Presentation: Mapping the Consequence of Technology on Public Relations

Presented by:

      I.        Azran Haji Awang

    II.        Noreena Haji Mohd Salleh

   III.        Nurerlin Md Zulkhari

  IV.        Mohd. Fariez Abd Wahab

MAPPING THE CONSEQUENCES OF TECHNOLOGY ON PUBLIC RELATIONS
By: John V. Pavlik, Ph.D.
Professor and Chair, Department of Journalism and Media Studies. School of Communication, Information and Library Studies. Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey

Executive summary

1. From Twitter to mash-up media, new technology presents significant implications for public relations.
2. The following paper examines what research tells us about a variety of emerging technologies and their impact on & implications for public relations.

4 BROAD AREAS OF IMPACTS & IMPLICATIONS

1. The impact of technology on how public relations practitioners do their work is considered.
2. The implications of technology on the content or messages developed and delivered in public relations is examined.
3. The implications of technology on organizational structure, culture and management is evaluated.
4. The impact of technology on the relationships between or among organizations and their publics is analyzed.

IMPACT ON HOW PRACTITIONERS DO THEIR WORK

1. Technology has long influenced how public relations practitioners do their work. Once typed on paper and sent via mail or fax, press releases are now produced on a computer and delivered via email.
2. Video news releases are delivered digitally via satellite or the Internet. Public opinion surveys are conducted via the World Wide Web. Photography and videography are widely produced and delivered digitally.

JOURNALISTS AND THE INTERNET

1. 98% of the journalists say they are online at least once a day to check email.
2. 15 hours a week are spent by journalists reading and sending email.
3. 76% of reporters go online to find new sources and experts.
4. 73% of reporters go online to find press releases.
5. 53% of journalists use email to receive story pitches. This is more than double the percent (25%) who used email to receive story pitches in 1995.
6. Most journalists have two email addresses. 12% have six or more. Typically, different addresses are used or given out for different purposes.
7. 24% of journalists used instant messaging in 1999. By 2004, 44% did.
8. 81% of reporters go online daily to do searching.
9. 92% of journalists go online as part of their story research. A growing portion of journalists use corporate Web sites to obtain information.
10. Magazine journalists in fact report that for breaking news when a live source is not available, corporate Web sites are the top choice for information.
11. 55% of print media sites at least occasionally use their Web site to scoop the print product. This is up substantially since 1999, when 42% would use the Web to scoop the print product.

Growing portion of journalists prefers receiving photographs, audio and video:

1. 46% of magazine editors favor receiving digital images.
2. 26% prefer slides.
3. 26% prefer camera-ready art.
4. 61% of newspaper editors prefer to receive digital photos or other images.
5. About a third of all broadcasters welcome receiving audio files from Web sites.
6. 20% of broadcasters receive video files online.

BLOGS AND TRADITIONAL MEDIA

1. The RSCG Magnet 2006 study shows that journalists are also agreed that Weblogs have a healthy future in the coming year for spreading information on the corporate level and functioning as watchdogs.
2. 68% of respondents agree that blogs will become a more popular tool for corporations seeking to inform consumers while 56% agree that blogs will remain an independent and unorthodox means of disseminating information.
3. Blog use by journalists has only increased since the 2006 study.

  “More than 51% of journalists use blogs” reported the 2006 - 11th Annual Euro RSCG Magnet and Columbia University Survey of the Media. The study surveyed 1,202 journalists in North America and around the globe. The study found that:

1. 70% of journalists who use blogs do so for work-related tasks. Most often, those work-related tasks involve finding story ideas, with 53% of journalist respondents reporting using blogs for such purposes.
2. 43% of journalists use blogs for researching and referencing facts and finding sources.
3. 36% of respondents use blogs to find sources.
4. Most notable is that 33% of journalists say they use blogs as a way of uncovering breaking news or scandals.
5.  Few blog-using journalists are engaging with this new medium by posting to blogs or publishing their own.

BLOGS AND THE PUBLIC

**From blogger Stephen Spencer:

              I.        “The ‘blogosphere’ is already a force to be reckoned with. Bloggers can wreck havoc on reputations (just ask Kryptonite) and careers (e.g. Dan Rather). Or they can create the ‘next big thing’. The immensely popular blog BoingBoing covered a very cool product called “InstaSnow” and traffic and sales spiked”.

            II.        Spencer concludes: “The ‘power of the people’ has become the ‘power of the bloggers’”.

           III.        As of July 31, 2006, Technorati tracked 175,000 new blogs each day with an estimated 1.6 million postings a day, or 18.6 posts per second.

          IV.        Top bloggers reveal their full names (83.26%) and provide contact information, particularly an email address (99.5%).

