Simonsays

Sao Paulo, risotto and anarchism

So I'm here in Sao Paulo for a couple of days doing some social media training for Brazil's PR trade body, Aberje, as mentioned in my previous post and while I'm here I've been catching up my Edel-colleagues.

Yesterday I had a fantasic lunch with our Digital Manager, Thiane Loureiro at a restaurant where you can buy everything in the place. We had a great discussion over risotto and beer about social media, PR, relationship building, sustainable communications and anarchism - but despite having many shared interests I'm sure I keep mis-pronouncing her name! I think it's pro: Tee-arn-uh. Thiane - am I right?

And then today I visited Edelman's rapidly expanding Sao Paulo office to meet the rest of the digital team. Our office is on the twentieth floor so you get quite a view from the window:

Anyway, I sat with the team and we talked about monitoring brands online, the difference between digital advertising and digital PR, the added value of relationship building in the online space and they took me through a couple of case studies - all of which were really cool, well thought-out and executed programmes.

I think it is really cool to see that even in another (pretty different) market that the fundamental ideas behind delivering online PR campaigns remain the same  - and more importantly are successful.

The reason for this - I decided today - is that aside from a few cultural differences, people are people throughout the world. They are largely driven by the same desires, needs, likes and dislikes.

By putting them (indeed, us!) at the heart of our work then we can finally start to make meaningful connections with society on a global scale. And that can only be a good thing, can it not?

I'll end this post with a top quality Brazilian tune, Sex-O-Matic by Edu K. The Amazonian natural world video is amazing too. Check it, as they say:

Conservative party set to launch Torypedia

ConservativeHome, the grassroots Conservative website is set to launch a Tory version of Wikipedia.

According to an article on the site, the people behind ConservativeHome are using MediaWiki to

"produce our own online encyclopedia for the Conservative Party and the wider conservative movement in Britain.  It will cover people and events that Wikipedia wouldn't deem 'notable', and by harnessing the wisdom of the ConservativeHome crowd we hope that any pages that do overlap will be better."

I think this is a great idea that will offer the party's grassroots and its future wannabe MPs an invaluable resource to get up to speed with and contribute the party's collective knowledge. The wiki plans to have specific sections covering off:

• Conservative history - e.g. timeline of Cameron's leadership, defining events in Tory history
• Resources - e.g. key Tory party figures, How to become a Tory MP
• Policy - existing Tory policy, debates on key issues

I don't know how exactly the wiki will function, but one challenge I can foresee is how to ensure the site avoids being vandalised or used for political point scoring a la David Miliband's Environmental Contract wiki which was hijacked by Guido and the right a couple of years back.

Great idea, though, really great idea reinforcing the Tories keeping one step ahead of the competition.

Technorati tags: Conservative Party, ConservativeHome, Wiki

UK internet traffic to blogs at all time high

I know this news has been around for ages (well, days) but it's interesting nonetheless - especially as reliable data on social media in the UK is few and far between.

Robin Goad from web analytics firm, Hitwise, has published findings that show:

• Blogs account for 1.19% of all UK traffic, equivalent to one in every 84 internet visits
• UK traffic to blogs has increased much quicker than traffic to ‘News and Media’ sites - 208% increase compared to 70%
• However in terms of overall volume, traffic to the latter is still larger

[I doff my hat to Stephen Davies]

Technorati tags: Blogs, Robin Goad, Hitwise

Review of Charlie Beckett's Supermedia

So it's been weeks since I've ahd a chnce to put some thoughts down into a blog post, but an email from Charlie Beckett, director of the new media think-tank at the LSE and London School of Communications, about his new book called Supermedia [full title] has finally spurred me into action.

Supermedia is an optimist and positive book outlining how the media can enhance its forces-for-good using the internet. its essential argument is that:

1. journalism plays a vital role sustaining healthy liberal societies;
2. journalism (like most industrial economic complexes) is being re-shaped by the internet;
3. that we are a media cross-roads where we have the chance to shape the future of journalism for the better;
4. that when we talk about contemporary journalism we mean, in effect, digital journalism.

