Elektronik Cumhuriyet İletişim Dergisi

Abstract

There are differences between public relations and propaganda in terms of the work done and the way work is done. However, there is no significant difference between the two fields in terms of the nature of the work/activity/practice. Public relations has developed in the political conditions required to ensuring the voluntary participation of the public of political administration activity and gaining public support. The work of shaping public opinion or persuading the public with information has become increasingly widespread in political propaganda and the importance of the concept of public opinion has increased.
The study is designed to examine the connection to public relations and political propaganda as practices forming of public opinion. The work of building public support has been research in the example of Media Communication Bureaus organized within the Ministry of Justice. In the research carring out on the work done in the unit and the way the work is done, Semi-structured interviews have been performed with the responsible officials in the offices in the provincial courthouses of Artvin, Rize, Trabzon, Giresun, Ordu, Samsun. The results of this research, which was designed as a traditional qualitative research, support the above-mentioned theoretical assumption: Public relations and political propaganda activities as shaping of providing public support, has the character of knowledge creation, dissemination for certain organized purposes and thereby shaping of public opinion.