A comparison study on the online media relations reported in homepages of hospitals in Korea and hospitals in USA

국내 병원과 미국 병원의 홈페이지를 통한 언론관계 비교 분석에 관한 연구

Now more than ever, many journalists are using hospitals' homepages for articles about hospitals, their mission, research, and events. Therefore hospitals' homepages have to be planned and constructed for journalists. The purpose of this study is to investigate hospitals' online media relations through analysing homepages. For investigating specifically, this study compares hompages of hospitals in Korea and hospitals in USA. This study uses four categories; basic media relations tools, useful information, interactive communication tools, and ease of use for journalists. The result of this study shows that hospitals' homepages in Korea are needed to improve for building with journalists. The hospitals' hompages have to be constructed by a variety of materials; press room, image and graphic archives, multimedia resources, and interactivity or responsiveness. This study suggests that the hospitals' homepages have the potential to achieve the desired public relations objective but are not commonly being used to their full potential in media relations.