DEVELOPMENT OF PR OVERVIEW

PR is a discipline that is hard to define and it is also said to be a fairly young and evolving profession. Disciplines often emerge and develop over a period of time, like PR, or they die at a certain point due to the fashion of the time or things along the lines of funding and resources available to the discipline. PR has managed to stand strong and show its worth for many years now and the tools that make up PR have been in use for many

The use of communication to influence the public comes from ancient civilisation. Two of the main groups to practice these ideas were the Greek and Roman Empires. Rhetoric is proof of just how long the ideologies of PR have been in use. Edward Bernays also argues that rulers of ancient Egypt and Persia, amongst others, used political publicity as well as personal (Baines, et al., 2004). It is also said that symbols on Viking ships, along with steamships and uniforms of armed forces etc. are examples of historical use of corporate identity- again supporting the use of PR tools in ancient history.

Certain PR tools have been in use for many years across the globe, PR in Britain developed through a political path in the 1920’s. Some of the key influences in the development of the PR profession are the professional bodies like the CIPR and PRCA as well as official PR education. The first PR diploma offered by the IPR (now CIPR) was in 1956 and in 1958 the very first IPR textbook was published. It wasn’t for another 30 years that the very first postgraduate PR degree was developed at Stirling University. This shows that it took PR a while to break through as an accredited and professional discipline. These are all valid influential factors of the development of the PR industry. Other influential factors are industrialisation, the new forms of technology and the rise of the mass media. For example take the media, years ago the only form of media was print, now there are so many mediums. The media can now get to us through not only print but the internet, broadcasting and cable amongst others. The mass media has become globalised; therefore offering PR practitioners many more channels to get their messages across which allows extensive growth within the industry.