The Impact of Public Relations on Different Publics. تأثير العلاقات العامة في الجماهير المختلفة

The Impact of Public Relations on Different Publics. 309 The Impact of Public Relations on Different Publics تأثير العالقات العامة في الجماهير المختمفة Maamri benaissa M.C.A. University of Ammar Thlidji- Laghouat [email protected] Received: 19- 06- 2026 Accepted: 15- 08- 2026 Published: 22- 09- 2026 ـــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــ ـــــــــــــ Abstract: The study evaluates the strategic impact of Public Relations (PR) on internal and external stakeholders within a highly competitive institutional landscape. Utilizing a descriptive- analytical methodology, the research demonstrates that effective PR performance relies on the systematic analysis of public opinion trends. Furthermore, the integration of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and two-way symmetrical communication functions as a foundational mechanism to cultivate trust. Ultimately, the study concludes that despite its vital communicative role, PR effectiveness remains constrained by financial and organizational obstacles. key words: Public Relations, Public Opinion, Corporate Social Responsibility. ملخص: اتيجي لمعالقاسة األثر االسترتقيم ىذه الدر ات العامة عمى الجماىير الداخمية والخارجية في ظل بيئة ايدة. وباالعتماد عمى المنيج الوصفي التحميمي، يظير البحث أن األداء الفعالمؤسسية تشيد تنافسية متز افية لمجماىير.أي العام والخصائص الديموغرلمعالقات العامة يرتكز عمى التحميل المنيجي التجاىات الر عالوة عمى ذل ك، فإن دمج المسؤولية االجتماعية لممؤسسات واالتصال المتوازن ثنائي االتجاه يمثل آلية غم من الدوراسة في الختام إلى أنو عمى الرأساسية لبناء الثقة المتبادلة والمصداقية التنظيمية. وتخمص الدر االتصالي الحيوي لمعالقات العامة، إال أن فعاليتيا تظل مقيدة بعقبات مالية جة، وادارية، وتنظيمية حر . الكممات المفتاحية : العالقات العامة ، أي العام، المسؤولية االجتماعية لممؤسساتالر .  Corresponding author

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The Impact of Public Relations on Different Publics. 310 Introduction. The study of the impact of public relations (PR) on various publics is a vital topic in an era characterized by escalating competition among organizations, the diversification of communication media, and the intertwining interests between organizations and their stakeholders. The importance of this subject lies in its connection to the core of successful institutional work, which is based on building bridges of trust and mutual understanding between an organization and its internal and external publics. This is especially crucial in light of the growing public awareness and the development of media outlets, which have made public opinion more influential than ever before. This study aims to provide a comprehensive conceptual framework for PR and its communication role; analyze the concepts of "public" and "public opinion" as primary targets for influence; uncover the mechanisms of PR influence on different publics; identify obstacles that limit its effectiveness; and highlight the role of social responsibility in enhancing the credibility of public relations. Research Problem This study is guided by the following primary question: How can public relations effectively influence different publics through various mechanisms, in light of the multiple obstacles it faces in achieving this influence? Research Hypotheses 1-There is a positive relationship between understanding the characteristics of the public, analyzing public opinion trends, and the success of the influence strategies adopted by public relations. 2- A commitment to social responsibility and two-way communication— based on exchange and transparency—enhances trust and credibility, thereby achieving sustainable influence on the public. 3- Public relations faces multiple financial, administrative, and organizational obstacles that limit its ability to exert effective influence. Research Methodology This article adopts a descriptive-analytical approach by reviewing literature and previous studies, analyzing concepts, functions, and mechanisms, and then drawing conclusions and recommendations. The study is divided into three main axes: axis one: The conceptual framework of public relations and its communication role. axis two: Analyzing publics and public opinion as targets for influence. axis three: Mechanisms of public relations influence on different publics and its obstacles.

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The Impact of Public Relations on Different Publics. 311 Axis one: The Conceptual Framework of Public Relations and its Communication Role. In this axis, we address the following points: First: The Development of the PR Concept. Second: Definition and Characteristics of Public Relations. Third: Importance and Functions of Public Relations. First: The Development of the PR Concept. Public relations are a social phenomenon that has existed as long as humanity, but as a term and organized activity, it dates back to the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The need for it emerged with the Industrial Revolution, the rise of large corporations, increased competition, and the emergence of hostile relationships between these companies on one side, and workers, consumers, and investigative journalism on the other. Pioneer Ivy Lee played a pivotal role in transforming the concept of "press agentry" into public relations based on openness and honesty in dealing with the public. The concept then evolved to include the study of public opinion and strategic planning, becoming a continuous and planned management function aimed at gaining understanding, empathy, and continuous support from internal and external publics. Second: Definition and Characteristics of Public Relations. There is ambiguity surrounding this term, resulting in a multiplicity of definitions among researchers. Before defining it, it can be broken down into two parts: Relations: The result of communication between an organization and its public. Public: A collective or multiple groups of people active in the organization's environment. The refinement of the term "public relations" began in the 1920s. The definition by the International Public Relations Association is widely considered comprehensive, defining it as a management function: "The continuous and planned management function by which organizations of all types and activities seek to gain and maintain the understanding, empathy, and support of their internal and external publics, by studying and measuring public opinion, ensuring its alignment with organizational policies and activities, and defining further creative cooperation and effective performance for the mutual benefit of the organization and its publics using comprehensive, planned media."1 It has also been defined as both an art and a science: "The practice of ـــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــ 1- Muhammad Naji Jawhar, The Role of Public Relations in Development, Baghdad: Dar Al- Shu'un Al-Thaqafiya Al-Amma, 1986, p. 28.

