Public Relations and

Digital Communication

PR Master Module
The Academic Year of 2023-2024
-SOCIAL MEDIA AND COMMUNICATION

-INTRODUCTION?

-How digital tools and audiences change

public relations
Introduction
Recent years have seen an explosion in the
opportunities and use of ‘new’ media in society,
including social media sites such as Facebook,
Wikipedia and YouTube and other Web 2.0
applications such as blogs and wikis. These
advances in media and web technology provide
new challenges and opportunities for
organizations to communicate and engage with
their stakeholders, including their own employees,
local communities, customers and the news
media.
Rather than the classic model of
communication practitioners liaising with
official news channels, blogs and social
networking sites now also offer content on
organizations, and indeed may influence
stakeholders or the general public in their
perceptions and subsequent behaviors.
Equally, employees can nowadays distribute
their own information about an organization
electronically to outside stakeholders, often
without any gate-keeping or control from
corporate communication practitioners.
Indeed, with access to e-mail, blogs, and social
networking sites for sharing corporate information,
many employees become corporate
communicators themselves.
From a corporate communication perspective, these
developments in new media and web-based
technologies can be seen as both a challenge and
opportunity. It is seen as a challenge when
practitioners take the view that the new media
landscape blurs the boundaries between content
providers and consumers and makes news gathering
and dissemination increasingly fragmented, for
themselves as well as for stakeholders.
As a consequence, they may feel that these
developments challenge them in managing or
even controlling the corporate messages that go
out of an organization and the way in which an
organization is subsequently seen and
understood. The developments around new
media can also be seen as an opportunity.
Involving the organization somehow in these
developments may create new ways of reaching
and engaging with stakeholders
For one, it provides an organization with the
opportunity to engage in conversations, and to
tell and elaborate its story or key messages to
stakeholders or the general public in an
interactive manner, a real advance compared to
the arms-length messaging model associated
with more traditional channels.
THE NEW MEDIA LANDSCAPE
For some, the explosion of blogs, social networking
sites, collaborative sites, Twitter and other digital
communication platforms is a game-changer for
corporate communication. The basic idea behind this
view is that where corporate communication used to
follow a command-and-control model with messages
being issued from the top of the organization, social
media and Web 2.0 technologies foster more
interactive and free-flowing conversations between
members of an organization or between corporate
communication practitioners and external
stakeholders.
As such, these media and their potential mark a
clear break from traditional communication
models and message flows. And thus these new
media present both an opportunity as well as a
challenge. The simultaneous challenge and
opportunity is to some extent tied into the
democratizing nature of these media. These
media are generally less about control, and more
about pro–active engagement within digital and
web-based conversations and communities.
There is good empirical evidence that the Internet is,
decreasingly, a means by which corporate
information is provided to users rather than a means
by which user-generated information is shared
amongst other Internet users. This collection of
applications enables individuals to share information
(including videos, photos, news items, and audio
footage) and create virtual communities on the web.
The previous growth in the amount of information in
digital form has been replaced by growth in the
communication of that digital information
Whilst it is perhaps too early to tell how these
emerging media developments will fundamentally
change corporate communication in the long run,
their explosive use in recent years suggests that
these technologies are driving a shift in how people
engage with one another and with organizations. It
is quickly changing how dialogues occur, how
news about organizations is generated and
disseminated, and how stakeholder perceptions are
shaped and relationships forged. Consider, for
example, the increasing internet access of
individuals around the world.
Two thirds of the world’s population has visited a
blogging or networking site, and the time spent at
these sites is growing at more than three times the rate
of overall internet growth.
Every one of those individuals with access, as well as
of course every connected organization, can in
principle become a global publisher of content.
Additionally, the widespread use of technologies such
as camera phones and digital cameras means that the
individual citizen can instantly become a potential
photojournalist or, with the spread of video
capabilities, a documentary filmmaker.
Whilst these new media play an important and
growing role within corporate communication,
there is at the same time often confusion among
corporate communicators alike as to what term
is most appropriate – ‘social media’, social
networking sites, or ‘Web 2.0’, digital media –
to describe this emerging area. These terms are
often used interchangeably, and what adds to the
confusion is that these terms themselves also
evolve in their definition as new technologies
and applications emerge.
The term social media became established
particularly after the creation of social
networking sites such as MySpace (in 2003) and
Facebook (in 2004). Besides these specific sites,
