Although it is generally hard to distinguish between public relations and propaganda,
It furthermore played a central role in the Gulf War. On behalf of the Kuwaiti government it presented a 15-year-old girl to testify before Congress about human rights violations in a Kuwaiti hospital. The girl, later found out to be the daughter of Kuwait's ambassador to the U.S., and its testimony then became the centerpiece of a finely tuned PR campaign orchestrated by Hill & Knowlton and co-ordinated with the White House on behalf of the government of Kuwait an the Citizens for a Free Kuwait group. Inflaming public opinion against Iraq and bringing the U.S. Congress in favor of war in the Gulf, this probably was one of the largest and most effective public relations campaigns in history.
Running campaigns against abortion for the Catholic Church and representing the
Accused of pursuing potentially illegal proxy spying operation for intelligence agencies, Richard Cheney, head of Hill & Knowltons New York office, denied this allegations, but said that "... in such a large organization you never know if there's not some sneak operation going on." On the other hand former
(Source: Carlisle, Johan: Public Relationships: Hill & Knowlton, Robert Gray, and the CIA.
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One of the most crucial issues in on-line advertising is the blurring of the line between editorial content and ads. Unlike on TV and in the print media, where guidelines on the labeling of advertisements, which shall enable the customer to distinguish between editorial and ads, exist, similar conventions have not yet evolved for Internet content. Labeling of online advertisement up to now has remained the rare exception, with only few sites (e.g.
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Public relations usually is associated with the influencing of public opinion. Therefore it has subsequently been linked with propaganda. Using one of the many definitions of propaganda "... the manipulation of symbols as a means of influencing attitudes on controversial matters" (Harold D. Lasswell), the terms propaganda and PR seem to be easily interchangeable.
Still many authors explicitly distinguish between public relations, advertising and propaganda. Unlike PR, which is often described as objective and extensive information of the public, advertising and propaganda are associated with manipulative activities. Nevertheless to treat public relations and propaganda as equivalents stands in the tradition of PR.
Also institutions like the
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The public relations industry, the same as advertising, is concentrated in the hands of few dominant firms. Still, the striking element about corporate public relations is that PR firms are tightly related to advertising companies. Nine out of the ten biggest international PR agencies have close ties with the advertising industry. Also, looking at the largest acquisitions involving U.S. PR firms from 1997 to 1999 it is apparent that money coming from advertising agencies has played an important role.
Table: Top 10 PR Firms 1998
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With many PR agencies sold to advertising companies, the advertising industry's influence further increases; enabling them to offer their clients not only advertising services, but also know-how in marketing, public opinion, crisis and issues management and political lobbying.
Table: Acquisition of PR Agencies (1997 - 1999)
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Source: Odwyerpr.com.
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Fiber-optic cable networks may become the dominant method for high-speed Internet connections. Since the first fiber-optic cable was laid across the Atlantic in 1988, the demand for faster Internet connections is growing, fuelled by the growing network traffic, partly due to increasing implementation of corporate networks spanning the globe and to the use of graphics-heavy contents on the
Fiber-optic cables have not much more in common with copper wires than the capacity to transmit information. As copper wires, they can be terrestrial and submarine connections, but they allow much higher transmission rates. Copper wires allow 32 telephone calls at the same time, but fiber-optic cable can carry 40,000 calls at the same time. A capacity,
Copper wires will not come out of use in the foreseeable future because of technologies as
For technical information from the Encyclopaedia Britannica on telecommunication cables, click
An entertaining report of the laying of the FLAG submarine cable, up to now the longest fiber-optic cable on earth, including detailed background information on the cable industry and its history, Neal Stephenson has written for Wired: Mother Earth Mother Board. Click
Susan Dumett has written a short history of undersea cables for Pretext magazine, Evolution of a Wired World. Click
A timeline history of submarine cables and a detailed list of seemingly all submarine cables of the world, operational, planned and out of service, can be found on the Web site of the
For maps of fiber-optic cable networks see the website of
The term refers to the separation of a work process into a number of tasks, with each task performed by a separate person or group of persons. It is most often applied to
Robot relates to any automatically operated machine that replaces human effort, though it may not resemble human beings in appearance or perform functions in a humanlike manner. The term is derived from the Czech word robota, meaning "forced labor." Modern use of the term stems from the play R.U.R., written in 1920 by the Czech author Karel Capek, which depicts society as having become dependent on mechanical workers called robots that are capable of doing any kind of mental or physical work. Modern robot devices descend through two distinct lines of development--the early
Japanese SONY KK, major Japanese manufacturer of consumer electronics products. Headquarters are in Tokyo. The company was incorporated in 1946 and spearheaded Japan's drive to become the world's dominant consumer electronics manufacturer in the late 20th century. The company was one of the first to recognize the potential of the consumer videotape market. In 1972 it formed an affiliate to market its Betamax colour videocassette system. In 1987-88 Sony purchased the CBS Records Group from CBS Inc., thus acquiring the world's largest record company. It followed that purchase with the purchase in 1989 of Columbia Pictures Entertainment Inc.