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The Impact of Public Relations on Different Publics. 312 public relations are the art and social science of analyzing trends, predicting their consequences, counseling organization leaders, and implementing planned executive programs that will serve both the organization and the public interest."1 It was also defined as: "The science that studies the behavior of individuals and groups in an objective, scientific manner to organize human relations based on cooperation, affection, and awareness."2 Based on these definitions, public relations can be defined as: A continuous and planned management function, based on scientific and technical foundations, aimed at building, strengthening, and maintaining relationships based on trust, mutual understanding, and common benefit between an organization and its various publics, through studying public opinion, adjusting organizational policies, and utilizing effective and transparent communication media. Accordingly, PR is characterized by: Being both a science and an art. - Expressing reciprocal relationships between an organization and its publics. - Being a planned and continuous effort. - Consisting of the organization, the communication process, and the public. -Working toward the continuous improvement of the organization's relationships with its publics. Identifying and working to meet the needs of the publics. - -The necessity of adhering to truth. The necessity of clarity. - The necessity of aligning words with actions. - Third: Importance and Functions of Public Relations. 1. Importance of Public Relations: The importance of PR and the need for it by institutions stem from several considerations, most notably: - Helping develops communications with the public and providing information about goods produced by the organization. - Contributing to developing mechanisms to counter propaganda and malicious methods from competing institutions. - Helping assesses public satisfaction with provided services and making decisions regarding how to deliver them. - Assisting in building good relationships between government agencies ـــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــ 1-Elias Salloum, Public Relations Guide, A Comprehensive Scientific Reference, Dar Al-Fajr for Publishing and Distribution, 2010, p. 10. 2-Ibrahim Imam, The Art of Public Relations and Media, Cairo: The Anglo-Egyptian Bookshop, 1980, p. 43.

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The Impact of Public Relations on Different Publics. 313 and citizens by raising their awareness of their role in national development and making them more positive and cooperative. - Helping government agencies understand public attitudes and reactions to public policies, assisting in providing appropriate clarifications and responding to critics1. The need for PR has grown due to changes in human society, including: - The power of public opinion in democratic societies: This compels all government agencies to work toward winning and containing public opinion in favor of government goals, policies, and programs. - Expanding competition between institutions: Driven by the growth of institutions and geographic expansion. - Societal transformation: The shift from rural/agricultural to urban/industrial societies requires significant communication efforts to understand the new community's desires and interests. - Development of media and publishing: The spread of printing and the diversity of communication media have helped PR practitioners select the appropriate time and medium to communicate and influence the target public2. 2. Functions of Public Relations: PR practitioners perform a set of planned activities to achieve organizational goals, including: - Informing the public about the organization's philosophy, goods, and services using simple, clear language. - Communicating organizational policy to the public and informing them of any changes to foster cooperation. - Providing the public with facts to create a public opinion based on reality. - Monitoring information provided to the public for accuracy and integrity. - Providing the organization with feedback regarding public opinion trends. - Defending the organization against false news and information. - Creating a healthy climate between the organization and its employees. - Reporting public reactions to organizational policies to leadership. - Researching, analyzing, evaluating, and summarizing issues, opportunities, and challenges facing the organization. - Activating and encouraging communication between organizational management levels. - Ensuring positive public engagement with the organization's goals. ـــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــ 1- Fahmy Muhammad Al-Adawi, New Concepts in Public Relations, Amman (Jordan): Dar Osama for Publishing and Distribution, 2011, pp. 30-31. 2- Ibid., pp. 31-33.

