Culture

Let’s first look what the notion culture implies. Culture represents a number of values, ideas, objects, and other symbols, that help people to communicate, interpret and understand people and environment around. Mind that not only different nations are culturally different, but also genders, ages, religions, etc.

Cultural differences are strong enough to let one identify, systemize and use them. They are widely described in literature.

Culture includes two main facets: psychological and environmental. Psychological consists of values, ideas, behavior, while environmental is built of political, economic, technological, social elements. If the later is understandable, the psychological factor requires explanation. Let’s look closer at what values, ideas and behavior mean.

Values are realities considered significant, such as social status, family, money, education, health, independence, etc. Those notions are of vital importance, but the priorities are placed differently in various cultures. For example, Americans are wide-know for their obsession for independence, democracy and fight against discrimination. In Asia people’s inequality is normal and even valued (castes in India, highly valued hierarchy in China).

Ideas show people’s attitudes and predetermine behavior. Ideas come to mentality as well. If you ask a Japanese person what is love you’ll get a very different answer from what you could imagine.

Behavior is the model according to which people act. And it again varies. This is the most overt factor, widely described.

Culture is represented by three main components. Values, that we have already covered; material environment, that includes economic and technical development, science, natural resources, etc; and institutional environment, which presupposes legislation, type of government, business, religion, etc.

All these factors are crucial for PR. For example, the PR sites might differ for Europe and Africa, and not just in usage of different symbols, but also in technical design. In Africa the quality of internet connection is less developed than in Europe, so the sites have less graphics, are cheaper, quicker and thus more useful.

But there are also global sites. Those are not for everybody, but for the majority. For instance, PRSA internet resources are for global target audience, that have internet access and can work in the web, and have at least some knowledge in the sphere. Both global and individual sites require careful elaboration.

According to the classification of a prominent PR practitioner R. Lewis, there are three main types of cultures:

1. task-oriented – people who plan their activity very carefully (Germans, Scandinavian, British, Australian people, as well as Canadians, New Zealanders, etc.)

2. people-oriented – highly communicative (Latinos, Arabs, Africans, Spaniards, Italians, etc.)

3. respect-oriented – people recognizing and submissive to authority (Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Thai, Vietnamese peope)

Russians live between Europe and Asia, so they combine all the characteristics.

Legal Requirements

To be effective and persuasive, public relation writing must be conducted within a legal and ethical framework. First, you must understand legal concepts so as to know what you may do and what you must avoid. Careless work can lead to costly litigation for you and your employer. Second, you cannot produce and distribute publicity mate­rials that are credible and believable if you don't have a strong ethical and professional orientation. The public demands accountability and won't tolerate mere "puffery".