Online Website-based Communication Strategies Used by Public Relations Departments in Government Institutions in the Sultanate of Oman

This study aims at identifying the online website-based communication strategies used by Public Relations Departments in government institutions that are subject to the civil service law and its executive regulations in the Sultanate of Oman. This study is descriptive and the researcher used Content Analysis to describe and analyze the contents of all the websites of the governmental institutions, and the communication patterns and technical tools used. The research design also aims to identify the communication strategies on which these contents focused. The most important findings of this study show that there is an increasing number of government institutions using websites as part of their public relations communication policy. Most of the content of these websites had regulatory and legal information, defining and analytic information, service and interaction information, and general information. However, there is an apparent lack of strategic information in these websites. The pattern of news coverage is a common communication pattern in all the websites, compared to other communication patterns. The study concludes that all websites use Roller’s communication strategies, but they focus on one-way communication from the institution to the public, represented by strategies such as, information, persuasion and interpretation.