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The Impact of Public Relations on Different Publics. 314 - Coordinating between management levels to achieve internal alignment and alignment with external publics. - Providing specialized consultation to the Board of Directors and senior management1. Some Researches consider the functions of public relations to include: - Strengthening communication between the organization and its public by activating communication channels between them. - Conducting studies and research on the public and how to gain its support. - Surveying public opinion in order to adapt to it or work to contain it. - Providing the necessary assistance to the organization's management to help it deal effectively with the public. - Preparing speakers and sending them to schools and clubs to explain the organization's philosophy and goals. - Motivating employees and making them more confident in their organization and more productive in their work2. These functions confirm that public relations are not just the transmission of information; it is a comprehensive process of understanding the environment, adjusting internal policies, and effective communication to achieve sustainable positive impact on all publics. Axis Two: Analyzing Publics and Public Opinion as Targets for Influence. To influence effectively, public relations must precisely understand the "public" and "public opinion." A public is a group of people, internal or external to the organization, who influence and are influenced by it. Because individual interests vary, the communication process in organizations is highly complex. In this axis, we address the following points: First: Defining the Public, its Characteristics, and Classifications. Second: The Concept of Public Opinion and Its Significance as a Target for Influence. ـــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــ 1- Hassan Khair al-Din, Principles of Public Relations, Cairo: Ain Shams Library, (n.d.), pp. 27- 28- 2- William Nickels, Marketing principles, prentice-hall. Jnc. Englewood cliffs, N, J, 1973, p.70- 73 (Quoted from: Mahmoud Farid Al-Sahn, Public Relations, Alexandria: University House for Printing, Publishing and Distribution, 1985, p. 35).

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The Impact of Public Relations on Different Publics. 315 First: Defining the Public, its Characteristics, and Classifications. A. Defining the Public: The public is defined as a group of people distinct from others by specific characteristics, with members linked by certain ties. It is also the receiver of written, spoken, visual, or electronic media messages containing political, economic, social, or cultural goals. Blumer believes that specific elements, when gathered, form what is known as a public1: - Membership consists of various social groups according to their scientific, cultural, and professional differences. - The public is composed of anonymous individuals. - The public is not structurally organized and cannot act as a unified whole. B- Characteristics of the Audience - Large Scale: The audience takes on a significantly larger structure compared to other types of social groupings. - Dispersion: Audience members are geographically dispersed. They are connected through modern communication technologies, such as the internet and satellite broadcasting, which grant the audience a global dimension. - Anonymity: Audience members are not personally known to one another, and they remain anonymous to the communicator. - Heterogeneity: Audience members differ in their characteristics, interests, demands, and needs, which influences how they engage with the communication process. - Lack of Social Organization: Given the aforementioned heterogeneity, it is difficult for the audience to form a cohesive social unit due to the divergence of their interests and concerns. - Fluidity (Changeability): The audience is characterized by instability in its conditions and demands, constantly shifting across time and space. - Demographic Implicit Characteristics: The diversity of media, the vast size of the audience, and its evolving interests have led audience studies to focus on quantifying and segmenting audiences based on demographic and social criteria, such as gender, age, and occupation. The interaction of these factors with the audience's psychological and sociological dimensions significantly impacts the communication process. These characteristics are classified into two categories: - Primary Attributes: Traits that remain constant across time and space, ـــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــ 1- Muhammad Shatah, Television Media, Algeria: Dar Al-Kitab Al-Hadith, 2006, p. 29. such as gender and age.

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The Impact of Public Relations on Different Publics. 316 - Secondary Attributes: Traits that vary according to time and space, such as residence, educational level, occupation, and income1. C. Types of Audiences There are numerous classifications of the audience; however, it is sufficient to adopt the classification proposed by the American researcher "Klapper." He categorized the audience based on their interaction with the media medium as follows: - The Hypothetical Audience: This refers to the segment of the population prepared to receive messages from a specific media medium, as they possess the material and technical means that enable them to receive these media messages from that medium. In this context, the hypothetical audience consists of those who possess the necessary receiving equipment (e.g., television sets, radio receivers). - The Actual Audience: This audience comprises individuals who have effectively been reached by the media content. It is represented by regular viewers of a television program, consistent listeners of a specific radio broadcast, or frequent readers of a particular newspaper. - The Exposed Audience: This is the actual audience that receives messages, regardless of whether they comprehend the content or have a reaction to it. Within this group, we find some who interact positively with the media message, while others pay it no attention, depending on the extent to which the message aligns with their personal thoughts, interests, and objectives. - The Active Audience: This refers to the audience that interacts positively with the communication process. They are the specific target audience for various promotional advertisements, whether commercial or political. The sender strives intensely to attract the members of this audience or, at the very least, to persuade them to adopt a neutral stance2. Second: The Concept of Public Opinion and Its Significance as a Target for Influence. A. The Concept of Public Opinion Public opinion is defined as the collective judgment held by a group of people regarding a significant subject or issue that is open to debate. It is not merely a transient "general discontent" or a fleeting "general trend"; rather, it is the product of conscious, societal discourse. ـــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــ 1 - Ali, Qasaysiya. "The Numerical Concept of the Public." Al-Waseet Journal for University Studies, Vol 5. Algeria: Dar Houma for Publishing, 2003, pp. 54-55. 2- Muhammad Al-Jawhari, Fatima Al-Qulaini, Media and Society, Studies in Media Sociology, Egypt: University Knowledge House, 1998, pp. 37-56. While numerous definitions of public opinion exist, we shall focus on the following:

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The Impact of Public Relations on Different Publics. 317 Definition by Claridge King: Public opinion is defined as the judgment reached by a group concerning an issue of importance to the general public, formulated following a comprehensive and public discussion1. William Albig defined public opinion as the product of the interaction of individual ideas within a group, or as a specific topic that becomes a subject of discussion within a particular group2. Floyd Allport defined it as the expression of a large group of individuals regarding a specific situation, whether spontaneously or upon invitation. This expression can be in favor of or opposed to a certain condition, person, or proposal of widespread importance, provided that the proportion of supporters in number, along with the degree of their conviction, steadfastness, and continuity, is sufficient to potentially exert influence—either directly or indirectly—on taking a specific action toward the issue around which public opinion revolves3. Based on the foregoing, public opinion can be conceptualized as the aggregate of views, consensus, or collective agreement among the majority of a population regarding a phenomenon, topic, or issue. This issue may be local, national, or international, and the consensus surrounding it serves as a powerful driver to influence that phenomenon or issue. Public opinion possesses several key characteristics, most notably: - Multiplicity: Public opinion encompasses multiple and diverse perspectives on a single issue. - Variance in Depth and Intensity: It varies in its degree of depth and strength depending on the nature and specificity of the issues raised; specialists and experts typically hold deeply rooted, profound, and stable opinions. - Dynamism: Public opinion is inherently a changing and evolving phenomenon. - Public opinion acts as a formative force in elevating and defining leaders. Public opinion holds significant importance; generally, it plays a pivotal role in steering society toward its strategic goals and actively contributes to public policy-making and decision-making processes. This significance can be highlighted through the following key dimensions: - It plays a pivotal role in steering society toward its pre-planned ــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــ ـــــــ 1- Burhan Zureiq, Public Opinion, 1st ed., Syria: Syrian Ministry of Information, 2016, p. 20. 2 Mukhtar Al-Tahami, Atef Adli Al-Abd, Public Opinion, Cairo: Public Opinion Research Center, Faculty of Mass Communication, 2005, p. 18. 3- Burhan Zureiq, op. cit., pp. 19-20. objectives; hence, cultivating and securing public trust becomes an imperative necessity.

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The Impact of Public Relations on Different Publics. 318 - Public opinion polling and research significantly contribute to shaping public policies and decisions that align with societal needs and aspirations. - Analyzing a society's public opinion provides deep insights into its underlying social structures, thereby facilitating effective governance and social organization. - Demonstrating respect for public opinion serves as a key indicator of the authority's commitment to upholding human rights. - Public opinion directly influences development projects across multiple stages, whether through proposals, funding mobilization, or execution. B. Measuring Public Opinion: Measuring public opinion is essentially a polling endeavor designed to gauge public trends and attitudes regarding specific issues of public interest that spark debate and discussion. To accurately measure public opinion, an interdisciplinary approach is required, drawing upon fields such as psychology, sociology, political science, economics, and statistics1. Measuring public opinion carries profound significance, as it serves as a distinct mechanism for understanding the public's trends and views across social, economic, cultural, and political spheres. By analyzing public opinion, policymakers can diagnose current realities as they truly exist, based on concrete data regarding public trends, needs, and demands. This diagnosis facilitates informed decision-making on pressing public matters and helps guide public sentiment in a manner that fosters social stability and cohesion2. Consequently, public opinion research holds immense value, which manifests in the following: - Facilitating consensus: Public opinion studies help societies reach agreements and consensus on critical public issues. - Enhancing public services: These studies contribute directly to the development and optimization of delivered services. - Fostering civic cooperation: They assist in designing strategic frameworks to enhance cooperation between the government and citizens. - Empowering civic engagement: Public opinion research helps identify practical pathways to activate and maximize citizen participation in matters of public concern. ـــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــ 1 - Kamel Khurshid Murad, Introduction to Public Opinion, 1st ed., Amman (Jordan): Dar Al- Masirah for Publishing, Distribution, and Printing, 2011, p. 379 2 - Abdel Karim Darwish, and Laila. Tekla. Principles of Public Administration. Cairo: The Anglo-Egyptian Bookshop, 1976, p. 464.