Charlie terms this type of contemporary digital journalism: Networked Journalism. Networked Journalism includes what we term ‘citizen journalism’ bit it is also a type of journalism that “is a reflection of emerging realities” as well as an opportunity to transform the ethics as well as efficacy of journalism.”

Now I haven’t read the full book, just the introduction (available with other chapter excerpts over at Harvard University’s Berkman Center). But it seems to me that in creating the concept of Networked Journalism Charlie is seeking to explore how journalism – and by extension – the news media can function in an internet-enabled or to use Yochai Benkler’s term, networked information economy.

This gets my thumbs up. There is a lot of general talk about how the social web and its various tools is changing media production for the worse - eg. the dumbing down argument (in fact, Private Eye magazine, the original challengers of establishment views are one of the worse purveyors of this which really annoys me – but that’s for another post).

The only issue I would raise about this line of argument is that in a networked world where everyone can publish their news, Charlie takes a specifically journalism-centric approach to the question of who actually owns contemporary media production.

Nowhere (at least in the book’s intro) is this made more clear than the following sentence: “Networked journalism offers the news media to enhance its social role.”

In my notes I wrote: “Or offers society to enhance its news media role.”

The point I’m making here is that the internet rejects the traditionally formalised structures and boundaries we artificially created around things like “the media” and “business” and “politics”. To borrow David Weinberger’s idea, the internet makes all of these traditionally siloed areas of life miscellaneous.

To push that idea a bit further, the interent removes these areas of life of their identity until we chose to invoke those identities in what ever form suits us best - not media publishers, not politicians, not business leaders, us.

So with this logic, the news media is no more. Or at least is no more different than citizen journalism, blog content, Flickr content etc. Charlie discusses the importance of these new social media tools, but still privileges ‘real’ journalism as a separate part of this new media ecology. In my mind the internet rejects any and all hierarchy and distinctions between citizen journalism and professional journalism.

Anyway, I’m getting abstract and I don’t think this represents any faults with Charlie’s arguments. Charlie himself tells us early in the intro that “I do not pretend to be objective … So I’m afraid that it is back to the journalist this time to understand what is happening to our news media.”

Supermedia is a book about what is happening to contemporary journalism, written by a journalist, from a journalist’s perspective. That’s not a problem – that’s the framework through which Charlie is interpreting the miscellaneous landscape of the internet.

One final thought on this is where PR or the professional communications industry sits in this view. I bet that for every 10 citizen journalists or bloggers there is a PR person trying to work out how to influence what that blogger blogs about.

This clearly presents challenges and opportunities to the growing ethics and efficacy of the news media. Maybe this issue is covered off later in the book but I’d love Charlie's take on the subject.

Technorati tags: Charlie Beckett, Supermedia, Polis, London School of Economics

Royal Holloway keynotes - Micah Sifry: Open source politics

I spoke at Royal Holloway University's Web 2.0 Politics conference on 18 April and had planned to live-blog the two keynotes by Micah Sifry and Michael Turk but unfortunately didn't manage to. But I did make notes and have now re-worked them so they are sort of a deferred live-blogging stream-of-consciousness.

First up is the keynote by Micah Sifry, titled Open Source Politics:

Micah began by stating that political communications must move from being egocentric to network centric. That is, becoming less about individuals and more about loosely connected networks of supporters that coalesce and self-organise around specific issues.

This allows voters to become co-creators of the candidate’s political campaign and network effects, Micah argued, are the key to this.

Funding – we are seeing small, but significant revolutions in political funding taking place:

• For example Ron Paul opened up his funds by putting all his campaign donations online

• The database of donations was entirely searchable

• Building on this, supporters started building useful tools that displayed fundsina useful and meaningful way

• For example, they started making graphs that displayed funding from specific places, organisations or people – they then set-up the website ronpaulgraphs.com where you can view the most interesting results [Edit: think of that resource as a journalist as well as a supporter!]

