Understanding Messaging Approaches In An Organization

In the realm of public relations and many other fields creating a strategic message that can resonate people is in the utmost importance. Every organisation does communicate, in what level and which efficiency of these communications occurred is up for debate. But all organisations communicate their messages and their vision and mission in their works. Creating a message is only one part of the work, in order to create an efficient way which public, people and even individuals inside organisation could understand, requires are more strategic approach, which includes such things as but not limited to, knowing your audience, who is interpreting and what type of background information this person or public possess.

Looking at the some of the theoretical frameworks for strategic communication is important beginning to an otherwise very diverse and rich field. Considering there are different approaches and strategies surrounding what constitutes a strategic message, the essentials of a framework about strategic message would be a valuable starting point. Though most of the theories came out from the realm of public relations there are different fields which incorporates other types of messaging strategies which is valuable. It is true that discipline-specific public relations practitioners have more of an insight to their respective fields. Integration on the other hand creates a fuller picture of organisational communication processes and goals whether is inwards which is in an organisational scope or outwards to the public.

After covering the framework this paper aims to introduce different messaging strategies in order cover a very diverse field. Since different fields of public relations have their own having a broader understanding would be valuable for those who are studying communication to have a broader understanding. These different topics will be on framing which a strategic persuasive massaging tactic, power of storytelling, understanding different infrastructures of different countries. Theoretical framework for strategic communication focusing on messaging. As mentioned before public relationship models provide some meaningful frameworks when it comes to strategic messaging but those frameworks alone is not enough, that is why having a broader perspective with the incorporation from different fields to create more well-rounded framework to strategic messaging.

Messaging is important because, it is the way communication strategised. These messages consist of symbol or symbols systems which should be understandable by the receiver and they are socially constructed and serves as a resource for organisations. (Hazleton, 1993)Hazleton (1993), also came up with a matrix which explained the effects of messages as symbolic communication and these messages contained; physical, psychological, and social properties. On a physical level messages considered as stimuli, on a psychological level messages can be interpreted by the receivers. Lastly, social structure influence the evaluations of the message, socially constructed meanings. On the other side of the matrix there are more general concepts such as content, structure and function which serves as characteristics of these messages. Content in a nutshell is about manifested characteristic of messages such as graphic-visual, oral-aura etc. Structure refers to the frequencies and communicative elements. Lastly, functions refers to reflections of the said messages

After the matrix Hazleton (1993) came up with six different functions of messages at psychological levels which can be used to create different strategies. These functions are: facilitate, inform, persuade, coerce, bargain, and solve problems, which in the strategical terms labeled as: informative, facilitative, persuasive, power (formerly referred to as coercive), bargaining, and co-operative problem-solving.

Informative strategies are assumes audience as rational and eager to listen and these type of strategies focus on the information and not the conclusion via using a natural language, this strategies trust that public will come up with their own conclusion on what has been said. Purpose of this type of strategies to create foundation for learning in societies where things are not constantly changing. From an organisational point view they need to posseses enough resources to maintain its contact with the publics to keep informing them. Facilitative Strategies are requires resources from the organisation to be used by publics, which can be tangible as well as such things as instructions. In this situation public’s willingness to self-help is important as well as relevance of the help offered and it can help where the motivation is low. Persuasive strategies is achieved by suiting the emotions and values of the public. As this the case language is sided and not neutral, it is designed to move the publics. These strategies can be used where the publics are not motivated as well as there is no time to wait and organisation cannot use power. Power strategies create expectation for reward or punishment. These type of strategies exercise power over their respective publics in a manner they evoke coercion. Organisations should be careful on choosing such strategies since these tactics can evoke positive emotion where public control the outcomes and in the negative coercion s organisations control the outcome. These types of strategies are used when publics either resistant to change or low level of need for change. Resources also important if desired change wants to be achieved, enough resources must be provided by the organisations or there should be encouragement from organisation to shift resources to address the issues that are raised in the power strategies.

Bargaining strategies consist of exchanging messages between different communicative bodies, there are different approaches to bargaining strategies such as information holding and deceptive means since communicative bodies try to achieve their goals. In order to guarantee success of these strategies organisation need to have alternative routes otherwise solutions might be likely in these situations. Co-operative problem solving strategies depends on the different bodies and whether they want to solve the problems or not as well as their definitions. When the goals of the organisations and public are aline it is easier to achieve success campaign. These strategies are only one side of the matrix which is coined by Hazleton, (1993) effectiveness lies in different situation as well the organisation itself, organisations must figure out strategies which are suitable for their goals. Frequency of use of the said strategies is also something important to weight legitimacy of these coined strategies. Study and frequency of use for the strategies are researched and there is a overall picture of use Persuasive, Informative, Facilitative and Co-operative are the most used ones across different researches where informative and persuasive strategies changing back and forth for the first place. Further research also shows that goal compatibility is the biggest factor when it comes to variety in strategy selection. Another study also highlights, more detailed accounts of interaction between perceived attributes of publics and variance in the effectiveness of the strategies used.

