Journal review 25: Impact of New Media and Technology on Customer Relationships

By Siti Nurarbayah Ibrahim 2009994875

A new media marketing world increasingly dominated by mobile technologies, "shopping bots," recommendation systems and peer-to-peer networks has spawned a radical new online marketplace, challenging the old behaviors of buyers and sellers.

The old straight line that governed customer relationship management has been replaced by a zig-zagging pathway that more closely resembles a game of pinball which is with risks and rewards waiting for companies that wade into the online marketplace, according to an international team of researchers in the journal's latest edition.

Making use of these opportunities and avoiding their respective dangers requires a thorough understanding of why consumers are attracted to new media and how they influence consumers attitudes and behaviors and new strategic and tactical marketing approaches must match the characteristics of new media and their effects on customers.

Social networking sites like Facebook, YouTube, Google and Twitter give customers a bigger role as market players capable of reaching and being reached by almost everyone, anywhere and anytime, according to the authors. Armed with the tools of the Internet, consumers serve as retailers on eBay, producers on YouTube, authors on Wikipedia and critics on Amazon.com.

Further challenging companies in a fast-changing landscape, a personal computer is no longer the base from which customers make decisions. Instead, smart phones, laptops and far-reaching personal portals like Twitter and Facebook have made real-time information exchange an integral element of consumer behavior without restriction to time of day or location.

While these new media are displacing long-established business models and corporate strategies, they also provide new and exciting opportunities for companies to improve customer relationships and expand businesses through strategies that adapt to this constantly changing new media era.

source: http://www.sciencedaily.com

Journal Review 24: Brave New World of Public Relation

by Nur Sukainah Mansor

This journal is about the changes of Public Relation practice since World Ward II until now. There’s changes from aspect such as publics with which practitioners communicate, internal and external communication channel happened, sources from which publics obtain information, results sought by clients, employer and practitioners and way in which those result are measured. 

The magnitude of these changes happened also is big and we can see the vocabulary changes occurred in concert with socioeconomic, demographic and technological changes that shaped the development of public relations practice. Even the media such as newspaper, radio and even television has been affected by these changes. 

Even during this time, publicity was the primary focus of public relations. Practitioner prepared and distributes news releases to news outlets at a pace that today would at best be considered lethargic. Through much of 1960s, public relation followed an information paradigm. The traditionally secretive ways of most organizations were supplanted by a new philosophy of openness.

Deterioration in the quality of public education however spawned growing numbers of functional illiterates and continues to contribute to progressive deterioration in mass media audiences. Other factors driving the process include growing numbers of new media spawned by emerging technologies, fragmentation of audiences across new and traditional media and fundamental shift from supply-push to demand-pull in the world of information.

The latter factor is especially significant in that it represents a quantum change in the ways individuals obtain information. Traditional mass media have gathered and packaged information and offered it for sale to consumers (supply-push). Today information consumers use the Internet, computer databases, and information supplies such as Google and Yahoo to obtain information as needed. We can see now that demand-pull has become the dominant form of information acquisition.

Especially in this technologies world where everything is needed as it is, one need to have skill in using the gadget in order to practice as  apublic relation practitioner more efficiently. We can see these happened with the  creation of new media press releases and much more.

source: E W Brody, Public Relations Quarterly, 2005

Journal Review 23 : Online Social Network

Social networking sites are the latest online communication tool that allows users to create a public or semi-public profile, create and view their own as well as the other users’ online social networks (Boyd & Ellison, 2007), and interact with people in their networks.

A website or social network can be our own magazine or gallery where anything that can be put unto word, pictures, video or music can be put here. This is what making the Internet fantastic and it still is. According to Gauntlett & Horsley (2004), the web offers people an opportunity to produce creative, expressive media product (text, art works, anything that you prefer) and display them to a global audience.

According to Pfeil & Zaphiris (2009), a social network is a comprised of actors and ties that link to the actors. Actors here can be the people, nations, organizations and many more that are link by ties which indicate a relation between one another. The links between different actors can be based on different characteristics that based on the affiliation or the exchange of resources.

Boyd &Ellison (2007) also agrees that social network site is very unique that it not that they only allow individuals to meet strangers but they enable the users to communicate and make visible their social networks with each other around the world. We define social network sites as web-based services that allow individuals to construct a public or semi-public profile within a bounded system, articulate a list of other users with whom they share connections and the nature of these connections may vary from site to site.

