Public relations office of religious institutions - the media's role religious communities since 2010-2016

Abstract

The religious institutions in Albania suddenly flourished in the 1990 with the return of freedom of worship and religion, which had been cancelled (1967) by an article in the constitution that turned Albania into the only atheist country in the world; something that was reverberated throughout the international media. Regaining their institutional forms the religious communities in the nineties started to develop their offices of communication and public relations, their own media to this very day, which operate with special programs in the public and private media for different occasions. As an important instrument of communication between institutions as a transmitter of religious messages to the faithful audience the broadcasting today is realized by dozens of different channels. Starting from the traditional media as reception offices, offices of public relations, newspapers and magazines, radio, television, internet, onto the social media nowadays who have become a pretty concrete means to channel all kinds of messages. But, how many and how these messages are followed? Where remains the „spasm‟ in some of those religious institutions? How many of those messages are public and are meant for everybody, and not only for the own crowd? Which are the external interventions? Cooperation with organizations in the civil society, business? These and others are some of the themes, which the complexity of public relations and the media of religious institutions confronts these last years in the public they address.