social media has been more broadly defined as
involving all kinds of online or digital
technologies through which people create, share
and exchange information and ideas. The term
Web 2.0 on the other hand describes a general
ideological and technological shift in the use of
online technologies.
The basic idea is that the web has evolved from
being a platform where content is created and
published by individuals or organizations to one
where content and applications are continuously
generated and modified by all users in a
participatory and collaborative fashion. The
creation and ‘publication’ of websites, in other
words, is indicative of Web 1.0 whereas blogs,
wikis, and collaborative projects are hallmarks
of Web 2.0.
Web 2.0 provides the platform for the evolution
of social media and their use within corporate
communication. Social media are accordingly
defined as ‘a group of Internet-based applications
that build on the ideological and technological
foundations of Web 2.0, and that allow for the
creation and exchange of user-generated content’.
CLASSIFYING SOCIAL MEDIA
Within this broad class of social media, we can
distinguish different technologies, which vary in terms
of their interactivity, inclusion and also the virtual
‘presence’ of the interacting individuals. A helpful
classification is the one by Kaplan and Haenlein, who
refer to characteristics of the medium based on theories
in media and mass communication research (social
presence and media richness) and distinguish between
two primary social processes (self-presentation and self-
disclosure) in which individuals engage when they use
social media. The combination of these two dimensions
creates a helpful classification scheme for social media.
On the media-related dimension, social presence
theory states that media differ in the degree of
‘social presence’ – defined as the acoustic, visual
and physical contact that individuals can have
with one another as they communicate. Social
presence is generally enabled by the intimacy and
immediacy of a medium, and can be expected to
be lower for more digital and mediated forms of
communication (e.g., telephone conversation, e-
mails) than for direct interpersonal interactions
(e.g.,face-to-face discussion).
On the media-related dimension, social presence
theory states that media differ in the degree of ‘social
presence’ – defined as the acoustic, visual and
physical contact that individuals can have with one
another as they communicate. Social presence is
generally enabled by the intimacy and immediacy of
a medium, and can be expected to be lower for more
digital and mediated forms of communication (e.g.,
telephone conversation, e-mails) than for direct
interpersonal interactions (e.g.,face-to-face
discussion).
When social presence is high, it generally leads to a
greater degree of involvement of individuals in the
interaction and also higher degrees of commitment.
A closely related media theory is media richness,
which states that media differ in their degree of
richness – that is, the amount of information and
cues that can be exchanged between individuals in
realtime, as they are communicating.
Rich media such as face-to-face conversations
allow for a frequent updating of information and
give individuals the opportunity to provide
feedback to one another so that they can gradually
build up a common understanding.
Poor media, such as written documents, on the other
hand require that information is encoded and
included as part of a medium, but such information
can only be retrieved and cannot be actively
discussed between the producer and any possible
consumers of the medium.
The other social dimension refers to the intentions
and objectives of individuals when they use social
media. On the one hand, they may at least in part use
the medium to create a certain impression of
themselves, possibly to influence others but also to
create a self image that is in line with their desired
personal identity.
Such a selfpresentation is typically achieved
through a degree of self disclosure; that is the
release of some personal information (e.g.,
thoughts, feelings, likes, etc.). Disclosing such
information is a crucial aspect of social media as
it allows individuals to exchange views and
build relationships. Social media, in other
words, differ in their general capacity to allow
individuals to socially interact with one another,
and in such a way that the twin goals of
impression formation and self-disclosure are
achieved.
The two dimensions together lead to a classification
scheme. As highlighted, web-based collaborative
projects (e.g., Wikipedia) and blogs score the lowest
on media presence and richness, as these media often
involve simple text based exchanges. Content
communities and networking sites are relatively
higher in media presence and richness, as they
include more interactive features that enable more
direct communication between the individuals within
the community. Virtual worlds, finally, are highest in
presence and richness, as these media mimic human
face-to-face interaction in a virtual environment.
On the other hand, blogs usually score higher than
collaborative projects in terms of the degree of self-
presentation and self disclosure, whereas
collaborative projects typically have a more specific
purpose and content (e.g., specific work projects).
Similarly, social networking sites such as Facebook
allow for more self disclosure than content
communities such as YouTube. And, finally, virtual
social worlds are premised on a higher degree of
human-like natural interaction and self-disclosure,
whereas virtual game worlds are more restricted in
terms of the roles and behaviours afforded to the
interacting individuals.
Thanks for your Attendance

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