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Multimedia Public Relations

Changes in technology since the beginning of the information age have provided public relations practitioners with powerful communication tools and unprecedented opportunities to transform the profession’s entire approach to relationships. These changes have increased the potential for communication failures by radically increasing competition for time and attention.

The Internet or World Wide Web perhaps best exemplifies the impact of multimedia in public relations. John Pavlik, who directed the Center for New Media at Columbia University at the time, summed up the “good news, bad news” of multimedia use in public relations in a 1996 report:

Rapid advances in the technologies collectively called the “information ...

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