Perception Management Is Different From Crude Publicity

About three months prior to the code of conduct was notified for the last Elections, newspapers carried almost every day full-page advertisements that listed various programmes of the Odisha government with a big picture of the Chief Minister. Huge hoardings with the Chief Minister’s picture were found at different places in Bhubaneswar city and elsewhere in the state. Some viewed this as an overdrive of perception management. Was this really perception management? A brief discussion on this would be useful,

Perception management is a multifaceted concept that impacts interpersonal relationships, organisational dynamics and even societal behaviour. It is a tool that is used to influence beliefs, attitudes, and behaviour. One makes use of this in personal interactions through impression management. The idea is to control how others perceive him. For example, one makes an effort to present himself in a favourable light by dressing well, speaking soft, avoiding a loud laugh and opting for a stylish smile.  Preparing carefully a social media profile or impressive biodata is also a part of this exercise. The objective is to gain trust and respect and to control how others perceive him. The nature of perception management in organisations, however, is more complex.

Employees' perceptions of the organisation’s goals, culture, and performance are sought to be modulated through transparent communication. It keeps the morale of employees in good shape when the organisation is passing through change. This tool is effectively used to ensure employees’ loyalty, commitment, and alignment with the organisation’s strategic objectives. Governments, corporations, and advocacy groups have been investing liberally in managing how the public perceives their actions, policies, and brands. This includes shaping media narratives, framing issues in favourable ways, and managing crises to mitigate negative fallout. In the political arena, perception management strategies are used to influence voter opinions, build support for policies, and discredit opponents.

Media has a pivotal role in perception management. News outlets, social media platforms, and entertainment industries contribute to shaping public perceptions through selective reporting, stories, and editorial decisions. The rise of digital media has added speed and width to perception management efforts, allowing information to be disseminated and manipulated on unprecedented scales. A nuanced perception management guides and influences public discourse. It has gone above mere optics; it makes policy work and makes one realise that it is no perception, it is real. 

While perception management is often used as a governance tool to influence public opinion, to arrest the decline of the government’s popularity and credibility, and to create a supportive environment for the government, ethical considerations do surround perception management. Strategic communications through media channels, public speeches, official statements, advertisements in media, liberal use of hoardings, and naming government programmes after political personalities are taken recourse to. The strategy is to highlight achievements, downplay controversies, and frame various issues in favourable ways. In the run-up to the Elections, the focus is on highlighting successful programmes, downplaying areas of weakness and hiding the underbelly.  During a crisis arising out of a natural disaster, economic downturn, political corruption, perception management becomes crucial. Crisis communication strategies are adopted to reassure the public, narratives are built to prevent panic, repose faith in the leadership and restore confidence in government institutions. Government explains rationale of controversial policy reforms, highlighting potential benefits. Effectively handled, perception management can smoothen public mood, soften differences, reinforce social bonding and facilitate policy implementation.

This brief narrative of what perception management is about makes one inclined to agree with those who believe that perception management is not just a tool, it is a responsibility. 
No wonder the governments of many developing Democracies, of late, have resorted to perception management/ manipulation as governance tool by spending billions. In most cases, unfortunately, these efforts have been low on ethical considerations and despite huge cost to the exchequer, haven’t improved economic growth nor fostered individual and societal happiness or improved the government’s credibility. On the other hand, it has actually turned out as a humongous exercise in self-deception.

Odisha, for example, kept talking about huge FDI flow; spectacular growth of Startups; and upgrading of Skills; of women empowering. An unbiased analysis, however, would reveal modest gains in these areas. The state government has talked long enough about Koraput Coffee and still keeps talking without building up an honest narrative that would have helped the tribal coffee- growers. Mere advertisement of Koraput Coffee does not improve the spread of cultivation nor does it address the challenges the growers face. Coffee did not arrive in Koraput due to the efforts of the previous government. An interesting account of Coffee in Koraput is available in the article captioned, “Technical competency and challenges in coffee production in Odisha, India” by Siddhartha Das, Sudeepta Pattanayak and Biswajit Mallick in the Journal of Pharmacognosy and Phytochemistry. It refers to efforts in the 1930s of the Ruler of Jeypore, Rajbahadur Ram Chandra Deo, who got a coffee estate developed near the Kolab basin near Jeypore.

Since the 30s, cultivation of coffee increased dramatically and covered six districts --- Koraput, Kalahandi, Ganjam, Gajapati, Phulbani and Keonjhar. Currently, in Koraput, 3,200 hectares are under coffee cultivation though the district has the capability of using a 10,000 ha area for coffee production. Over 90% of farmers are small and medium. The economic condition of tribal farmers being poor, they find it difficult to arrange resources for the initial investment. Lack of government support makes farmers disinclined to coffee cultivation. The ideal perception management would have addressed these genuine issues rather than an expensive advertisement campaign of Koraput Coffee. Another example of flawed perception management efforts relates to ORMAS which has become a familiar word, thanks to repetitive use of the name as the government’s special purpose vehicle to facilitate marketing of rural products.

My personal search led to a painful discovery that ORMAS has hardly any retail marketing arrangement and it’s only recently that only one sales outlet at the Baramunda Bus Terminal complex has come up in Bhubaneswar and I have to go there if I have to buy anything from ORMAS. There is no arrangement for home delivery; no online marketing arrangement either. The agriculture sector again is more talking; farming in Odisha hardly shows in fields on the scale and quality it does in Andhra, West Bengal or Madhya Pradesh. Odisha’s ground-rooted new Ministers must change the prevailing window-dressing culture; go to fields and make flowers bloom. 

Communication experts, social media, print and electronic media were made active in Odisha at a huge cost to the exchequer to build and sustain an elaborative narrative of a “performing government and a transformational leadership”. Full-page advertisements in newspapers were published for months in the run-up to the last elections. The BJD government, however, tasted electoral defeat for the first time in 24 years. The elaborate perception management overdrive had had no effect because it lacked credibility. 

While responsible and ethical use of perception management can maintain trust and legitimacy in governance, crude use of it solely for the purpose of retaining power has proven to be counterproductive.

(DISCLAIMER: This is an opinion piece. The views expressed are the author’s own and have nothing to do with OTV’s charter or views. OTV does not assume any responsibility or liability for the same.)