Digital transformation\disruption

The evolution of media landscape in Africa.

When we refer to digital media in public relations, we talk about the forever evolving and booming industry as it always introduces new technological medias to the industry.

                                      Origin of digital media and its history.

Many years ago, before the origin of digital media, public relations professionals used traditional media that includes radio stations, newspapers, magazines, billboards, and journals to share information and manage public perception. Due to the forever developing of technology, we moved from traditional media to digital media that included digital photographs, books (ebooks), websites and blogs, social media (Facebook, Snapchat), and artificial intelligence (Holograms, Chatbot).  This happened during the 21st century where we moved from mass media to news media, and traditional media to the many other emerging forms of digital media. According to Arief 2019, digital media is transmitted as digital data, which at its simplest involves digital cables or satellites sending binary signals--0s and 1s-- to devices that translate them into audios, videos, graphics, texts, and more. 

(For more information) What Is Digital Media? All You Need to Know About New Media | Maryville Online

Challenges that come during the evolution of digital media to PRPs.

According to Mahendra 2020, public relations carry out an important task in an organization as public relations is all about types of communication that occur between an organization and the public. Therefore, the evolution of technology impact both positive and negative on how public relations functions and interacts with the society. The "digital disruption" is the common phrase we use as it shakes up every industry in the world and it is caused by the technology, gadgets, automation of processes, social media, or innovations in terms of products and services. This impact badly to the stages of planning, executing, and managing communication strategy in the marketing and communication industry. Now public relations practitioners are expected to be flexible and be able to adapt to the transformation of media and acquire new digital skills to succeed in an area of expertise.

Opportunities of digital media.

Even though the digital media has its own challenges to the public relations industry. However, they are opportunities that are brought by digital media. Digital media promote good storytelling, and it established a direct relationship with the clients. The new communication channels allow the PRs to interact with the public and the organization on its own and be able to engage or tell a sufficiently good story that will attract the attention and achieve its goal-to connect with the targeted audience and lead them to act.

Here are some of the opportunities of digital media.

(For more information) (16) Public relations 4.0: Challenges and opportunities for a new PR stage | LinkedIn

Recommendations for PRPs & the future PRPs.

Social media is the "number one use of the internet", and this brings many changes to the working conditions and lives of the PRPs. They are now supposed to keep up with trend so that they will be aware of what is trending and which media channel they can use to deliver message to their target audience and reach a wider audience, as every media channel is also communication on its own. Therefore, they need to obtain knowledge about the types of media on how to use it, and when to use it to attract potential audience and maintain the relationships with the current audience. However, the new communication technologies change the business relationships management, roles and functions of communication leaders. For example, nowadays the organizations or businesses uses social media during a crise to maintain their reputation and image to the public.

(For more information) (PDF) Public Relations: Scope and Challenges in Digital Era (researchgate.net)

To conclude, it is obvious that digital media will continue to grow, so it is vital that the public relations practitioner's to be aware of such changes and be prepared to adapt to the transformation of technology in the now and into the future.