DummySpit

One of the claims being made for new media is that it gives greater access for ordinary folks to express their views and debate politics. The current US election prologue is being put forward as the first real “Internet Election”, although this claim was made for the 2004 campaign.

In his ‘Read Me First’ column in the Guardian this week, Seth Finkelstein, takes a swipe at the limited access to citizens in the recent CNN YouTube debates with a column headed, New media is just another way to pull the same old tricks. Finkelstein argues that “new media bring new media manipulation and new media exploitation” and that the method of selecting YouTube postings by a gatekeeper was the same as “contests where the winner gets a cameo appearance on a TV show”.

He goes on criticise the process further with, “ss is typical of user-generated content, despite all the hype about empowering citizens, the individual is utterly powerless, except to try to please and serve the interests of the gatekeeper and thereby obtain some attention (but not remuneration).”

There is a raft of issues that arise from this critique: would the candidates have participated in an open-access debate where they didn’t know what issues were likely to be? That’s highly unlikely, although it might make edgy broadcasting. Would broadcasters, like CNN which staged this cross-media event, give up their control and their standards of presentation? Again, highly unlikely.

So Finkelstein’s hope that a true shift in power could have occurred was forlorn before the start of the process because the broadcaster as gatekeeper has too much to defend and he recognises this in his sign-off comment: “… we should never mistake a change in media style for any advance of citizens’ power in politics”.

New media has also brought unforeseen problems for two of the UK best known brands - Vodafone (mobule phones) and First Direct (online banking) which bought packages of online advertising space on Facebook and ended up on a page giving information about the far-right British National Party (BNP). As the Guardian reports, “the move may affect other advertisers on Facebook by highlighting a current lack of control over where the multimillion page network places their bookings”. The report highlights the problem that there is little control over where where advertisements appear.

Ironically, The Guardian’s online version of the report includes a Vodafone click-through advertisement across the top of the story (or it did when this blog was being written) which again shows the problems that advertisers have when seeking associative coverage of their organisation.

Perhaps these two instances of new media problems - lack of access to a range of voices and damaging associations - make a collateral case for well-researched, targeted public relations activity. The public relations practitioner as an intermediary can have a valuable and ethical role to play in promoting genuine debate.

After three months of discussion, the Study of the Priorities for Public Relations Research (PR Priorities Study - final report) has been completed. The initial piloting was undertaken on DummySpit in April and led to the setting of 26 public relations topics. These were sent to a Delphi study panel (of experts) in five continents covering top academics, leading practitioners and the CEOs of PR industry bodies. After three rounds of intensive email debate, the Top Ten PR research topics are:

1) Public relations’ role in contributing to strategic decision-making, strategy development and realisation, and organisational functioning

2) The value that public relations creates for organisations through building social capital, managing key relationships and realising organisational advantage

3) The measurement and evaluation of public relations, both offline and online

4) Public relations as a fundamental management function

5) Professional skills in public relations; analysis of the industry’s need for education

6) Research into standards of performance among PR professionals; the licensing of practitioners

7) Management of corporate reputation; measurement of reputation

Ethics in public relations

9) Integration of public relations with other communication functions; the scope of public relations practice; discipline boundaries

10) Management of relationships

Just outside the top ranked priorities are:

11) Client/employer understanding of public relations

12) The impact of technology on public relations practice and theory.

This report is the first completed international study on public relations research priorities (using a Delphi panel) since the mid-1990s and gives valuable insight into the ‘front and centre’ public relations research areas around the world.

The results will allow academics and practitioners to work closely together to improve understanding of public relations and its most effective and ethical use. It is a benchmark that all research plans and funding can be judged by for relevance and importance.

Frank Luntz’s article in The Guardian (March 16, p.39) is a research-based demonstration of why “spin” dressed up as public relations and political communications is bound to fail. [http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2035405,00.html]. 

When authentic voices are lost, voters switch off. Luntz has reported on research amongst a panel of voters in England’s second city, Birmingham that found deep disenchantment with soundbite politics and “PR stunts”. Most of the panel believed that this was the characteristic of the Blair years (since 1997) and now featured amongst all parties.

Taking the example of Opposition leader David Cameron (himself a former public relations practitioner), the panel switched off when shown a web video of life in the Cameron household. The reaction, says Luntz, was “predictably negative” as it was seen as a PR-stunt. ”Voters crave something real.”  When Cameron spoke from the heart that the policy changes he was proposing would include “pain and sacrifice”, they warmed to him as it was an authentic voice that made statements which the voter panel accepted as realistic.

The lessons for Cameron and other UK politicians were that after a decade of soundbite culture, “voters are more savvy and wary of anybody who sounds too good to be true”. Being aspirational and visionary is acceptable, as long as it is balanced with reality in the manner in which change and progress will be delivered.

The external view of public relations is that it is based on spin and publicity, a cocktail of one-way communication and deception. But the really effective public relations programmes are those which engage with stakeholders in their many and varied form and build a relationship based on mutual interests with an authentic voice. Political parties (and public relations practitioners) should take note of Luntz’s small-scale research, which endorses the best practice model.