Behave yourself

All human advances seem to come with an inbuilt temptation to bad behaviour. Social media, despite its often high-minded presentation, is no different and offers new hazards to PR practitioners attracted to the dark side of communications.

'Astroturfing' is the suitably new media term for the shady practice of creating a blog, website or other platform as a front for another organization. The PR Conversations blog has an interesting reference to this phenomenon in a Q and A with a prominent PR agency CEO.

The Chartered Institute for Public Relations rightly takes a dim view of such tactics and has added a special social media section to its code of conduct (note references to 'flogs', 'white hat SEO', 'black hat SEO' and other anti-social behaviour).Yet while astroturfing projects a sense of organized conspiracy, the freedoms and ease of access offered by social media surely open up a host of lower-level but equally questionable ethical developments.

Is it right to lift material from an individual's Facebook page and publish this in other media without their permission? When does reading blogs and social media chat by PR practitioners shift from innocent participation and environment scanning to eavesdropping? What protection do individuals have from PR people intervening in their chat to steer and influence debates? Does anonymity in the blogosphere and in web comments undermine the whole ethos of wider access and stronger freedom of expression?

Phillips and Young in Online Public Relations (p.226) raise a fundamental question: 'What is the function of public relations in this contested area of message exchange? Is it really about facilitating an exchange of information through a model of two-way symmetry? Or is it about persuasion through the projection of messages and partial truths designed to encourage behaviours and attitudes favourable to the client?'

Bit of both, anyone?

Exclusive: Shirky on PR

Well, he was courteous enough to answer a number of questions villager's alter ego sent him in an e-mail. Here is the exchange:

Q - Do you see public relations as a mass media discipline struggling over the loss of gatekeepers?

A - In many cases, sure. The imbalance of production to consumption of media in the 20th c was so enormous that anyone who got anywhere near it ended up with a business model that isn't readily able to tolerate a massive influx of communicative amateurs.

Q - Is there a role for public relations in the new paradigm where groups have freedom to mobilise more freely?

A - I don't know how it is over there, but here the phrase 'public relations' suggests relating with the public, while 'PR' suggests lying to the public. So sure, since the public is not much more capable of entering into something like a relationship, there's a role, but many people in the PR industry seem unprepared for such an outcome. (Like many people with a public platform, a good part of my spam filtering is set up to defend me from reading anything PR-related, like auto-deleting email with the words 'For Immediate Release' etc...)

Q - Are you aware of the Grunig and Hunt model of symmetrical communications - the notion that groups can communicate in perfect balance, and through the free exchange of views arrive at mutual understanding?

A - I'm not aware of it, and will look it up, but I am skeptical, because I have never seen group interactions even approximate symmetry.Indeed, from the work on powerlaw distributions in social spaces, I'd characterize the situation for group interaction as "Large.Symmetrical. Engaged. Pick two."

Q - Some think social media makes this public relations holy grail more attainable. Others think it remains idealistic and takes insufficient account of the inherent power imbalance in all exchanges between groups. What do you think?

A - The latter.


Plenty food for thought. And good to see a social media champion staying true to the ethos of interactivity.

pic: Bill Sheridan/flickr

Benign revolution or mob rule?

The manifesto for social media, the film Us Now, can now be watched online.

For 60 minutes a succession of digital gurus, including Clay Shirky, state their case. Any villager should be gladdened to hear such committed advocacy for a 'gift economy', 'collaboration' and a new take on community spirit. The movie brings to life many of the examples quoted in Clay Shirky's book, Here Comes Everybody. Appearances from politicians like Ed Milliband and George Osborne have added piquancy given the current revelations about expense claims in the British House of Commons.

And yet... It sounds churlish but the utopian zeal, for this villager at least, comes close to undermining the whole case. "If you could actually combine that innate intelligence {of} millions of different opinions from people with different perspectives you would end up with fantastic policies," says one contributor. True, but that is the holy grail of democratic politics. The absence of any detailed discussion of power, conflict or decision making on complex issues suggests it would be foolish to assume that social media is the path to democratic utopia. Another voice adds that the new freedoms powered by technology would open the way for people to "go round the side of representative democracy." Chilling, if you push the notion to extremes.

A more moderate view pops up near the end of the film and concludes that what might be a revolution to Clay Shirky is "not a recipe which will work in every situation."

Despite villager's scepticism this is a film which every PR practitioner should see. Nobody will look at one-dimensional stakeholder maps in quite the same way again.

Postscript: Strange to report, but the accompanying Us Now blog is a pretty lifeless affair. Perhaps the film said it all. Or people agreeing with each other makes for poor blog copy.