Everything is now just a finger tips away. The uses of these sites have limited the use of the old media as the revolution has changed the view of the society in communication whereas they are now more comfortable using the online sites to socialize with each other, not necessarily meeting new people but they are primarily communicating with people who are already part of the extended network. However, there are some parents decide to place the internet connection in a public room in order to monitor their children’s internet use afraid that it could harm their children.

by: Tengku Rashidah

journal review 22: Adoption of Social Media for Public Relations by Nonprofit Organizations

By: Marliana Binti Omar

Social media allow greater opportunities for public relations practitioners to interact with public when they adopting with the new forms of technology and practice it in their life. This approach of using new media has become more practical especially among public relations practitioner and journalists. It gives lots of benefit when they understand and fully utilize the tools. Therefore, the journal of Adoption of Social Media for Public Relations by Nonprofit Organizations’ is about the perception and usage of social media in gender and also in the public relations department. The purpose of this study was to find out how nonprofit public relations practitioners are adopting social media tools and view them as credible.

There are 18 types of social media tools have been selected for this research. For an instance are e –mail, social networks, video sharing, blogs, instant messaging, photo sharing, text messaging, wikis and other forms of social media. The total respondents that used some of social media is (n=404). Through survey online, the most frequencies reported are 97.8% (n=400) used e-mail, 51.1% (n=223) used video sharing, 54.5% (n=223) used social networks, 48.4% (n=198) used blog, instant messaging 13.4% (n=55), other forms of social media; (n=11

1, 27.1%) photo sharing, text messaging (n=51, 12.5%) and wikis (n=74, 18.1%).

This research found out, there are differences in gender in the adoption of social media. As compared to males and females; females scored higher than males in factor of performance expectancy and attitudes. Meanwhile for two factors which are social influence and facilitating conditions, males scored higher than female. As for organization, the organization with public relations departments more likely to adopt social media practices than those without public relations departments.

Moreover, this journal indicates that social media tools are becoming beneficial methods of communication for public relations practitioners in nonprofit sector. It allows more impact on achieving their organization goals. Public relations practitioners tend to used more social media if they find credible to them. It is essential for public relations practitioners to adapt and understand the media tools and fully utilize the advantage to the organization itself.

source: Elsevier INC (2009)/ Proquest by Lindley Curtis, Carrie Edwards, Kristen L. Fraser, Sherly Gudelsky, Jenny Holmquist, Kristin Thornton, Kaye D. Sweetser

journal review 21: Rebuilding the Media

by Nurerlin Zulkhairy

The radical changes the newspaper industry needs to implement arise from a more true understanding by that industry of why newspaper readership began declining well before the Internet was opened to the public; about why one billion people worldwide have gone onto the Internet after it was opened to the public which they didn't do it to read traditional media on computer screens, and about why all that plus the misnamed and illusionary 'fracturing' of media audiences requires semantics solutions.

A newspaper isn't a medium, nor are newspapers media. Magazines aren't media nor is a magazine a medium. Television isn't a medium nor is radio nor are radio or television stations media. A website isn't a medium nor is the Internet media (Vin Crosbie).

Misunderstanding New Media

Companies that broadcast programs or that publish newspapers or magazines are having problems understanding and adapting to why and how one billion consumers are now using Internet-based technologies to receive news, information, and entertainment. Those companies have the problems simply because they misunderstand the meaning of media or medium. It is that starkly simple. Their misunderstanding of the terms and not the new technologies that a consumer use which is the root of the companies' problems. Most of the executives work in the 'Mass Media' (the Mass Medium). But almost all will take that a step further which is a misstep and say that their broadcast, newspaper, or magazine is a medium.

Broadcast and publishing executives mistake Mass Media as a catchall phrase for all possible media, as if no other medium can exist except as a Mass Medium. Moreover, they extend this mistaken meaning of medium to cover their own broadcasts or publications.

So entrenched has the contemporary misunderstanding of the terms media and medium become that the mistake limits the abilities of most publishing or broadcasting executives to comprehend what exactly is a medium or the media in which they work.

What is medium?

