Strategies for presenting news via Facebook used by the District 7 Public Relations Department Offce

Abstract

        The objectives of this research were to study 1) the process of presenting news on Facebook used by the Public Relations Department’s District 7 Office; 2) the office’s strategies for presenting news via Facebook; 3) satisfaction of members of the Facebook fanpage and Facebook group; 4) members’ demand for news from District 7 Public Relations Department Office.

        This was a mixed methods research. For the qualitative part, 4 administrators and PR workers of the Public Relations Department District 7 Office were interviewed using an interview form. Data were analyzed by summarizing. For the quantitative part, 413 members of the Public Relations Department District 7 Office Facebook fanpage and Facebook group were surveyed using a questionnaire. The samples were chosen through voluntary sampling. Data were analyzed by frequency, percentage, mean and standard deviation.

        The results showed that 1) there were 8 steps to the process of presenting news on Facebook used by the Public Relations Department’s District 7 Office: (1) selecting news and information from different kinds of media; (2) considering the relevance of the news based on public interest at the time, government policies and the Public Relations Department’s mission; (3) analyzing the content, summarizing the main points, and concentrating it into an easy-to-understand concise message; (4) choosing the presentation format; (5) producing the media in the selected format; (6) presenting the news; (7) liking and sharing to the target audience (individuals and Facebook groups); (8) deep analysis of the reception of the news in order to improve. 2) The office used 3 main strategies for presenting news on Facebook: (1) the message sender strategies were utilizing the Public Relations Department’s credibility as a government agency and building public recognition of newscasters; (2) message strategies were presenting news in several formats to meet the needs of diverse groups of target viewers and putting emphasis on government policies and services that are currently popular to create a niche market; and (3) the media strategy was to use Facebook because it has a built in data analysis system that enables you to know which news items are most popular and to track viewer numbers and statistics like likes and shares in concrete terms. 3) Members of the Public Relations Department District 7 Office Facebook fanpage and Facebook group had a high level of satisfaction with the office’s Facebook content, presentation methods, technical aspects and avenues for participation. 4) Members had a high level of demand for content, presentation methods, technical aspects and participation.