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The Impact of Public Relations on Different Publics. 319 Undoubtedly, public opinion carries immense weight and wields a significant influence over individuals, societies, and states alike. Consequently, various actors constantly strive to shape public opinion as a strategic means to influence and contain opposing parties. To exert this influence effectively, these actors leverage the most impactful channels and mediums within society, which primarily include: - Interviews: (Both structured and journalistic dialogues). - Meetings: (Gatherings designed for direct engagement and alignment). - Mass Media: (Various traditional and digital media outlets). - Conferences: (Formal assemblies for elite and professional discourse). - Symposiums and Seminars: (Platforms for specialized discussion and debate). - Theater: (Performing arts as a tool for cultural and political expression). - Cinema: (Motion pictures as a medium for mass influence and narrative shaping). Axis Three: Mechanisms of PR Influence on Different Publics and its Obstacles. In this axis, we address the following points: First: Communication. Second: Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). Third: Obstacles hindering the influence of public relations on the public. Public Relations (PR) employs a set of mechanisms to influence its target audiences. These mechanisms include: First: Communication. A. The Concept of Communication. Communication represents the manifestation of human interaction and reflects the behavioral responses between an individual and their familial and social environment. It serves as a tangible expression of the inherently social nature of human beings. Communication is known linguistically as: it came from the verb connected, connects, connecting, and repaired it and gathered it, and make someone to bring him and made him reach it. Operationally, various definitions of communication exist, including: 1- Information Exchange Perspective: Some scholars define communication as "a process. aimed at transmitting and exchanging information, which serves as the foundation for aligning thoughts, unifying

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The Impact of Public Relations on Different Publics. 320 concepts, and making decisions.1" This definition emphasizes that communication is actualized through the information exchanged between the sender and the receiver. This exchange helps align the perspectives and concepts of both parties regarding organizational issues, thereby facilitating effective decision-making to achieve organizational goals. 2 - Administrative Process Perspective: Others view communication as an administrative. process designed to "produce, provide, or compile the data and information necessary for the continuity of the management process. It involves transmitting, exchanging, or broadcasting this data so that individuals or groups can inform others of new matters, news, or information. Additionally, it aims to influence, modify, or direct individual and collective behavior toward a specific objective. These operations are typically bidirectional (two-way) rather than unidirectional (one-way), ...meaning the transmission or provision of data and information to others, and vice versa."2 This definition positions communication as the cornerstone of the administrative process, owing to the crucial data and information it provides to organizational decision-makers. Accordingly, the core functions of communication include transmitting this data to relevant authorities, exchanging it among stakeholders, or broadcasting it to the target audience. The ultimate objective is to keep others informed of new developments, influence behavior, and direct efforts toward the appropriate actions necessary for achieving predefined goals. 3- Others define communication as: "The transmission or exchange of ideas or information with others, ensuring their participation, to achieve specific goals.3" This definition emphasizes the general concept of communication and underscores the necessity of its effectiveness. This is achieved through dialogue and discussion among stakeholders regarding the intended goals, as well as the optimal methods and appropriate procedures required for their realization. 4- Communication has also been defined as: "The process of transmitting or exchanging information and ideas to achieve unity of understanding and thought.4" ـــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــ 1 – Ibid, p. 464. 2 - Hassan, Abdel Fattah. Principles of Public Administration, Cairo: Dar Al-Nahda Al-Arabiya, 1972, p. 158 3 - Sheha, Ibrahim. Principles of Public Administration. Alexandria, 1979, p. 226. 4 - Abdel Wahab, Mohamed Rifaat. Public Administration. Alexandria: Al-Dar Al-Misriya Al- Haditha, 1981, p. 286. This definition highlights the necessity of exchanging ideas and information within the organization across all its levels. The objective is to reach

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The Impact of Public Relations on Different Publics. 321 consensus among most organization members on work-related issues and goal attainment, within a harmonious and coordinated intellectual and organizational climate. 5- some define communication as: "The conveying of information, directing of instructions, or exchanging of ideas and data to accomplish the goals of the administrative organization.1" We note that this definition summarizes the three directions of communication. More often than not, informing and reporting is embodied through upward communication, which flows from the subordinate to their superior. This typically takes the form of requests for clarification or inquiries regarding specific issues or procedures related to task performance. Conversely, issuing instructions is carried out through downward communication, which flows from the leader to the subordinates with the purpose of providing new directives or requesting additional work. Finally, the exchange of ideas and information takes place through horizontal (lateral) communication, which occurs between individuals at equivalent structural levels within the organization, or between the organization and external entities. This aims to foster coordination among these various levels and parties to achieve the organization's objectives. B-The Concept of Communication in Public Relations: In the context of Public Relations (PR), communication can be defined as: "the process of conveying ideas, information, and facts to and from target audiences with the aim of influencing them.2" This definition underscores that public relations is in dire need of transmitting and exchanging information and facts with its audiences to achieve the desired impact. This represents a two-way symmetrical communication process, through which the organization gauges various public opinions and demands, and conveys them to upper management to integrate them into the organization's general policy. Consequently, a mutual adaptation between the interests of the organization and its publics is achieved. This reflects a positive corporate image, secures public support and endorsement, and ultimately ensures the organization's sustainability and survival. Hence, it can be argued that the importance of communication in public ـــــــــــــــــــــــ ــــــــــــــــــ 1- Abdallah, Abdel Ghani Basyouni. Principles of Public Administration Science. Alexandria: Monsha'at Al-Ma'aref, 2006, p. 383. 2 - Al-Dulaimi, Abd al-Razzaq. Public Relations in Practice. 1st ed. Amman: Dar Jreer for Publishing and Distribution, 2005, p. 143. relations are firmly established. It manifests in the transmission of information, orders, and instructions from superiors to subordinates. Concurrently,