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the colloquial meaning of medium is a latecomer to the publishing industry. It dates only from around 1880 — a quarter millennium after publication of the first daily newspapers and 150 years after publication of the first magazines:

Medium ('mi:diem), sb. and a. Pl. Mediia, -iums. [a. L. Medium, neuter of medius middle, cogn. With MID a.] A. sb 5. a. An intermediate agency, means, instrument or channel. Also, intermediation, instrumentality: in phrase by or through the medium of. spec. of newspapers, radio, television , etc. As vehicles of mass communication . Also attrib. And in pl. (see MEDIA) 1880 Coach Builders' Art Jrnl. I. 63: 'Considering your Journal one of the best possible mediums for such a scheme.'

What is media?

Media ('mi:dia), sb. pl. [Pl. F MEDIUM sb., prob. After mass media.] Newspapers, radio, television, etc., collectively, as vehicles of mass communication. Freq. attrib. or as adj. Also erron. As sing. in same sense. 1923 [see mass medium].

What is medium?

Mass medium (,maes 'mi:diem). [f. MASS sb. + MEDIUM sb.] A medium of communications (such as radio, television, newspapers, etc.) that reaches a large number of people.

In 1923 S. M. FECHHEIMER in N. T. Praigg Advertising & Selling v. 238 (title) Class appeal in mass media. Ibid. The several million readers of a big mass medium. G. SNOW in Ibid. 240 'Mass media represents the most economical way of getting the story over the new and wider market in the least time.'

Just as only three transportation media exist, only three communications media exist:

As with transportation media, two of these communication media are ancient and people's usage of the two arose independent of technology. However, the third medium is relatively new and is entirely dependent upon technology, it is called the Interpersonal Media.

The New Media

New Medium for communications. It is a new communication medium that, like Sky for prior transportation media, bridges the mutually incompatible characteristics of prior communications media.

Among the technologies needed to create this New Medium were the invention of digital communications during the late 1940s, invention of the Transport Control/Internet Protocol ((TCP/IP) during the late 1960s, ARPANET's creation of the Internet and other people's invention of the personal computer during in the 1970s, and to lesser extents the invention of the HyperText Transport Protocol (HTTP) in the late 1980s, opening of the Internet to the public in 1992, and invention of the graphical browser software later that year. Those and other technological innovations converged to create a new communications medium that has characteristics inconceivable even a decade ago.

A website can be a vehicle to display Mass Medium content, which indeed is how most newspapers, magazines, and broadcasts use it. However, that merely replicates online the hallmark limitations of Mass Medium vehicles and doesn't take advantage of the New Medium's ability to display a precise match of specific information to each and every recipient's individual needs and interests, however different those recipients may be.

Moreover, because each recipient in the New Medium shares with all publishers and broadcasters equal and reciprocal control over what that recipient gets, neither by each recipient's choices of which publishers' or broadcasters' websites to visit or else increasingly by mechanisms that allow the recipient to aggregate that content without visiting each of those publishers' or broadcasters' sites and these New Medium consumers are leaving behind the traditional Mass Medium's packaging of information.

Interactivity, as long ago defined by Dr. Jonathan Steuer in the Journal of Communications is "the extent to which users can participate in modifying the form and content of a mediated environment in real time." That is a far cry from simply letting the user read Mass Medium newspaper, magazines, or broadcast content that has been shoveled online.

Within the next ten years, most New Medium consumers will be receiving information from each's choice of myriad broadcasters and publishers, perhaps too many for any individual consumer to name or even realize. (Early adopters of tag-driven XML, advanced RSS, and 'peer-to-peer' technologies have already begun making such use). Because these many consumers will be sharing content choices and control with all publisher and broadcasters, the New Medium serves not just a 'one-to-one' or 'one-to-many' medium but a 'many-to-many' one. Publisher and broadcasters who don't make full use of the New Medium will likely be left behind and wither during this new century.

Journal Review 20: INTERNET AND THE PUBLIC SPHERE: A Glimpse of YouTube

by Tengku Rashidah Hanim Raja Ahmad

Without doubt, Internet is the most important communication medium today. It is the most important development in communication and it also has create the global ‘public sphere’ where people globally has direct access to each other, where they can simply just express their arguments without any hesitation or censorship.

Internet also has been told as ‘center of the communication’ where most of the people nowadays prefer to use the Internet as their favorite channel to communicate.  However, according to Kasun Ubayasiri from the Central Queensland University, there are numbers of questions being asked how the massive volume of the inane chatter on forums such as youtube, myspace and a vast number of blogs, discussion boards and chatrooms could fulfill the conditions of a public sphere as forum for critical and rational debate. This is true because sometimes, most of the feedbacks and comments are just  judgmental critiques, not reliable and unfair.