In order to broaden the effect of messages researcher also researched about the varieties in different receiver, them being mostly focused on their involvement and their ability to recognise a problem. In a nutshell, research suggest that, level of involvement in Co-operative problem solving strategies are highest in different level of involvement from the public. Also there were some contrary research in different fields some of the research being conducted in the marketing or public relation realms which may have affected the results, in the light of that; “They concluded that message strategy effects are complex and highly situational. ” Thus far in the research we have been lacking is a intercultural perspective and research will try to incorporate how different cultures and their different systems that are in place could possibly make any difference in the field of public relation and creating strategic messages. There are key factors which would potentially affect the messages created in these nations which are; political system, its level of economic development, and the level of activism that are in the different countries. There are other factors but these are the key infrastructural ingredients in the realm of public relations.

Political System

Political systems within the countries has an effect on social structure. Social structure also will effect on the communicative strategies, if a country does not value the public opinions all the public relationship campaigns would focus on the message alone and not creating a public opinion which would look like one-way and propagandistic. There are many different types of political system would potentially require lots of tinkering in their messaging strategies.

Level of Economic Development

This structure is closely related with the political system, politically plural nations also have more of a preference to greater economic freedom that also translate into economies that are favouring more strategic public relations strategies by extension strategic messaging in organisations. Potential organisations who want to developed messages in such countries where the lack of communication infrastructure exist would end up having a difficult time, since the systems they have developed favours the existing communicative systems and they might have to developed an another plan.

Activism

Political systems within the country will directly affect activism related events that are happening in countries, level of economical development also directly influences the activities considering people are working hard to get by and may not be participating in “other” activities that are not directly essential to their survival. When those survival means are threaten, there will be a chance for activism. Activism proves challenge and opportunities for the people who are dealing with public relations, since every organisation is dealing with their own version of the activism in the shape of pressure groups, special interest groups, or social movements, etc. These sort of activism would affect the messages communicated since depending on the different motivations of the crowds there are different strategies utilised as mentioned in the attributes of the publics. Researchers studied the organisational management and their effect on communicators within the organisation and their messaging. Different organisational structures yield different result on chose of strategies. One significant take away is even though practitioner favoured using informative strategies, that did not translate into effectiveness of such strategies. Also certain transformational leadership styles enabled facilitative and power strategies. Framing, practical take on messagingIn a more practical note using framing as a persuasive messaging tool is important since studies shows that combination of communicative strategies can lead the cognitive and behavioural change, in messaging there is a great deal of want for change for what organisations wants. Framing is important because it makes the messages within the communicative context more salient, in a manner promote certain features of the give messages. Frames in a way make things easier to understand giving us a point to focus on and highlights our attention. This type of framing strategies has wide variety of different uses in different fields. In a short explanation framing is strategically message where problem in question will be represented in a certain way to influence your cognitive abilities to get the desired outcome in an any give situation. There are different types of framing which will be covered in this section. Gain framing is a typical framing manipulation which is a message emphasising positive aspects of a prospect in order to create a choice for that option.

Loss framing on the other hand focuses on the negative parts of a situation in order to create a desired action from the public. By the look of it, these two prospects have the exactly the same function only different in salience which part is the message are they focusing on. In certain situation gain or lost framing can be better than the other in such cases when things are introduce immediate danger or risk research found out that loss framing had a better effect on individuals. This doesn’t mean that framing whether is positive or negative change the result of the outcomes. This is where there are some confounding effects of whether these positive or negative frames work at all. Even though, in some situation negative and positive framing works in the issues such as different type of male contraceptive use there were no clear intentions to choose any contraceptive. From this it is possible to say that due to the complex nature of human behaviour it is difficult to figure out in which situation, which frame will work the best, there are plenty of research has been made and future communication experts should draw from those research when they are doing their own research and public relations campaigns. Kim (2015) also agrees that findings from the many experiments that has been done over the years bore many different practices. Like covered in this paper, audience and social structure, politics and economics plays a role in the message production and using different frames.