Social media in PR education and the market : an audience comparative analysis in the UAE

Abstract EN

Social media has grown explosively and became outstanding in recent years.

Organizations, public or private, have realized the importance of social media as a powerful tool for establishing relationships with citizens or consumers.

Increasingly, organizations want to hire some professionals as an attempt to manage and utilize social media effectively for their businesses or projects.

Universities need to prepare a curriculum for students who want these jobs.

As a consequence, this study aims to determine to what extent social media education in UAE universities, is efficient in fulfilling the needs of modern public relations industry in UAE.

It includes 40 participants; 20 PR professionals from various industries across the UAE and the other 20 are faculty members from five universities in the UAE, using purposive sampling.

In addition, the researcher conducted a qualitative content analysis of Social Media related courses syllabi in five universities in the UAE.

The researcher used "Experiential Learning" theory to support the theoretical aspect of the current study.

The most important results: - The overall survey results indicated a clear consensus among educators and practitioners of the existence of a gap between PR academia and PR industry.

- The overall survey results indicated a clear consensus among educators and practitioners about the degree of importance of knowledge components.

- However, the views and opinions of public relations educators and practitioners differed on the skills that should be taught and their degree of importance.

- Comparing the results of the surveys to the content analysis, it showed that no much consensus among the two groups' views and what is being taught now in PR curriculums exist.