• Apparently Obama is considering running an online to raise $1m in 1min – which may or may not be a good/successful idea!

• Micah’s concluding point was that with micro-economics emerging on the web, big money doesn’t go away – but now there is a counter-veiling force. People can now say if that if the party does follow this or that route with policy or selection etc then they will donate cash to a rivel candidate etc. The micro-funding revolution makes parties/candidates etc more accountable

Micah also addressed, what he termed as, the Economy of Abundance:

• This arises – in essence - from the easy and cheap availability of storage on the web.

• Micah says that – politically, at least - the sound bite is being challenged by abundance of space online to have upload, store and search etc other messages, speeches, communications material etc

• The media presentation format of 20 or 30 second glib or catchy but meaningless snapshots is being onverted

• As an example: Barack Obama has approximately 900 videos on YouTube, and most of these videos are about 13mins long

• The Race Video has had 4m views and as YouTube only counts a full play-through of a video as a view then there’s a lot of people who are hungry for quality, in-depth content that they can’t get from MSM. Where do they go to find it? Online.

Micah’s three conclusions were particularly insightful:

Conclusions

• The network is more powerful than the list

• Networks are resilient, but not nimble
  • If you have a network of 5,000 bloggers and one says something stupid then it’s not the end of world. However, if you take away the central point then they’re that not easily corralled

• Networks and campaigns can be allies, but they ultimately have cross-purposes
  • Campaigns share tasks but not authority with their supporters
  • To get to a position of open source politics we need to give supporters authority
  • Micah asks can we ever get there? Ron Paul supporters were given full authority to shape his campaign, but then they raised money to spend on a branded blimp – was a good idea and use of funds?

For Micah, the big (and most interesting) question is where will the balance of power lie in the future and what happens to the networks once the elections are over. Once you have given supporters/voters a sense of power, they probably won’t let it go so easily.

Technorati tags: Royal Holloway University, Politics 2.0, Micah Sifry, Open Source Politics

I've been cloned!

Or rather this blog has. Doc Searls spotted this post over at the spammy-looking site, Lalaia - the virtual city, and blogged it.

It doesn't take a close read to spot it's word-for-word the same post. If you look further down the site you can spot pretty much all my other posts this month.

On the one-hand if it's a spam blog then I don't really see there's much I can do. But if - as Doc points out- they making commercial gain from the content then where does that leave me? I can't see any form of  contact for the site's owner/author.

There is a link at the bottom of each post directing the reader to the 'oriinal post' which sends them to my blog. BUT... as Michael May points out in a comment on Doc's post Lalaia are breaking the Creative Commons 2.5 I use for my blog because "no CC license copy is distributed on the copy site."

For the time being I'm inclined to do nothing but keep a close eye on the site. Doc's linked to what looks a really good post I need to read - and I'd welcome others' thoughts too.

But, if nothing else this occurance seems to reinforce the growth of flogging, splogging etc etc. Even Technorati seems to have atrophied under the volume of these sites.

Technorati tags: Doc Searls, splogging, flogging, Creative Commons

Social media and the dark side of doing PR

There’s a, well.... how can I put it... rather depressing post by former Friendly Ghost aka Brendan Cooper on the issue of ghost-blogging. It’s quite timely given my post on the subject the other week, although Brendan comes at the issue with a very different perspective.

The post begins:

“The blogosphere is no garden of Eden. We can try to self-regulate, but in so doing we’re only exposing our own naïveté.”

And it continues with the theme that, like it or not, the internet will evolve to match the current world of traditional media and PR.

Rather than clients appointing us to help them create sustainable, long-term relationships based on trust and respect using the social web, it will be business as usual where spin, ghost writing and paid advertorials are not only common place online but expected.

