Stakeholder Strength: PR Survival Strategies in the Internet Age

With the advent of the Internet, stakeholder communication behavior has changed and will continue to change in the future. Stakeholders can now communicate with each other about an organization in a very public way. The public relations function will in most cases be the department dealing with these unplanned messages. As stakeholder strength increases, PR practitioners will have to develop strategies that deal with the rising power of different stakeholders on the web. This paper gives examples of how customers and other stakeholders can use the web to inform other stakeholders of compliments and complaints about an organization or its people. It then suggests ways PR practitioners can formulate strategies to react to these messages