Online Public Image Maintenance

Internet public relations for image management of celebrities and corporations

Internet public relations (PR) research covers litigation public relations , political public relations, and the media. Litigation public relations and and online political PR explores the use of websites that attempt to improve or maintain the reputation of a public figure or corporation and explores websites used to influence the public image of political figures and government (Reber, Gower, & Robinson, 2006). Political candidates use websites to improve their ratings and attempt to manipulate their public image. Celebrities, like Michael Jackson and Martha Stewart, use websites to improve public image during high profile lawsuits (both website are now down). This tactic is affective in influencing an audience because the media reports what can be found on the sight, which is carefullly chosen information from the website owner. Haggerty (as cited in Reber et al., 2006), defines litigation PR as managing communications during a legal dispute proceeding to “affect the outcome or its impact on the client’s overall reputation” (p.24). Many researchers in this field agree that the two goals of litigation PR are to influence the outcome of the court case (Butler, 1996; Fitzpatrick, 1996; Haggerty, 2003; as cited in Reber et al.) and to “protect the client’s reputation before and during the trial” (p. 25). Websites using reputation management for litigation PR achieve these two goals through managing the public’s attitudes toward a client and not simply focusing on knowledge or facts about the client (Reber et al.).
The design, content depth, and complexity of websites, elements that create credibility, is of great importance to the future reputation of the website owner. Website observers have a range of perceptions when viewing different types of sites. Flanagin and Metzer (2007) discovered that genre influences credibility levels, news website had the highest perceived credibility and personal website had the lowest perceived credibility. Trustworthiness and expertise influence credibility; however, credibility is not an automatic characteristic and it is judged by the observer of the information presented on the site (Flanagin & Metzger). Websites effective in influencing credibility perceptions contain “well-designed, reputable genres of sites, … [and] involve messages of low persuasive intent” (Flanagin & Metzer, p. 338). Those who design effective websites for litigation PR follow these characteristics and would also incorporate Kent and Taylor’s (1998) five principles for building dialogic websites. The researchers suggest:

1. Create a dialogic loop that allows observers to question the organization, which in turn can respond to concerns.
2. Insure that information on the website is useful to allow the public to be involved as an informed participant.
3. The website must encourage return public visitors by using desirable elements like updates, downloads, mail information, and forums.
4. The website interface should be easy to navigate and include a table of contents.
5. Preserve visitors by not leading users away from your website through links to other sites. (Kent & Taylor, 1998, as cited in Reber et al., 2006).

Martha Stewart and Michael Jackson successfully used websites for their image management by using Kent and Taylor’s principles. The celebrities’ sites included “press releases, open letters, formal statements, downloadable court texts, responses to media coverage, a vehicle for sending notes or letters to the defendants via email, recently updated information, and prominent home page links” (Reber et al., 2006, p. 36). The sites also used framing to “[counteract] negative publicity, … [balance] media coverage, … [make] the defendant’s viewpoint known, and to [contest] the defendant’s [innocence] (Reber et al., p. 37).

Other reading:
Martha's Website, USA Today.
Jackson and Stewart, Online journalism review.


References:
Reber, B. H., Gower, K. K., Robinson, J. A. (2006). The internet and litigation public relations. Journal of Public Relations Research, 18, 23-44.

Flanagin, A. J., & Metzger, M. J. (2007). The role of site features, user attributes, and information verification behaviors on the perceived credibility of web-based information. New Media & Society, 9, 319-342.