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The Impact of Public Relations on Different Publics. 322 it serves as the very mechanism through which subordinates convey demands, suggestions, and opinions to their superiors. This facilitates the requisite interaction between leadership and staff, enabling management to comprehend organizational issues and deliver appropriate solutions—ultimately fostering a positive impact on employees and enhancing their performance1. Communication is of paramount importance in the administrative process of public relations. Through the information provided by the communication process, planning is effectively conducted, and coordination among various administrative levels and units is achieved. Collectively, this facilitates decision- making, as well as the monitoring and evaluation of the implementation process2. Communication in public relations operates on two distinct levels, The Internal Level: Which pertains to the organization's internal public (employees and stakeholders), the External Level: Which pertains to the organization's external public (customers, media, community, etc.). Internal communication is defined as "the set of principles and practices designed to foster a culture of listening; facilitate, transmit, and disseminate information; encourage collaboration; and promote corporate values in order to enhance both individual and collective efficiency within the organization3." Organizations strive to maintain effective communication with their internal stakeholders. Consequently, employee public relations are built upon specific pillars, objectives, informational requirements, and channels, as detailed below: A. Pillars of Employee Public Relations: - Individual Recognition: Valuing each employee's contribution. - Fair and Effective Recruitment: Maintaining a just and efficient selection system. - Job Security: Providing a stable and secure working environment. - Equitable Compensation: Implementing a fair system for bonuses, salaries, and wages. ـــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــ 1 - Al-Trafi, Suleiman Dakhilallah. "Obstacles to Organizational Communication and Their Impact on the Level of Work Stress." (Master's thesis, Institute of Graduate Studies, Naif Arab Academy for Security Sciences, 2001), p. 12. 2 - Ibid., same page. 3 - Amal, Berbaoui. "The Role of Internal Communication in the Process of Organizational Change: A Field Study of Sonelgaz Distribution Company in Bechar." (PhD diss., Faculty of Economic Sciences, Commercial Sciences and Management Sciences, University of Tlemcen, 2015), p. 6. - Career Advancement: Offering clear opportunities for promotion. - Ethical Culture: Embedding core values, ethics, and exemplary

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The Impact of Public Relations on Different Publics. 323 leadership within the organization. - Conscious and Just Leadership: Ensuring capable, aware, and equitable management. B. Objectives of Public Relations with the Internal Public - Achieving job satisfaction. - Boosting employee morale. - Providing continuous employee awareness and education. - Enhancing communication channels between employees and upper management. C. Information Disseminated to Employees - The history and heritage of the organization. - Corporate policies and the rationale behind their implementation. - An overview of organizational activities, products, and services. - Strategic positioning against competitors. - Research and studies conducted by the organization for workforce and corporate development. - Financial disclosures regarding revenues, expenditures, and fiscal efficiency. - Future outlook and strategic vision of the organization. D. Channels of Internal Public Relations Communication channels vary based on the medium's efficacy, timing, and the nature of the information. The most vital channels include: - Official reports. - The corporate handbook/employee directory. - Internal magazines and newsletters. - Internal broadcasting systems. - Corporate events and celebrations. - Excursions and recreational tours. -Tangible and intangible rewards (incentives). - Meetings, seminars, and workshops. External communication is defined as a purposeful process targeted at the organization's external stakeholders. It serves to build strong relationships between the organization and its customers, ensuring rapid responsiveness to inquiries and demands. This proactive engagement aims to attract new clients, strengthen brand loyalty, and sustain long-term relationships. Consistent, effective communication and a genuine commitment to addressing customer needs provide the organization with solid public backing and ongoing support1.

