مقاله سال ۲۰۱۶

In contemporary public relations literature, media content has been categorized into what some call four ‘quadrants’—paid, earned, shared, and owned, referred to as the PESO model in academic research (Luttrell, 2014) and industry publications (e.g., Bayles, 2015; Dietrich, 2015). The PESO model evolved from the earlier categorization of media content as ‘paid, owned, earned’ that Burcher (2012, p. 4) refers to as the “media trinity” .

Paid media refers to traditional advertising and other forms of content commercially contracted between organizations and mass media. This has been the dominant form of promotional media content for the past century, accounting for more than US$600 billion in expenditure globally in 2015 (Statista, 2016a). Owned media are publications and digital sites established and controlled by organizations, such as corporate magazines, newsletters, reports and, more recently, organization Web sites, blogs, and official Facebook pages. Earned media refers to editorial publicity that is generated by organizations through media releases, interviews, and other media relations activities (Stephen & Galak, 2012).

Ofthese formats, earned media has been a dominantfocus of public relations and corporate communication (Macnamara, 2012; p. 183) ; Watson, 2012; p. 390). However, the era of social media has introduced a fourth ‘quadrant’ to the traditional paid, owned, earned model – shared media – and also radically changed the scope and scale of owned media.