Social media use by public relations practitioners in Malaysia: An exploratory study

This exploratory study endeavored to examine if social media is being used by Public Relations (PR) practitioners in Malaysia to communicate about their organization with their constituents and if it is producing the desired results for their PR efforts. A previous study by Fitch (2009a; 2009b) found that PR practitioners in Malaysia and Singapore were hesitant to use new media because it meant a loss of human connection. In the present study, a total of 26 PR practitioners of which 18 were PR consultants responded to an online survey. A reliability test conducted on three completed questionnaires conveyed a 0.95 Cronbach Alpha value indicating a high internal consistency of the questionnaire. Two cross-checking questions were included to increase the validity of this study and to check for gaps between an organization’s existing PR practice and its future practices involving social media use for communication with its strategic publics. This study found that a large number of PR practitioners (22 or 84.6%) were actively using social media to communicate directly with their various constituents about their organizations and such communication involved their mission statements, value statements, the latest business news, updates and announcements. Social networking sites were the most used social media among all 22 (100%) respondents. 16 (72.7%) respondents agreed that social media communication with their constituents produced the desired results. These desired results included an increase in awareness, branding and popularity of the organization as well as an increase in sales. However, while respondents felt that social media puts the word out faster in addition to the fact that a majority of people are connected to it, there was caution from some practitioners that social media cannot be a standalone tool in PR. The implication for PR is that, it is not only about the tool being used but about the content being disseminated and the PR objective to be met suggesting that social media coupled with traditional media as well as direct audience-engagement needed to be used to support PR objectives. This study is valuable as it allowed the researchers to obtain responses from practitioners which are otherwise not easily obtainable. Most importantly, the findings of this study contradict Fitch’s (2009b) research that PR practitioners in Malaysia were hesitant to use new media because of a loss of interpersonal or human connection.