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The Impact of Public Relations on Different Publics. 324 The external public represents the environment that the organization strives to win over. Amid fierce competition, organizations vie to solidify relationships with external audiences by delivering goods and services that garner appreciation and satisfaction. Accordingly, Public Relations departments pursue the following objectives through external communication: - Securing stakeholder trust. - Providing comprehensive and transparent information about the organization. - Highlighting mutual interests between the organization and its clients. - Aligning corporate policies with the public interest. 5. Channels of External Communication The aforementioned objectives are conveyed to external audiences through various channels, including: - Personal and direct communications. - Official correspondence and letters. - Exhibitions and trade shows. - Public site visits and open houses. - Newspapers and press releases. - External magazines and publications. - Audiovisual media. 6. Strategies for Managing Critics and Opponents To manage opposition and win the trust of critical individuals or competing organizations, the Public Relations department must adopt the following crisis management and resolution strategies: - Assessing the validity and significance of criticisms leveled against the organization. - Maintaining objectivity, diligence, and caution when confronting allegations. - Investigating the underlying backgrounds and motives of the accusations. - Making informed, decisive corporate resolutions regarding the allegations. - Clarifying the organization's stance to its supportive audience. - Engaging in constructive dialogue with critics. - De-escalating and managing hostile narratives effectively. ـــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــ 1 - Fadhila, Mahmoush. The Excellence in Administrative Communications and Effective Correspondence. Algeria: Dar Al-Kutub Al-Ilmiyah for Publishing, Distribution and Printing, 2009, p. 20. Secondly: Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Public Relations (PR) has not overlooked social responsibility in its communication with publics and in achieving organizational goals. Rather, PR

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The Impact of Public Relations on Different Publics. 325 functions to align individual interests with those of the organization, making it a top priority for all entities. Social responsibility can be defined through the following perspectives: -The World Bank Definition: It is defined as "the commitment of business owners to contribute to sustainable development by working with their employees, their families, and the local community at large to improve the quality of life in ways that simultaneously serve both the economy and development."1 -The American Management Association (AMA) Definition: It is defined as: "The response of organizational management to changing consumer expectations and public interest in society, while continuing to deliver the unique contributions of business activities aimed at creating economic wealth."2 - Drucker's Definition: Peter Drucker defined it as: "The organization's commitment toward the society in which it operates. This commitment expands as the segments of stakeholders in society broaden and their orientations diversify."3 Based on the foregoing, it is evident that social responsibility must inherently accompany PR activities to impart an ethical character to them, grounding the organization's relationship with its public on moral values. This ethical commitment toward the public ensures the organization’s continuity and survival, reinforcing that the practice of social responsibility contributes to fostering positive and long-standing public relations. 1. The Importance of Social Responsibility The importance of social responsibility lies in the following: - Enhancing the corporate image in society through initiatives, charitable works, and commitment to the ethics of the community in which it operates. - Achieving social stability by fostering fairness and equal opportunities, which constitute the bedrock of social responsibility. ـــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــ 1- Michel Capron, Françoise Quairel-Lanoizelée. La responsabilité d’entreprise. Paris : Éditions la découverte. 2007. p23. 2- Al-Sairafi, Mohamed. Social Responsibility of Management. Egypt: El-Wafaa for Printing and Publishing, 2007, p. 17. 3- Al-Khafaji, Neama Abbas, and Al-Ghalibi, Taher Mohsen. Readings in Contemporary Managerial Thought. Jordan: Dar Al-Yazouri Scientific for Publishing and Distribution, 2008, p. 289. - Ensuring continuous improvement of the services or goods provided to society. - Raising awareness about the importance of integration between civil society organizations and various individual interests. - Contributing to the provision of health, social, and educational services to alleviate burdens on the state. - Benefiting the state through commitment to social responsibility and sharing social costs1.

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The Impact of Public Relations on Different Publics. 326 It appears from the above that public relations achieve success in society to the extent of its ethical commitment toward it, the benefits it realizes, and the services it renders. Consequently, PR practitioners in organizations must strive to contribute to fulfilling societal interests, given that the organization was established to serve society and is an integral part of it. 2. Public Relations and Social Responsibility within the Organization Public relations play a vital role in embodying social responsibility within the organization. Some researchers consider that "social responsibility is an integral part of strategic management in enterprises. Since business entities operate in a society that provides them with profit opportunities, they must, in return for this commitment, serve societal needs. This obligation is what is termed social responsibility."2 The success of public relations in fulfilling its role in social responsibility is achieved when it demonstrates a commitment to the following: - Fostering a sense of responsibility within the organization toward employees and external publics, and demonstrating behavior rooted in respect and appreciation. - Environmental preservation by ensuring that the organization’s production processes do not harm the environment, or by providing activities and services that contribute to environmental development and conservation. - Standing firmly with the community and offering continuous support and backing3. An organization's social responsibility is not confined to a specific time or place, as its commitment brings definitive benefits. It builds a relationship based on trust, loyalty, and mutual support between the organization and its internal and ــــ ـــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــ 1- Al-Ghalibi, Taher Mohsen Mansour, and Al-Amiri, Saleh Mahdi Mohsen. Social Responsibility and Business Ethics. 2nd ed. Jordan: Dar Wael for Publishing, 2008, p. 52. 2- Hatem, Mohamed Atef. "Social Responsibility of Public Relations: An Analytical Study of the Websites of Telecommunications Sector Institutions in Egypt." Journal of Public Relations Research Middle East (JPRRME), (October/December 2013), p. 147. 3- Ibid., p. 148 external publics. Through PR's commitment to social responsibility, the organization contributes to the welfare, stability, security, and comfort of society. This, in turn, reflects positively on the organization’s mental image in society, securing permanent public support and endorsement. Thirdly: Barriers to Public Relations' Influence on the Public. Public relations professionals face a range of obstacles that limit their ability to effectively influence the public. Key barriers include: 1-Insufficient Financial Resources: The lack of an adequate budget specifically allocated to

