Discussing the Impact of the Internet on issues Management

by: Judith Hoffmann
 

"It is natural for man to indulge in illusions of hope.
We are apt to shut our eyes to a painful truth…
For my part, I am willing to know the whole truth;
to know the worst, and to provide for it "
Patrick Henry (1775)

Introduction

When Patrick Henry spoke those words more than two hundred years ago, the development of issues management was far away. Nevertheless his words describe what can be called the essence of issues management (IM) over the past 25 years. According to Jones and Chase (1979) issues management can be defined as a tool which helps companies to identify, analyse and manage emerging issues and allows for responding to them before they become public knowledge. Issues emerge, when a stakeholder has a problem with the company relationship, but a problem only turns into an issue when it moves from private to public concern (Coombs 2002).

According to Niklas Luhmann (1996 [2000]) who states whatever we know about our society, we know through the mass media, IM used to be concerned with monitoring, influencing and reacting on media events, and thus changing company reputation in the eyes of the public (Moloney, 2000, Philipps, 2000). Accordingly media could be seen as a transmitter between stakeholder and organisation. Due to the gatekeeper function of journalists the louder voice of industry naturally has had more chance to be heard and get media coverage (MacLeod, 2000). This has led to a corporate communication which used to be a merely one-way activity in the times of traditional mass media (De Bussy, Watson, Pitt and Ewing, 2000). The internet has changed this situation. Not only that it allows for the first time real two-waycommunication (White, Raman, 1999), it has also added a new dimension to direct communication between organisations and their stakeholders (de Bussy et al, 2000). PR people as former gatekeepers of company’s reputation are now bypassed (Philipps, 2000). People are communicating not only with the company if they have problems to address. They are communicating with each other. Recent PR books (Haig, 2000, Philipps, 2001, Middleberg, 2000) work already as a modern Cassandra, exhorting companies to be aware of the potent ial danger of the internet. This paper therefore seeks to explore the impact the internet has on IM. It does so by analysing different models of issues development and characterising the influence the internet might have on them. This impact is backed up in the second part, discussing different ways the internet offers for IM coming to the conclusion that there are both, advantages and disadvantages. Thus the analogy of the two-edged sword seems appropriate. The last part analyses what measures can be used in praxis to react on the changes the internet has on IM. The paper concludes by proposing further research about the stakeholder usage of internet rather than focusing on the practitioner’s side.

Internet Impact on Issues Emergence

Before talking about the ways the internet is used as a tool within a company for IM and discussing the ways it is used by stakeholders to address issues, the question of how an issue emerges will first be discussed and on what stages of its life the internet has had the impact. Several models exist which describe the emergence of issues. The situational theory (Grunig and Hunt, 1984) and the catalytic model of IM (Crable, Vibbert, 1985) as well as the Hainsworth cycle (Hainsworth, 1990) and the model by Femers, Klewes and Lintemeier (1999) try to explain how problems develop. Grunig’s situational theory (1984) talks about the preconditions of an active and communicative public. He names three characteristics that affect how publics react: problem recognition (awareness), constraint recognition (the extent to which people think that there are obstacles that limit them) and level of involvement (people personally affected). According to those factors Grunig (1982) differs between latent publics, aware publics and active publics where the latter are willing to communicate and take action. Using this model the internet has changed the way an issue arises in terms of speed with which latent publics are likely to become active ones (Hearit, 1999). The easy to use interface and effective search engines as well as easing of finding likeminded persons (Holtz, 2001, Manheim, 2001), can increase problem recognition and decrease constraint recognition (Hearit, 1999). Furthermore the internet as a pull-medium favours active information seeking and therefore potentially reaches high involvement individuals (Manheim, 2001)

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