If that sounds a little bleak, Brendan tells us to quit our bleating and hammers home his point:

“There will be a time, a year or two or three hence, in which we look back at the arguments against ghost blogging, and laugh. It lacks transparency. It lacks integrity. It lacks authenticity. Gimme a break. In a year or two or three hence, the big money will be savvy. It will be pushing messages out in every digital channel available. The people you think are saying things, will not be saying them. Other people will.”

I find this alarming both in the sense that Brendan thinks these thoughts but is also prepared to share them with others - although perhaps I *would* think that given that Edelman takes very much the opposite stance to Porter Novelli. In fact we've just launched a group blog about PR and the drive for transparency appropriately called Authenticities.

In a way, Brendan’s view kind of makes sense. He is a former copywriter and now social media planner – which suggests to me (and is alluded to in by Brendan his post) a strong tradition with top-down, command and control communications.

Arising from Brendan’s post are a number of interesting things. Firstly, I personally believe Brendan is missing the entire challenge to traditional media and PR created by the internet. People don’t trust advertising, PR and marketing. That’s the power of social media – it is connecting real people with real people. That’s why it works. Faking blogs or social networks etc will similarly shut down genuine relationships built on trust.

Secondly, Brendan’s post is timely because if offers a startling counterpoint to the idea raised by Dave Winer and now picked up on by Doc Searls that maybe it’s time to get out of blogging. Blogging is becoming flogging, suggests Searls. Brendan seems to reinforce this idea – or at least confirm its growth.

Thirdly, I was blown away by the Cluetrain manifesto when I first read it. Brendan suggests in a comment that the Cluetrain Manifesto is “pretty naïve”. Um. Woah. I’m not even going to get into that one.

Technorati tags: ghost blogging, blogging, flogging, command and control, Cluetrain

Downing Street's digital guru: an interesting choice?

This week’s PR Week reports [paywalled] that Prime Minister Gordon Brown has hired former MD of the London-based commercial radio station LBC as:

“head of digital comms, with a brief to overhaul Prime Minister Gordon Brown's lacklustre web strategy. It is understood more hires could be on the way as the Government prepares for the first general election to be fought largely over the internet.”

Interesting choice.

A quick Google trawl turns up nothing much. Mark has no Wikipedia entry - although there’s an interesting Iain Dale blog post from 2006 that suggests Mark was nearly parachuted in for Labour as the Bromley by-election candidate.

Apparently he was already advising “Downing Street and the Labour Party on new media (that's the Interweb to you and me)” back then.

I look forward to seeing what developments emerge.

Technorati tags: Downing Street, Mark Flanagan, digital strategy

Can UK political bloggers influence the MSM?

I posted a few months back about the completion of a research project for my CIPR Diploma which investigated the ability of political bloggers in the UK to affect the MSM agenda of broadsheet newspapers.

I promised that once I had the final result I'd post up a version to share. Well, I'm pleased to say that the research project was awarded a distinction and so for your enlightenment here's a pdf version of New media democracy or pain in the RSS? An examination of political bloggers and media agenda setting
in the UK. [Download simoncollisterdiplomaresearchproject2008.pdf (383.8K)]

I'll also be presenting an updated version of the paper at Politics & Web 2.0: an international conference in April if anyone's interested.

Technorati tags: political blogging, research, CIPR

Internet and Ideology Part 2 - Economy

I’m posting some thoughts at the moment about the ideological shift in politics, economics and society that occurred during the transition to modernity 200 years ago and comparing them with changes occurring now as we entered a period of post-modernity.

I’ve covered off these ideas already in an introduction and I;ve added a post about the political changes taking place. This post will specifically take a look at the changes to economic ideologies in an internet society.

According to Schwarzmantel, another core feature of modernity “was the separation of two orders: state and economy”. For the first time making money was something that was no longer the sole domain of the state.
People were free to create wealth using their newly found individualism. Although these opportunities were limited due to traditional physical barriers: capital, land, education etc, Modernity paved the way for industrialisation, industrialists and mass market capitalism.

