One of the things that radically affected on the image of the Arab world was the attacs of September 11, 2001. Kirat (2005) explains that after September 11, 2001 the Arab world suffered from accusations, stereotypes and misconceptions which led to a situation where Arabs and Muslims have been portrayed as initiators of terrorist. I guess that most of us are familiar with these accusations and one-sided stories through international and our national media.
Kirat (2005) continues that Arabs, individuals, organizations and states have not managed to defend themselves and they have not been able to convey their true image. He also says that international Arab public relations have not met the challenges and have failed to market the real image of Islam and Arab, while the international media is strengthening the stereotypes and the wrong image of the Arab world (Kirat 2005).
There are lots of discussions about public relations challenges in the Arab world and many people criticize that PR in Arab states lacks of democracy and it is used as a tool of propaganda. This topic made me wonder how our "Western and developed" PR is any different? It is spreading one-sided, prejudice image of the Arab world and forgetting everything else. It loves to present the Western world as civilized, democratic and somehow better. Isn't this propaganda? Maybe it would be time to look at the mirror with an critical eye...It may not be only the Arab PR that lacks of democracy and atmosphere of freedom...
Reference: Kirat, Mohamed (2005). Public relations practice in the Arab World: A critical assessment. Public Relations Review. Vol.31 Issue 3, 323-332
Written by: Satu-Maria
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I believe you mix two different things here - In my opinion Kirat criticized the Arab countries of not having put enough effort to managed communication. On the other hand, I don't believe that the picture we in the Western countries have about the Arabs is our fault, at least directly - it's a question about communication and the construction of reality: The knowledge we have about Arab countries is mainly that what we get from the news - and news are usually about bad things. If something it's a question of news ethics, not PR ethics. I don't believe we have any false or distorted information, but we have a lot of biased and one sided information.
ReplyDeleteThe Arab countries are there somewhere far away - with a foreign and strange culture. To my opinion, that is the main reason we have a biased picture of those countries - we have no interest to their music, literature, tv-shows etc. And this would be a crucial connection to get to know another culture and get a better picture of it.
But luckily at the moment we have a good exception to the rule: Pensselisetä. At the moment he is being an exemplar of all Syrians for us Finns. His public appearance has been great: everybody seems to love him. And as we listen to his Syrian music, it doesn't seem so weird to the ear anymore. It becomes something familiar.
I had to re-read the posting after reading the previous comment by Aleksi. As far as I understand Satu-Maria hasn't mixed up two things here, she has pointed out in the second paragraph "Kirat's critique" but just in neutral wording :)
ReplyDeleteI really like the questions asked in the last paragraph cause they are bold!!! And I have a question to Aleksi - can we always separate PR and news ethics?
Thank you Aleksi for your comment and maybe I wasn't clear enough. As you said Kirat criticizes the Arab countries of not having put enough effort to managed communication, but that is exactly what made me wonder why only the Arab public relations should be responsible of the communication and real image of Arab world? Isn't that also responsibility of Western PR? Of course the media has a huge impact on our image building, but I was thinking about this in PR's point of view. This is just what I was wondering and there might be a difference of opinion :) I hope I could somehow make my text clearer somehow.
ReplyDeleteDiscussion, great! :D
ReplyDeleteI still think you mix two things here: managed communication as advocacy and news media as news business. I can't see the ethics point here, concerning Western PR: of course it's not ethical to deliberately distort the picture of the Arab countries and that's always wrong, that's clear. But why would there be any responsibility for the Western PR to promote Arabs and whose responsibility would it be and where? Should Valio or Fortum think about Arab countries in their communication? Should Hill & Knowlton, besides as clients? This is what I mean with the problem here: Western PR doesn't really affect to our picture about the Arab countries, because there aren't real motives for PR towards Arab countries. The public discussion does have and so does the news media - and they choose, what they want to show to us.
But this raised an interesting question to my mind: if professionals see, that the picture of Arabs is distorted in our media and public discussion, who should try to change that picture and how? Should the PR professionals just keep that in mind in common communication, or should they do something extra? Should someone intervene somewhere, reveal bad practices and offer better information?
To make myself clear, I don't believe there are any western PR professionals doing managed PR against Arabs - there aren't real interests there. On the contrary, Western countries try to legitimate their alliances and cooperation with such countries as Saudi-Arabia, Afganistan and Iraq. Thus they want us to like them. For example the US government would like us to support the idea, that it's important to keep troops in Afganistan to protect the Afgan people. And that good relations to Saudi government is important. The negative stories come from the news and public. Iran, on the other hand, is another story.
ReplyDeleteReally interesting points!
ReplyDeletegood discussion:) real social media! Can you feel your power of your words?
ReplyDelete