Social Media and How it is Impacting on Public Relations (Part One)

This is PART ONE of a guest post by strategic public relations professional and blogger, Craig Pearce (left). His views and news on PR can be found at Public relations and managing reputation: better business and society.

The world’s leading authority on public relations, Professor James Grunig recently said that social media has, “the potential to truly revolutionalise public relations – but only if a paradigm shift in the thinking of many practitioners and scholars takes place.” (Praxis, a digital PR resource centre.)

In the Praxis article, entitled Paradigms of global public relations in an age of digitalisation, he provides a lucid analysis of, and adds considerable value to, discussions on public relations and its dialectic with social media. This post – the first of a three-part series – discusses certain elements of the article that are of interest and relevance to me and, I think, the public relations profession at large.

Social media, Grunig says, has “the potential to make the profession more global, strategic, two-way and interactive, symmetrical or dialogical, and socially responsible.” This will not occur, he warns, if PR pros use it as a means of “dumping messages”, however. Rather, he counsels professionals to interact with stakeholders and bring information, “from the environment into organisational decision-making.”

Implications of social media on the practice of public relations

The prevalence of social media has accelerated (or crystallised, it’s hard to know which sometimes) the emergence of disparate cultures and sub-cultures. This has, in turn, led to a fracturing of target audiences for organisations. Segmenting target audiences has become increasingly more challenging (a new meaning of the ‘digital divide’?).

Issues of concern to these audiences, the language they use and their needs and wants make the public relations (and marketing) professional’s job more difficult than ever, certainly, but so do they make it more important. Based on the assumption that public relations professionals are the organisation-stakeholder relationship experts, it has given the profession an opportunity to progress its ongoing battle to secure a more strategic, influential and high-level role within organisations.

Further, this emphasises the need for public relations professionals to be appropriately educated, at both a tactical and strategic level.

The plethora of social media being utilised by target audiences, or stakeholders, has placed a huge burden on PR practitioners. The technical nuances and appropriate social behaviour for each social media ‘species’ demand prodigious (and daunting) amounts of knowledge, as well as multi-skilling and multi-tasking attributes.

And do not forget that both the technical elements and capabilities, as well as the sort of behaviour that is suited to these mechanisms, is in a constant state of evolution – the world has no place for a complacent PR operative.

The conversation = public relations and social media

Another dimension of social media is that its very existence is predicated on the notion of ‘giving’, of an approach that benefits a community or society. Thought leadership plays an important part in this dialectic. Corporate social responsibility is deeply analogous to it.

 All of these elements go back to the core theory of Grunig and his colleagues, that of two-way symmetrical communication. This is an approach which sees public relations as an activity that enables organisations and their stakeholders to come to a negotiated, mutually agreed set of behaviours. These are the PR programs which reap results, according to Grunig (pictured left).

Controlling target audiences?

As Trevor Young recently pointed out, since when did organisations have control over what their stakeholders thought or how they behaved? He’s on the same page as Grunig here, who says, “the assumed control of messages and influence has always been an illusion rather than a reality of public relations practice.”

Some organisations and practitioners might find this reality a little too tough to stomach. If that’s the case, then the social media waters are way too choppy for you, baby.

The only way to influence is to engage. This means conversational communication, two-way symmetrical communication. And not just communication. We are talking behavioural change here, as well, from an organisation and its stakeholders. What is good for the goose is good for the gander.

Research has discredited the media release, one-way notion of public relations and the assertion that control of stakeholders ever occurred. Stakeholders, “have always controlled the messages to which they are exposed.’ Best practice public relations, Grunig says, is “a participant in organisational decision-making rather than a conveyor of messages about decisions after they are made by other managers.”

PART TWO of this guest post by Craig will be posted next week.