The image of the public institutions and new technologies

During the recent past decades, a new technology and a new kind of media emerged: the social media. It created a huge communication area that houses the interactions and debate between creators of social images and messages. In public relations, the emergence of social media challenges the traditional instruments of government public relations. Responding to development of information and communication technology (ICT), social media is considered as an alternative communication channel of government public relations efforts. Public relations practitioners make choices every day about how to relate to different publics in different situations. Nowadays they perceive social media (e.g., blogs) to be a normal part of their organization. This article presents the challenges and opportunities of social media for public institutions and argues that the designing and implementing government public relations using social media involves more than merely having another communicational channel for publics. In this paper, we conclude that social media are an alternative instrument to encourage a two-way communication channel between government and publics.