Public Relations Practices of the FDRE Ministry of Education and Perceptions of its Selected Publics.
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Date
2023-09
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
One of the major roles of any public relations office in a given organization is to create social coherence with its publics. When it comes to the government PRs, the applicability of the profession is mostly controversial as it swings between public information and mere propaganda. This research has selected the FDRE’s Ministry of Education to evaluate the corporate PR practices and the perceptions of their publics. Since the Ministry’s activities affects a vast amount of the population, the researcher only focused on a segment of the general population that includes teachers, students and their families. The research uses quantitative research approach to collect information from 193 randomly selected people using self-administered questionnaire; In-depth interview and a focus group discussions with the PR practitioners of the ministry provided additional qualitative data. The findings indicate that, despite the efforts made by the PR team to reach the public using diversified media techniques, these publics are far from understanding what the MoE is doing and how to get information from the ministry. Less than 7% of the survey participants acknowledge that there is a possibility of getting information directly from the MoE. Even as an alternative source of information regarding education. There are challenges on the part of the PR team to clearly identify the target audience which arises from the government’s federal structure. Even though there are encouraging moves to employ the new trend of PR like that of social media and internet, still the team must have full control on the information and communication tasks undertaken by other departments. The effort made by the PR team to utilize a symmetrical method to address the audience on important issues is plausible.