It is important to clearly understand the nature of the ideological arena that Jurgen Habermas has dubbed the ‘public sphere’. He defines the public sphere as the “realm of our social life in something approaching public opinion can be formed. (Where) access is guaranteed to all citizens” (Habermas, 1989, p102).

He (Habermas) also argues that publicity is not constitute of a social realm, but more like a status attribute when someone displayed or presented himself or something as an picture of some power.

HABERMAS AND THE INTERNET

The internet basically is the free access medium of communication and it is introduce to this in heavy commercialized theatre of mass communication. Leaving a sparking great expectations in the minds of those that support the refreshing the public sphere. However, Lincoln Dahlberg argue that the internet is not been 100% successful in creating the public sphere or even the optimism of its future ability to create public sphere. He said that “a cursory examination of thousand of diverse conversations taking place every day, online and open to anyone who has internet access seems to incicates the expansion on a global scale of the loose webs of rational-critical discourse that constitute what is known as the public sphere” (February 2001).

While mass media have failed to create public sphere, mass media itself at times play a significant role in gaining and retaining the democracy in numerous political threatens. Habermas himself has not quite sure to speculate on the internet role as the public sphere. In his speech on March 9, 2006 he said “use of the internet has both broadened and fragmented the context of communication. That is why the internet can have bad effect on intellectual life in authoritarian regimes. But at the same time, less formal and cross linking of communication channels weakens the achievements of traditional media. In this medium, contributions by intellectuals lose their power to create a focus”.

In this context it should also be noted the public sphere as Habermas defined it, while granting free access has never forced every member of the people to participate. Similarly the internet based public spheres, while providing the forum for those who are interested in engaging in critical debate, can not anticipate all users of the web to engage in meaningful dialogue. 

However it can also be argued that the internet’s potential in creating public sphere, can be and has to be connect by ‘public intellectuals’ if the cyberspace is to fulfill its potential as a forum for public spheres. In this context the argument can be presented, despite the risk of over simplification, as need for cyber analogues with the cafe and bar which brought the intellectuals together, thus it is creating an environment conducive for the sharing of ideas and so the sustenance of a public sphere.

THE US ELECTION CAMPAIGN ON YOUTUBE: A CASE STUDY.

by Kasun Ubayasiri  [CENTRAL QUEENSLAND UNIVERSITY]

Less than two years after in inception US politicians have made an appearance on the video sharing website, providing a forum for the American public to directly respond with text and video comments. By passing the media’s selection process, and hence any potential biases and political and commercial agenda’s of the mass media.

In this context Barack Hussein Obama a relatively junior senator for Illinois has been quick to harness the internet’s You Tube public sphere to post no less than 41 video clips between October 2006 and mid-April 2007. According to his You Tube site the BarackObamadotcom channel registered on September 5, 2006 has been hub of political activity and dialogue, with a video clip of a speech highlighting his anti Iraq invasion policy posted on March 19 receiving 146619 views and 403 comments by mid April, 2007. Obama’s official website, which according to Whois server information is registerd to his campaign office “Obama for America, 233 N. Michigan Ave, Suite 1100, Chicago, Illinois 60601” contains a prominent link to his You Tube channel. The You Tube channel boasts 4674 subscribers and 2,767,667 channel views.

Similarly Hillary Clinton’s official website, www.hillaryclinton.com has linked to a Hillary for President – You Tube channel which had been operational under the ‘hillaryclintondotcom’ login since July 21, 2006. The channel boasting 1508 subscribers and 114,977 viewers according to automated counters, has posted 20 videos. Compared to Obama it can be argued Clinton has enjoyed limited success on You Tube, with her ‘Children's Health Care’ Video published on March 14, 2007, has been viewed 9049 times and has received a mere 26 comments. Both channels have also been copied and ‘favourited’ by a significant number of You Tube users thus mirroring the clips and increasing their exposure. The accumulative effect of these websites and their comments is too numerous to study, and beyond the scope of this paper. However it should be noted that even within the context of American politics the you tube public sphere’s attention is not limited to Obama and Clinton; and channels such as Politicstv created on March 28, 2006 cover a iwde range of political responces form both sides of the US political spectrum.

