Graphical content of the contemporary PR-text: typology and means of design

PR-communications in the last decade have been experiencing a tremendous impact of the new technologies. And it is essential for PR to keep up with the new technologies in their development, as the nature of human perception and information processing are changing. Since the purpose of public relations is "the formation of an effective communication system between the social subject and its general public, ensuring the optimization of social interactions with the significant segments of the environment", we presume traditional written forms of the text communication in the last 10 years have undergone significant changes, so the classic written PR-text has converted into a new object synthesizing various types of information. Today PR-texts transform under the influence of factors of the technical progress into a new phenomenon - a visual and interactive PR-text. Images appear to be objects which define the visual and interactive nature of the modern PR-text. Since the foundation of PR-activity is to prepare effective materials for the target public and the media, it seems necessary to identify the features of this type of visual objects, to give its characteristics and formulate recommendations for its use in the practice of PR-communications. To do this, we conducted a study the results of which are presented in this paper. As sources in our empirical study, we used a collection of 255 PR-texts of different genres. Using the method of comparative analysis, we divided the graphical content of the PR-texts from our database into six groups on general grounds, and then formed a classification which is described in detail in the article. Then we used the same sample for the study of the functional capacities of the three types of visual content: photos, illustrations and videos. Our study has allowed to establish the following: 1. The most frequently used graphical content in the PR-text is photography. 2. The most versatile visual means, in our view, are photos. 3. Photo is the easiest-to-use type of graphical content, PR-specialists themselves can operate photo images; illustration suggests involving an artist or a designer; creation of high-quality video content is virtually impossible without a team of specialists: cinematographer, editor, sound engineer, etc. 4. The purpose and nature of communication are crucial factors when choosing a particular type of graphical content for the PR-text. 5. A resource-demanding degree for each type of the graphical content may be measured using a complex of three factors: speed of creation, cost of creation, number of people involved. Using the modeling method, we have developed a schematic representation of the relationships between the planned nature of the message, resource-demanding degree and the types of graphical content. The proposed scheme can be a tool for checking the relevance of the image type for the visual PR-text.

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