Contrast this with today’s post-modernity and while we still have largely a mass market capitalist society (and I’m talking primarily about Western history and economies here) I’d argue the internet is separating markets (ie. wealth creation) further from the ‘capitalist state’ – i.e. the large companies that relied on levering capital to make money.

More specifically, markets are being opened up to the individual in an even greater way. Look at tools like Paypal, designed to allow money transactions globally that by-pass state regulation and banks; look at virtual markets such as the metaverses of SL and WoW where money can be made through creating, buying and selling goods that only exist in a virtual capacity – but a capacity with a market value nonetheless.

Modernity separated the economy from the state, but wealth creation remained largely in the hands of industrialists and ‘big business’. It’s likely that in an age of post-modernity the internet will further emancipate the individual and open even greater opportunities for wealth creation outside of traditional mass markets and the mass market economic systems that have grown up over the past 200 years.

Technorati tags: ideology, post-modernism, modernity, John Schwarzmantel, economy

Internet and Ideology Part 1 - Politics

Yesterday I posted about the ideological shift in politics, economics and society that occurred during the transition to modernity 200 years ago and comparing them with changes occurring now as we entered a period of post-modernity.

This post will specifically take a look at the changes to political ideologies in our internet society and examining what we can learn. These are not fully formed ideas; consider these blog posts as a note pad where I attempt to work out some of my thoughts in public.

The “politics of modernity” according to John Schwarzmantel is marked by

“the malleability of human nature. In contrast to the religious argument of the time that individuals were irredeemably marked by original sin … [modernity] took a more optimistic view of human nature and suggested the possibility of cooperation.”

Furthermore:

“These more positive attributes of human nature could be fostered by political or social institutions designed to encourage the cooperative spirits of human nature.”

I would argue that this view has prevailed pretty much unchanged for the past 200 years – at least until the coming of the social web.

While civil society has played a key part in fostering human cooperation, society’s endeavours were always dependent on institutions providing support, funds, direction and often a voice to facilitate change. Admittedly there are exceptions throughout history, but as a rule I would agree with Schwarzmantel’s suggestion.

Compare that with civil society in an internet age. Institutions are being disintermediated; individuals are organising themselves, membership organisations (political parties, charities etc) are losing out as barriers to participation and scalability are removed.

People no longer need – nor want - a rigid, hierarchically structured institution, they want  a ‘join in’ type of organisation operating as a flat network, not a ‘join us’ top-down one - as identified by David Wilcox. This is made possible and happening thanks to the internet and IMHO marks a key developmental stage of civil society in a post-modern world.

In short, when we entered modernity the political and social focus moved from a pre-determined world where lives were pre-determined according to religion and towards a world where individual rights came into existence: for the first time people’s lives could be self-determined.

However, that this vision of the modern civil society was dependent largely – if not entirely – on civil society institutions. In essence, people could recognise their individual liberty, but only through wider groups or institutions.

I would argue that it has taken until now and the rise of the social web for people truly to be able to shape civil society as individuals liberated from the traditional membership organisations the grew up 200 years ago.

Technorati tags: ideology, post-modernism, modernity, John Schwarzmantel, civil society, politics

The internet and ideology - introduction

Apologies in advance to those who work with me for I am about to post briefly about post-modernism; more specifically I’m going to write a post about modernity and what comes afterwards.

A lot of people – IMHO – talk about the specific changes taking place in business or education or politics as a result of the internet and social web; they may even highlight specific changes that seem to be taking place in, for example, consumer behaviour. But what about the changes taking place at the level above – at the level of the cultural and social ideologies that shape our wider political, economic and public sphere?

I only ask because I’m reading John Schwarzmantel’s Age of Ideologies which argues that the ‘ideologies’ – political, social etc – that have largely shaped our business, poltics, social behaviour etc are a product of a very specific phase of history: modernity.