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The Impact of Public Relations on Different Publics. 327 cover and sustain public relations activities. 2-Scarcity of Specialized Expertise: A shortage of advanced academic knowledge and technical skills among the staff within the public relations department. 3-Instability of Organizational Policies: Frequent shifts in institutional policies and strategies, which undermine the credibility of public relations campaigns and diminish their impact on the target audience. 4-Weak Executive Support: A decline in the department's institutional value when upper management neglects the strategic role that public relation plays within the organization. 5-Lack of Employee Involvement in PR Initiatives: The exclusion of staff from participating in the development of PR policies, plans, and programs, which negatively impacts engagement with both internal and external stakeholders. 6-Overlapping Jurisdictions: Role confusion and conflict of duties with Human Resources, Marketing, and Media departments, which disrupts PR practitioners and hinders their capacity to effectively engage audiences. 7-Unfavorable Organizational Structure: The scope of PR's impact is directly tied to its positioning within the corporate hierarchy. The closer the department is to executive leadership, the more prominent its role and the more substantial its actual influence. 8-Underutilization of Media Channels: Achieving effective outreach depends heavily on selecting the optimal media channels to connect with the audience. This requires PR professionals to possess diverse technical skills and analytical capabilities to execute successful communication campaigns. 9-Dominance of Bureaucracy in Public Institutions: Rigid bureaucratic constraints in government entities stifle the creativity and flexibility of PR practitioners, preventing innovation outside pre-established rules and severely limiting their ultimate effectiveness. Conclusion. This study examined the impact of public relations (PR) on diverse audiences through three main axes: concepts and functions; audience and public opinion analysis; and influence mechanisms and obstacles. The findings reveal that public relations are not merely an informational activity, but rather a strategic management function grounded in two-way communication and social responsibility. Furthermore, the study demonstrates that successful influence depends heavily on an accurate understanding of audience characteristics—which are inherently heterogeneous and dynamic—as well as the multifaceted and shifting nature of public opinion.

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The Impact of Public Relations on Different Publics. 328 To this end, public relations employ multiple mechanisms, including internal and external communication, mass media, and live events; however, it faces financial, administrative, and organizational constraints. Ultimately, a commitment to transparency and ethics enhances the organization's mental image (corporate image) and secures long-term institutional support. Based on the aforementioned insights, the study presents the following findings and recommendations: First: Results. 1- Public relations is a continuous, planned management function built on scientific and technical foundations, aiming to foster mutual trust and understanding between the organization and its publics. 2- Analyzing the audience and public opinion is a prerequisite for effective influence. Audiences vary in types and characteristics, while public opinion is dynamic, heterogeneous, and shaped by demographic, psychological, and social factors. 3- Internal and external communication serves as the central mechanism of influence, executed through various channels such as interviews, newspapers, magazines, conferences, personal communication, and field visits. 4- Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) acts as an ethical pillar that bolsters PR credibility and contributes to the well-being of both society and employees, which positively reflects on the organization's corporate image. 5- The primary barriers limiting PR effectiveness include financial constraints, a shortage of specialized talent, weak administrative support, overlapping jurisdictions, bureaucracy, and unstable institutional policies. Second: Recommendations. 1- Allocating adequate budgets for public relations activities and involving PR departments in strategic decision-making within the organization. 2- Qualifying specialized personnel scientifically and technically, and enrolling them in continuous training programs focused on communication fields and public opinion analysis. 3- Adopting two-way symmetrical communication strategies, and leveraging modern media alongside field studies to periodically measure public opinion. 4- Enhancing the autonomy of the public relations department within the organizational structure and elevating its hierarchical position to ensure its efficacy. 5- Adhering to the values of social responsibility, transparency, and professional ethics when engaging with publics to build relationships sustained by mutual trust and support.

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