Governmental public relations and digital communication practices: A research on the Istanbul district municipalities

Today, because of advances in information and technology, the rapid process of digitalization has led to social, economic, and cultural changes. One of the areas where this transformation is mostly seen is communication. Nowadays, it is noteworthy that digital communication tools, as well as traditional communication tools, are being used extensively in public relations applications. In this context, institutions seem taking advantage of implementations of digital communications in many processes from ways of doing business to their relations with their target audience to achieve public relations goals. In recent years, especially the practices of public institutions to adapt to the digitalization process and their tendency towards digital communication applications have attracted attention. Among the public institutions, municipalities, which are considered as the closest public institutions to the public, are affected by the rapid developments in the field of communication. It is observed that they started to use digital communication applications intensively in governmental public relations activities which are carried out in order to announce their activities, services and practices to the public and to have information about their target audiences. This study was planned to determine the linkage between public institutions and public relations and use of digital communication tools by public institutions in focus of municipalities. For the purposes of the study, a research was conducted by using the interview technique within the scope of qualitative research methods, and it was aimed to reach the findings about the use of digital communication applications in the public relations of Istanbul District Municipalities. In the research, finding about the purpose of using digital communication applications of municipalities and the effects and contributions of digital communication practices to the public relations activities carried out by municipalities were revealed. It has been determined by the research findings that digital communication applications have started to be preferred intensively by municipalities in governmental public relations activities due to their many advantages such as removing time and space constraints and providing fast and dialogue-based communication.