New Information and Communication Technologies and the 'Demassification' of Public Relations

Media gatekeepers often prevent carefully constructed messages from being delivered to key publics. However, new information and communication technologies have the potential to open a new, alternative, channel for public relations practitioners who wish to engage in the two-way symmetrical/mixed motives(dialogical) model of public relations and communicate directly with individual members of a key public. This function is termed 'demassification' and its development has pointed to the need for new public relations communication techniques. These include knowing how to construct discrete databases of active publics, develop new methods to engage those publics, and manage an interactive, two way flow of information between an organization and its publics. Other practices include developing feedback mechanisms to ensure that a dialogic relationship is created through the use of chat rooms; e-conferencing and webcasts, and ensuring websites contain information required by active publics.