Emails, educators, practitioners and changing professional paradigms

The management of relationships with stakeholders, key publics and clients is central to the practice of public relations. Maintaining relationships and valuing those that have been established between practitioners and their clients and between practitioners and other organisations, has become increasingly important to the practitioner. However within the changing communication environment of email and Websites can these relationships be managed effectively? Both the practitioner and the educator of public relations are communicating with virtual clients and virtual students through online discussion, email messages, chat rooms and organisational websites. This paper points to the way in which practitioners are adjusting to the changes in online relationship management both online and through traditional communication, and how this can be reflected in educators’ response to online teaching of public relations