           V.        8% of internet users, or about 12 million American adults, keep a blog.

          VI.        39% of internet users, or about 57 million American adults, read blogs.

         VII.        54% of bloggers are under the age of 30.

       VIII.        52% of bloggers say they blog mostly for themselves, not for an audience.

          IX.        79% of bloggers have a broadband connection at home, compared with 62% of all internet users.

           X.        49% of bloggers believe their blog readership is mostly made up of people they personally know.

          XI.        15% of bloggers include video on their sites.

         XII.        One of the more recent developments in blogging is Twitter.

       XIII.        Although limited to about 140-150 characters, Twitter can nevertheless provide extremely up-to-the-minute updates to blogs.

      XIV.        Business Week reports that “With Twitter, people share quick updates on their most mundane doings, often from a cell phone”. 

IMPLICATIONS FOR CONTENT/MESSAGES

1. Blogs, podcasts and Web sites in general all present vehicles for distributing messages to a variety of publics.
2. Expanded use of audio and video files – podcasts, vodcasts – is a major trend. Moreover, these media can shape the character of the messages themselves.
3. Text messaging via cell phones has emerged as a viable means to reach mobile publics, especially youthful targets.
4. Interactive media, including online games, are increasingly important tools  in public relations, as more sponsored games emerge as a way to reach young publics in particular.

Web 2.0

1. The new media, especially Web. 2.0, is of the latter type of influence. Video news releases are an example of the former. They are not really any different than a press release, but in electronic, visual and sound form. They are important, but are essentially just tailored to the particular medium.

Differences Between Web 1.0 & Web 2.0

•      Video News Releases

1. Nielsen Media Research reports the “technology electronically recognizes and records each airing throughout the entire U.S. with over 95% accuracy.”
2. Lamoureax of West Glen Communications said, “VNRs will morph into a form of marketing communication that will be available for viewing on portable devices, such as mobile phones, and other technologies.”
3. Viewership is easier to measure online and consumers are able to easily find them through search engines such as Google and Yahoo, without traditional media filters or gatekeepers.

EMERGING MESSAGE TECHNIQUES

1. An emerging form of content or message technique is called “mash-up” media.
2. An example comes in the form of Chicagocrime.org, which merges together crime data reported by the Chicago Police Department, the Citizen ICAM and mapping and satellite data provided by Google.
3. Another system is a subsidiary of MediaLink and is called TeleTrax. It utilizes an electronically embedded "watermark" securely measuring VNR use even when digitally altered. The watermark is almost impossible to strip off in editing, so monitoring is highly reliable.

IMPLICATIONS FOR ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE, CULTURE & MANAGEMENT

1. Digital communications makes it possible for more efficient management of organizational communications, including both internally and externally.
2. Organizations can be more open and transparent to facilitate better understanding between and among various groups.
3. We are witnessing the rise of decentralization, with increasing use of collaboration (intranets have succeeded Lotus Notes, etc.) and group decision making software.
4. Organizational openness and transparency are increasing as online technologies have become ubiquitous and powerful.

Organizational Structure

1. Organizational structure is also becoming virtual, and the virtual is becoming increasingly real.
2. Reuters has even assigned a full-time correspondent to cover the goings-on of Second Life and report entirely within the virtual reality.
3. MacArthur Foundation, which has held a conference in the virtual reality.

IMPACT ON RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN ORGANIZATIONS AND THEIR PUBLICS

1. As audiences have increased their use of the Internet and have grown more savvy with digital media of all types, public relations has needed to evolve with them.
2. Audience members, or members of often key publics, maintain their own Web sites, blogs or podcasts, often circumventing traditional media outlets. Practitioners monitor such online sources alongside traditional media outlets.

Social Networking

1. As millions of users populate such Web sites and spend increasing amounts of time immersed in them, these online environments become increasingly relevant to the communication strategies for organizations.
2. Consumers are empowered by digital technologies to voice their opinions more easily and more powerfully via social networking sites, including creating and posting their own videos, sometimes griping against corporate practices they find objectionable.

Privacy and Tracking

1. One of the challenges raised by social networking sites and other new technologies is the notion of privacy and security in the digital age, with all of the attendant public relations issues.
2. Jonathan Donner, of Microsoft Research India, points out the dramatic growth of mobile technologies internationally. In China, for example, more than 600 million persons use mobile phones, and 100 million more persons begin using mobile phones there each year.
3. Mobile communications is a powerful communication tool, there are also significant privacy implications.
4. Another powerful online technology is Google Earth.
5. Yet, privacy concerns may arise as well as citizens become increasingly aware of the ease with which any one from anywhere in the world can observe their home or other locations.
6. Further fueling privacy concerns in the digital age are computer vision technologies that enable automatic face recognition and more.
7. Communication professor Mark Frank at SUNY Buffalo and others have developed powerful digital vision systems that can quickly scan the faces of persons walking past a security checkpoint, for example, and match them up automatically and quickly against databases of known or suspected terrorists.
8. This technology has other applications, including the ability to automatically scan a human face to determine the emotional state of a person, including whether he or she is lying.