Concept
public relations
The profession of managing an organisation’s, idea’s or group’s relations with the public; described as “public relations counsel” in Bernays’s 1928 book.
Public relations is the profession that tries to manage an organisation’s relations with the public. In his 1928 book Propaganda Edward Bernays calls the person doing this work a “public relations counsel”, and argues that the profession arose because society had become more complex and almost every kind of power depended on public opinion. In his description the counsel is the agent who, working with the means of communication and the group formations of society, brings an idea to the consciousness of the public.
In the same book Bernays defends the word propaganda and defines modern propaganda as a consistent, enduring effort to create or shape events so as to influence the public’s relations to an enterprise; that is, he uses the two names side by side. Some sources say that the name “public relations” was chosen in place of the negatively charged propaganda.
“Halkla ilişkiler” is an established term in Turkish; however, no entry under that name was found in the Turkish Language Association’s dictionary for this lesson, so the term is marked “to be checked”.
Example
According to Bernays’s book a publisher, a municipality or a hospital could all do the same thing: build the events and news that let the public understand and adopt an idea.