A graudate student's blog about convergent journalism. Using social media to communicate. Information about public relations and strategic communication. Information Mercenary.
The varying limitations provided by technology in media aren't necessarily the fault of the technology itself. It is the fault of "dumber" humans using technology they don't completely understand, manipulating technology in clumsy ways to get an end result, or forgetting the basics of their professional ethical obligations and using technology to try and hide that human limitation.
When dealing with technology applying the same set of ethics will help alleviate some lapses in human judgment. For instance in government public affairs or public relations providing a security, accuracy, policy, and propriety check of anything that is published is the standard. The standard should still be applied no matter the medium.
Another issue is speed and the need to be first for social media clout. Professional organizations should not sacrifice credibility for speed. Doing the right things right creates a smooth workflow and allows them to be fast and credible.
The always-connected culture has reached work. One way to combat this is setting standards and applying them for when employees, especially communications employees need to answer a call, text, or email. This can be done by time standard or just using a general rule for each. Noting of course that emergent situations will be the very rare exception to the rule.
In society's bid to always be connected and to now be involved in news stories speed is now an expectation when delivering the news. The number of journalists using Twitter, for instance, makes it a speedy medium for publishing breaking news and information. Not only do news media want to be first but people want to be first to share or provide that credible vetted information to their followers.
This creates a dangerous precedent for trusted sources of information providing bad, misleading, or misinformation to their followers who trust them to vet the news and be primary sources of information. However, the expectation is that the news will arrive in our pockets on our smartphones and we will be quickly informed of any breaking news.
Our media is now in our pockets and consumed in our hands or on our lap. The invention of fast food like fast media created an expectation that it's available everywhere with instant access to whatever consumers want has created a media environment where everyone is always connected. One expectation from this environment is that all media always be available and updated.
The audience-centric journalist producing audience-centric stories knows that with social media people expect to be involved in some way in the production or commentary of the story (Kolodzy, 2013). The always-connected person also has the expectation of "vomiting" every inane detail of their lives onto the internet.
There is an expectation from peers that certain social media accounts are established and used. The social networking services want you to always be connected to their service because that's how they generate revenue. The businesses that pay large amounts of money to have consumers see their advertisement, click their link or view their video. The amount of money isn't small, Facebook alone, generates over 100 billion in revenue from advertising annually and is one of the biggest in the business.
The expectation of always being connected to SNS is societal but also created by the new way people consume media. It's much easier for society to enforce the idea of always looking at your phone than it was for people to make sure you were watching the nightly program on television. This societal expectation loop reinforced by SNS and media conglomerates may have long-term effects on cognition, including some that are already coming to fruition like shrinking attention spans.
Screenshot from Statista webpage showing growth of Facebook advertising revenue since 2009.
References
Asay, P. (2019, October 8). We’re Always Connected, Thanks to Social Media. Why Do We Feel So Alone? Plugged In. https://www.pluggedin.com/blog/were-always-connected-thanks-to-social-media-why-do-we-feel-so-alone/
Kolodzy, J. (2013). Practicing convergence journalism : an introduction to cross-media storytelling. Routledge, Cop.
Statista. (2021). Facebook ad revenue 2009-2018. Statista. https://www.statista.com/statistics/271258/facebooks-advertising-revenue-worldwide/#:~:text=In%202018%2C%20Facebook
One of the burgeoning fields for corporations to include in their boardrooms with appropriately named "chief" and directors is corporate social responsibility (CSR). CSR has grown in proportion to the ability of consumers to have direct contact and give their opinions on the conduct of the business of a corporation. The engagement with consumers doesn't always go as the corporation planned, sometimes proclaiming the corporation needs to perform some task to prove they are doing good for the community, the globe, or humanity in general with their service or product.
Social media has allowed small but noisy members of activist communities to force large global entities like multinational corporations to take a stand on social, political, and other issues. This has become more abundantly actionable during the Black Lives Matter protests and riots and the subsequent large corporate donations to racial justice organizations. This has even led to large corporate entities creating entire bureaucracies inside their organizations to appease Twitter mobs, like the ever-evolving and increasing power of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion offices.
They are also forced to take stances on political issues. For instance, last year when MLB was forced to move the All-Star game because of the perception of a voting bill in Georgia. Social media and its direct contact from consumer, customer to CEO or public relations office put undue influence to change the scope of the social responsibility of a corporation.
As Milton Friedman would say, the only responsibility of a corporation is to provide profits to its stakeholders. While a cold and libertarian take on the issue, the quickly changing social landscape created stakeholder capitalism because people wanted to be involved and make comments are their actions in the public sphere.
Changing work for Public Relations: Integrated Communication
What is integrated communication? Is it just a buzzword and
corporate jargon? Is it just used to mask uncertainty about a requirement that
is shifting due to changes in technology? The advancement of technology and the
growth of data analysis provide a new form of communication that combines the
inform and influence functions of a brand. Integrated marketing communications
uses the information provided by consumers voluntarily and through tracking
“cookies” to provide the tailored messages at the right place and right time.
Public relations functions inside of corporate entities need
to be aware of IMC for a couple of reasons. The primary reason is the purpose is a multidisciplinary effort to make sure consumers are being engaged by the same branding and messaging every time they encounter the brand. There is an added benefit of adding audience analytics and business analytics, the science of communication, to a public relations strategy: the consumer will be given the correct message at the right time. Depending upon their status or place in the marketing funnel public relations and associated social media accounts can ensure they are speaking with one voice on behalf of the brand.
