Abstract:
This study's main goal was to assess the practices of PRs practitioners‟ image-building
practice: Hawassa City Administration Municipality (HCAM) in focus. It was guided by the
following objectives to examine the activities of PRs practitioners, to find out the PR tools, to
analyze the role of PRs practitioners, and to find out the challenges of PRs practitioners on
image-building practice. Literature was reviewed from various sources. The study adopted
the descriptive research design & used both quantitative and qualitative methods. It selected
121 respondents as sample size from the 221 total populations. Out of 121 the 116
respondents gave the responses so a 96% return rate from 100%. To divide the respondents
the researcher used stratification that means stratified sampling techniques for quantitative
approach and purposive sampling for qualitative approach. Data was collected by using
instruments those are questionnaires through quantitatively, in-depth interviews, FGD, and
document analyses thematically. The findings indicated that there is no significant effect of
PRs practitioners on image-building practice. The study also found that the activities of PR
practitioners, PR tools, Expert prescriber and problem solving facilitator roles were not
effectively practiced. On the other hand, the communication technician & media relations
roles are effective practice. Dominantly there is a high challenge found in the institution. To
sum up, the practice of PR practitioners on image-building practice was not effective and did
not reach the objectives according to the stated goal except more. The study recommended
that further research should be done on the practice of PR practitioners on image-building in
any government and non-government institution.
