Political communication in post revolution Libya: an in-depth study of government public relations practices / Aiman Abdulmunem Laiyas

The general aim of this study is to explore the importance of political communication and governmental public relations in Libya after the Arab spring 2011 or post Muammar Gaddafi. On the way to gain significant data on the essential concentration of this study, these following research questions were addressed : (1) What are the basic roles and functions of public relations played by the government after the Libyan 17th February revolution, so-called Arab Spring?, (2) What are the factors that led to the government’s lack of awareness of public relations and political communication?, 3) How does the political environment affect public relations practitioners’ job delivery?, (4) What are the attitude and perception of elites toward governmental public relations and political communications?. This study was directed by two theories; (i) Grunig’s Theory, (ii) Excellence Theory. Furthermore, in this qualitative study phenomenology approach was chosen, through in-depth personal interviews with 15 of key Libyan elites. Data analysis was conducted concurrently with data collection and the NVivo 11.0 software was used in the process of coding. Thematic analysis was used to analyse the data.