The early information services in British Malaya, 1910-1950 : a historiographical approach /
Malaysia has an active public relations industry; however, there has been limited research done to explore its antecedents and to understand how the present knowledge, practice and acceptance have come to being what it is today. Malaysian PR scholars are often influenced by 'Western hegemonic p...
Saved in:
| Main Author: | |
|---|---|
| Format: | Thesis |
| Language: | English |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | Click here to view 1st 24 pages of the thesis. Members can view fulltext at the specified PCs in the library. |
| Tags: |
Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
|
| Summary: | Malaysia has an active public relations industry; however, there has been limited research done to explore its antecedents and to understand how the present knowledge, practice and acceptance have come to being what it is today. Malaysian PR scholars are often influenced by 'Western hegemonic public relations' and thus conform in the primacy of Western scholarship in the field of public relations. American interpretations of public relations history are too simple and lack consideration of the histories of other nations, while many of the British PR scholars believe British public relations has its own national origin. Some scholars argue that every nation has its own account of social, cultural and political forces that shape their national histories. The purpose of the current study is to reconstruct and provide a clear, historical picture of the PR lineage in Malaysia. It is evident that many of the early information offices that were run by local governments have been the forerunners of the PR sector. The current paper traces the history of the information offices in British Malaya and explores its evolution as a precursor to the PR sector in Malaysia. It argues that the formation of the information activities in 1910 marked the beginning of public relations as a practice much earlier than other scholars have thought about. The concept of public relations began to emerge through the various historical episodes that cumulatively set the antecedents for the development of modern public relations in Malaysia. The study incorporates a qualitative historical approach that includes a search for confirmation inferred from a range of written and printed archival evidence. Finally, the resultant history is organized chronologically. A historiographical approach (Bentele's Functional-Integrative Stratification Model) is integrated to interpret the historical events in layers and relate them to other variables like social, cultural and political forces of the country thus obtaining meaning to the events. This study discovers public relations as a historical phenomenon that reflects on society and its developments at a given point of time. The study retrospectively traces the British consolidation of power over the Malay colonies through the Malay States Information Agency of 1910 that focused on commercial propaganda. Later with World War I and World War II, the Department of Information and Publicity of 1940 was linked to the prolific use of propaganda and psychological warfare. The first Department of Public Relations in 1946 was seen as a plan to control and consolidate power over the Malayans and to restore the war-torn nation. In conclusion, the development of public relations in Malaysia has evolved as part of Britain's strategy of consolidation of power over information services in Malaya. The bulk of this study focuses on the emergence of public relations as an occupational field. The study concludes that Malaysian public relations is still an occupational field and at an incipient stage of professionalism with due acknowledgement to the antecedent factors that have contributed to its development. |
|---|---|
| Item Description: | Abstracts in English and Arabic. "A dissertation submitted in fulfilment of the requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Communication." --title page. |
| Physical Description: | xiii, 353 leaves : illustrations ; 30cm. |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references (leaves 328-353). |