As we’re now in the age of post-modernity these ideologies (arising directly from the American/French revolutions) need re-shaping. Schwarzmantel also suggests the concept of ideology itself may need to be revised wholesale to accommodate the fragmented world of post-modernity.

So let’s hold it there. The reason I’m blogging this is because Schwarzmantel’s view of the rise of modernity struck some chords with what’s happening now as the internet impacts on politics, economics, society etc. So I thought I’d look at the origins of modernity as outlined by Schwarzmantel and see if his conclusions about the transition from the pre-modern into the modern 200 years ago can be applied to what’s happening in our internet-enabled world now and spot parallels or patterns.

Schwarzmantel discusses the effects of modernity on three areas: society, politics and economics. Over a series of forthcoming posts I’ll look at each of these areas in-depth.

More to follow….

Technorati tags: Age of Ideologies, Ideology, John Schwarzmantel, Internet, Theory

Technology = boring?

So I was miffed I didn't get sent an advance copy of Clay Shirky's new book Here Comes Everybody.

But James Cherkoff over at Modern Marketing has a great quote from the book:

"Communication tools don't get socially interesting until they get technologically boring.  The invention of a tool doesn't create change: it has to have been round long enough that most of society is using it."

Tis is something I've been known to bang on about before and chimes nicely with some thinking I've been doing this morning around ideologies in the 21st Century. Hopefully more to come...

Technorati tags: James Cherkoff, Clay Shirky, Here Comes Everybody

Great VRM debate: will PR still have a place to play in a customer centred business environment?

There's a great round-up on a recent VRM debate by Ian Delaney - although I am galled I missed the chance to meet Doc Searls :(

The event was put on by Media Influencer's Adriana Lukas who raised the spectre of PR (as well as advertising and marketing) having zero relevance to a world of VRM.

She flagged this issue in response to a comment I left on Ian's blog suggesting that VRM might drive PR back to where it is supposed to sit in a classical business envirnoment: at a strategic board level (at least according to Grunig).

I buy into Adriana's point about disintermediation entirely, but can't help but feel that PR will still maintain a place at the table. It will be a radically altered place, but a place nonetheless.

Technorati tags: VRM, Vendor Relationship Management, Adriana Lukas

Quote du jour

Reality check:

"Online PR is not about big numbers it is about a range of changing and relatively small nodes that have a small interaction with other nodes. It is the number of small blogs that is important not sheer reach."

Courtesy of David Philips

Technorati tags: David Philips, Power Law, Here Comes Eevrybody

Media, community and humanity - call for papers

Charlie Beckett from the LSE's Polis think-tank has a post calling for abstracts for a forthcoming conference: Media, Communication and Humanity.

The conference is about how the media is "mediating human values, actions and social relations" and paper proposals should offer "theoretical insight and/or empirical work on this theme". In particular:

• Communication and difference
• Democracy, politics and journalism ethics
• Globalisation and comparative studies
• Innovation, governence and policy
• Media and new media literacies

Funnily enough I've been thinking about a few of these themes recently. More specifically whether democracy building/public diplomacy is being changed by citizens using social media to by-pass traditional media gate-keepers.

If so, whether these changes support greater diplomatic/democratic transparency or whether they are open to greater, more subtle (and thus more dangerous) exploitation by special interests.

And also, if the traditional media are being made obsloete, what's the role for NGOs or independent organisations that aggregate and/or curate digital news content. A good example of this may be the Berkman Center's Global Voices project.

Hopefully more of this to come.

Abstracts/papers can be submitted by going here.

Technorati tags: Charlie Beckett, Polis, London School of Economics, democracy, public diplomacy,
Berkman Center, Global Voices

Living in a two platform world

Today's great quotation:

"there are only two platforms  - the individual user and the web"

Via Adriana Lukas: Content is for container business

Technorati tags: Adriana Lukas, platforms, media, content

Best neologisms of 2008 so far...

