Online Resources in Modern Media Relations

Abstract

The Internet environment has become a field of active interaction between the audience, companies and the media. The change in media communication has led to the emergence of new PR-techniques in the field of media relations. User-friendliness of the "new media" has caused an extensive growth of the Internet audience. Media personnel also actively use the benefits of the Internet. All this adds to the topicality of the research. The article examines the use of e-mail, websites, chats, forums, blogs and social networks in media relations. The author analyzes the advantages of these Internet resources for effective interaction in the context of high-tech development. He proves that modern World Wide Web provides big opportunities for media relations specialists to communicate with both target audiences and mass media. The author conducted a pilot study in order to find out how the Internet resources meet the audience’s expectations. This helped to determine the sources of information that are used by the respondents, and those which are not used. The respondents noted advantages and drawbacks of the key information sources and proposed ways of improvement. Basing on the analysis of the responses, the author creates a portrait of an information source that is ideal as viewed by Internet users.