Future PR professionals will need to have some understanding of hard sciences like statistics, data analysis and minor computer programming for manipulation of AI-centric databases. AI is rearing to change PR in a number of ways including the automation of menial tasks allowing more focus on big picture items (Martins, 2017).
Communication professionals shift with technology in order to ensure they are reaching their intended audiences. Audiences relying upon cellular and mobile devices to access entertainment and news mean information professionals in public relations, marketing and journalism need to use those channels to communicate. According to Pew Research, 85 percent of adults have a smartphone and over half rely upon cellular devices to access news and entertainment (Pew Research, 2021).
PR professionals of the future will need to be experts of public relations with basic grounding in data analysis, customer relationship management. PR is becoming an art and science with the ability to use data to calculate the best channel and time to reach an intended audience to inform about a brand’s operations.
PR will also have to integrate planned communications with marketing directors to ensure a cohesive effort. Corporations and brands are already integrating PR and marketing into one C-level directorate which controls the overall strategy for all brand communication whether its informing or influencing consumers.
The art of PR using it to inform audiences was always hard enough but now PR pros need to delve into the science of their systems to better fulfill the obligation of managing the reputation of their organization.
Big Data Gets Smaller
The old days of public relations professionals firing and forgetting press releases are over. A new world with access to compounding computer technology allows access to information and data to target specific audiences and collect detailed feedback on effectiveness of a campaign. Data analysis, machine learning and artificial intelligence allow the instant collection of data points to inform current and future campaigns.
Information professionals need to understand current and emerging technology. This means training on operations like social media algorithms, data analysis and the software to use it. A professional should have a little understanding of how to manipulate the systems as the foundational level to find the data they need.
PR isn’t just about the strategic communication and placement it also delves into the realm of customer service as social media channels are increasingly the go-to for consumers to voice issue with brands. This means including basic training customer relationship management tools which are essentially just large databases of information concerning the customer’s interactions with the brand or company.
References
Conway, S. (2021, August 26). 4 ways technology is changing the public relations industry. Agility PR Solutions. https://www.agilitypr.com/pr-news/public-relations/4-ways-technology-is-changing-the-public-relations-industry/
Council, Y. E. (2017, March 20). Council Post: How Advancements In Artificial Intelligence Will Impact Public Relations. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/theyec/2017/03/20/how-advancements-in-artificial-intelligence-will-impact-public-relations/?sh=73fd54b941de
Martins, P. (2017, November 26). How AI is Changing PR. Medium. https://towardsdatascience.com/how-ai-is-changing-pr-14b40b8cd619
Pew Research Center. (2021, April 7). Mobile Fact Sheet. Pew Research Center: Internet, Science & Tech. https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/fact-sheet/mobile/
Rodrigues, N. (2021, April 22). Council Post: Why Integrated Marketing Communications Is Crucial To PR Pros’ Survival. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2021/04/22/why-integrated-marketing-communications-is-crucial-to-pr-pros-survival/?sh=5a2367f24c5d
Photo Illustration from Agility PR Solutions (Carufel, 2019).
The adoption of cellular technology to provide instant
connection anywhere has revolutionized the way information is received. Most
importantly, in has changed the way professional communicators work from the
fields of journalism, marketing and public relations. The introduction of
cellular connectivity as a norm has created a 24-hour news and information environment
that requires information professionals to always be “on.”
Audiences engaging their news mostly from mobile and cellular
devices have the expectation that they news will always be updated in their
pocket. They will have access to the most up to date information. Smartphones
are now in the hands of 85 percent of the general public and 50 percent or more
receive news information from social media (Pew Research, 2021; Walker, 2019).
Audience expectation implies new capability for people providing
the information whether a journalist or spokesperson. According to MuckRack, If
the media needs something, you want to get it to them right away. If
you wait too long (even by an hour), you could risk missing out on the
opportunity (Schneider, 2020). News media and the people who work with them
need to operate in the 24-hour cycle and understand and leverage it to provide information
on behalf of their organization.
News and information professionals need to always be on. This
doesn’t mean the individual. The organization should create teams to provide 24-hour
coverage without resulting to burning out good employees who care about the
organization. On call rosters, a duty “phone” and leaders providing guidance and
expectations for responding to emails, texts etc. help in providing some comfort
to the people working in what is commonly known as the most stressful occupations
(Carufel, 2019).
References
References
Carufel, R. (2019, March 18). The most stressful jobs of 2019—“PR Executive” ranked among Top 10. Agility PR Solutions. https://www.agilitypr.com/pr-news/public-relations/the-most-stressful-jobs-of-2019-pr-executive-ranked-among-top-10/
Pew Research Center. (2021, April 7). Mobile Fact Sheet. Pew Research Center: Internet, Science & Tech. https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/fact-sheet/mobile/
Schneider, M. (2020, April 27). How to spot burnout in your PR team (and what to do about it). Muckrack.com. https://muckrack.com/blog/2020/04/27/how-to-spot-burnout-in-your-pr-team
Walker, M. (2019, November 19). Americans favor mobile devices over desktops and laptops for getting news. Pew Research Center; Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/11/19/americans-favor-mobile-devices-over-desktops-and-laptops-for-getting-news/
