I could not find any separate “Department of communication” or “Organizational communication and PR” or similar subject there, but later noticed that PR was usually placed (at least in those cases) under journalism or economics/marketing.

USED SOURCES:

Goregin, G. Alexander & Nikolaev, Alexandre G. (1996) Evolution of Modern Russian Communication. Communication World. June-July 1996.

Tsetsura, Katerina (2009) Development of public relations in Russia: a geopolitical approach. In Sriramesh, Krishnamurthy &Verčič, Dejan. (ed.) The global public relations handbook: theory, research, and practice. New York: Routledge 2009, p. 600–617.

Kazakhstan & Borat

by Maija Baijukya

If you'd never heard of Kazakhstan before you heard of this guy, don't feel ashamed - I hadn't either. In fact, even in the 2000s many of the Former Soviet Union countries are unknown to most people and clouded in some sort of mystery. Sacha Baron Cohen made use of this ignorance and created his film Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan. Released in 2006, it was a critical and commercial success, even being nominated for an Oscar (!?). However, it appears that the Kazakhstani's themselves have mixed feelings about it all.


Even before the film was released, Borat was featured on the Ali G Show, and managed to gain the negative attention of Kazakhstan's officials. In 2005, Kazakhstan's Foreign Ministry threatened to sue Baron Cohen for portraying the country in a "derogatory way." In 2006, prior to the release of the film, Borat acted as the host of MTV's Europe Music Awards and behaved in a manner again caught the attention of Kazakhstan's Foreign Ministry. They released a statement, read by the Foreign Ministry spokesman Yerzhan Ashykbayev told a news conference: "We view Mr. Cohen's behaviour at the MTV Europe Music Awards as utterly unacceptable, being a concoction of bad taste and ill manners which is completely incompatible with the ethics and civilized behaviour of Kazakhstan's people."


Here is how Borat responded.

Once the movie itself was released, Kazakhstan responded to the negative publicity by launching a so called PR blitz - videos, advertisements and infomercials presenting Kazakhstan as The Heart of Eurasia.

It would appear that in this case,  the old saying there's no such thing as bad publicity* is as true as ever. After all this, Kazakhstan actually started having tourists! Borat - though controversial - put Kazakhstan on the world map of the trendy traveler (note, trendy in 06/07). According to Kenzhebay Satzhanov, deputy chairman in Kazakhstan's tourism and sports ministry, "It [the movie] was free of charge advertising and lots of people want to come and see our country...The rise (in tourists was) maybe not so huge like we expected but in any case we saw interest."


In fact, both Satzhanov and the deputy Foreign Minister Rakhat Aliyev invited Sacha Baron Cohen to visit Kazakhstan and found out what it's really like. Apparently, he has yet to take them up on the offer.




What is most interesting to me about this case, is that it shows how important the the country's brand is to Kazakhstan's officials. I doubt that Austria will launch a campaign to straighten up the presumptions people may have after Baron Cohen's new film - Brüno.

SOURCES:

• Kazakhstan Not Laughing at Ali G http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/story?id=1315240
• Bush to hold talks on Ali G creator after diplomatic row http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-404852/Bush-hold-talks-Ali-G-creator-diplomatic-row.html
• Borat boosts tourism in Kazakhstan http://www.news.com.au/travel/story/0,26058,24644937-5014090,00.html
• Starmer-Smith, Charles. Borat brings a tourist boom to Kazakhstan http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/travel/charlesstarmer-smith/3666861/Borat_brings_a_tourist_boom_to_Kazakhstan/
• Fletcher, Phyllis. Kazakhstan Embassy Responds to Borat http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6276973

* The actual quote is by Brendan Behan, and goes There is no such thing as bad publicity except your own obituary.