The channel - www.youtube.com/politicstv, boating 1479 subscribers and 27,007 viewers presents 509 videos in just over 12 months of operations. It has also been cited by You Tube as the 54th most frequently accessed You Tube channel in April – a list, interestingly topped by a reality docudrama hosted by LG15 on http://www.youtube.com/lonelygirl15, a site containing 114 segments in the life of a sixteen year-old girl. Thus suggesting while the YouTube offers an environment conducive for rational critical debate – thus a forum for a public sphere, and while it is harnessed to some extent by the public, their need for leisure purportedly a construct of the cultural industries and hegemony of the dominant media influence continue to hamper, at least to some extent, the wide growth of a cyber public sphere.

source: ejournalist.com

Journal Review 19: An Analysis of the Increasing Impact of Social and Other New Media on PR Practise

by Azran Haji Awang

Although the first two annual trend studies in the area of blogs and social media concentrated mainly on how employees communicate via blogs and ethical aspects of this communication, the 2008 and 2009 studies have taken a more broad perspective. Although some of the questions asked in 2008 and 2009 are similar to measures explored in the 2006 and 2007 studies, a number of new questions were added in each of the past two years. While the researchers still are able to compare current thinking against some of the earlier benchmarks, this year’s research also provides the opportunity to analyze important new ground.

The fourth annual (2009), international, trend study examination of public relations practitioners on the impact blogs and other social media are having on public relations practice once again finds these technologies are dramatically changing public relations and the way it is practiced. Results of this year’s study show considerably more agreement in some areas than was the case in previous years.

Last year (2008), it reported that 61 percent of the respondents believed the emergence of blogs and social media had changed the way their organizations (or their client organizations) communicate. This year the score on that item is 73 percent. Findings continue to suggest these changes are more prominent in external than internal communications but numbers are up considerably there also. The majority (93%) of this year’s respondents spent part of their average workdays with some aspects of blogs and the social media. Many (85% in 2009 compared with 72% in 2008) believe social media complement traditional news media, and an even higher number (92% in 2009 compared with 89% in 2008) think blogs and social media influence coverage in traditional news media. Most (88% in 2009 compared with 84% in 2008) believe blogs and social media have made communications more instantaneous because they encourage organizations to respond more quickly to criticism.

Results continue to show that traditional news media receive higher scores than blogs and social media in terms of accuracy, credibility, telling the truth and being ethical. Findings also show most (80% this year and 75% last year) expect traditional news media to be honest, tell the truth and be ethical. Fewer than half (41% in 2009 and 44% in 2008) hold these same expectations for blogs and other social media.

This year’s (2009) study also asked a number of questions for the first time. Results of these annual measures find:

              I.        Although more than 90% of the study’s respondents encourage the use of research to measure various aspects of how blogs and social media are impacting their organizations, only about one-third (39%) say their companies are conducting this measurement.

            II.        Although there is a very strong agreement (more than 90%) that measurement and evaluation about blogs and social media should focus not only on outputs but also on content analysis and outcomes, in reality most of what’s being conducted is directed at outputs.

           III.        Most (93%) of the respondents to this survey report they spend some time working with blogs and other social media during a typical business day. This includes 30 percent who spend between 11 and 25 percent of their time working in these areas and 48 percent who spend between one and ten percent.

          IV.        About one-third (31%) of the respondents are aware of situations in which an organization’s legal function has impacted how the company manages blog and social media communication.

Highlights of responses to the study’s open-ended questions include a recurring suggestion that blogs and social media have had a huge impact moving public relations into the direction of facilitating more two-way communication by opening up direct channels of communications between organizations and their publics. Other comments of note:

              I.        “They provide a cost-free forum for the expression of ideas, information and opinion”.

            II.        “They increase the immediacy of communication and offer platforms for public opinion on various issues”.

           III.        “Blogs have enabled our clients to directly reach their target audiences in a cost-effective manner”.

          IV.        “They help us reach new, younger audiences that we might not get to through traditional news media”.

           V.        “Blogs and social media are how one communicates in today’s global world”.

          VI.        “The new media enable companies to quickly learn what publics and consumers are saying about their products and services”.

         VII.        “They give ordinary people media to communicate through without gatekeepers”.

       VIII.        “There are places for professionals to go to now because of social media, i.e. Linkedin and Facebook”.

          IX.        Blogs and social media are more personal and they bypass traditional mass media to get to audiences and create dialogue”.

           X.        “Public relations has not yet caught up to the value opportunities here”.

source: Donald K. Wright & Michelle D. Hinson