We’re only two weeks into January 2008 and already Umair Haque is predicting the macropocalypse while Adam Tinworth is heralding the hackopalypse.

Put them on your buzzword bingo cards :)

Social media: The death of spin has been greatly exaggerated

Wendy from Liberate Media has posted on their blog about the fundamental forces within social media require any PR to be as transparent as possible. In particular she cites political communications as a potentially huge beneficiary of this.

Her starting point for the discussion is Gordon Brown’s appointment of former “spin doctor” (as the Telegraph calls him) Stephen Carter to be his principal advisor.

Wendy observes:

“Politics is one subject in particular that is becoming harder and harder to 'control', with so many opinions and arguments being voiced across social media networks. The influence that spin doctors can have on political matters is rapidly being diminished, and in my mind will very soon be a thing of the past. There is no pulling the wool over the public's eyes, when social media offers so much opportunity for the truth to come to light”

I left her a comment saying I totally agree but while this is ostensibly good news for democracy/civil society I had two major concerns.

These are:

1) PR in the UK is still not getting social media. There's little or no industry leadership from the CIPR & PRCA and just look at my previous post on how some of the industry is engaging with the online space by artificially manipulating search rankings - this is still spin, albeit online spin with Google becoming the regulator.

2) Political parties seem to be recognising the value of this transparent medium, but they're turning to advertising to roll out online campaigns. I think this is partly due to tradition but also because PR in the UK is far behind the curve on understanding and implementing social media strategies. What we could then end up with are creative, engaging digital campaigns devised by advertising and marketing firms which look good but aren’t planned or implemented with long-term relationship building in mind.

This is leads us to a potentially dangerous situation where the public (and worse the media) thinking political parties are giving the people a voice, when in fact they disenfranchising them by paying lip-service to participatory democracy.

If this happens then traditional, hard political power hardens at the centre while the public play with digital toys that keep them entertained but no closer to (argubly even further away from) democratic engagement.

That would be a very bad thing indeed.

Technorati tags: public relations, social media, politics, Gordon Brown, Stephen Carter, hard-power, democracy

Does the social web socialise politics?

I had an email from a friend on Friday telling me she was backing Obama in the US elections. She’s not American but said that British politics was boring at the moment - although perhaps it is fairer to stay stagnant when compared to the thrill of an election.

Dave Winer and Doc Searls have some great insights about how US – and by extension, UK – politics could empower the citizen through a change in politicians’ attitudes towards the collective electorate.

Doc suggests that just as in commercial markets, politics is built around three areas:

1.    Transaction
2.    Conversation
3.    Relationship

Again, just as in business the links between all three are disproportionately weighted towards what Doc calls “big money” and away from (disenfranchising) the public/citizens.

The socialisation of the internet, disintermediation of business/politics and empowerment of individuals clearly has the potential to change this.

It all sounds good, however I’m conscious about not equating ‘socialisation’ with ‘socialism’ – although there are strong arguments for taking that line.

Read more from Doc here and Dave here.

There’s so much great political campaign work being pioneered in the US at the moment, but I wonder how much of it will cross the Atlantic in 2009?

Technorati tags: US elections, politics

Google warns PR firms: no link farming

I can't quite believe I'm reading this in PR Week in 2008, but the UK edition of the magazine has a story about Google warning PR firms not to pay for link farming and other dubious practices. Instead, the article tells us PROs should be working at having conversations with bloggers which will boost their search rankings.

I mean... where do you begin with this one. Here's my dismal thoughts:

1. Not content at editing client's Wikipedia entries to manipulate public reputation PR firms have not got wise to what online marketing firms have been doing for years... and 'cheating'
2. I know I keep saying the marketing profession is encroaching on the work of PR, but retaliating by taking up link farming etc is counter-productive
3. I can't believe that in 2008 there are still PR firms who don't know anything about blogs, the internet and understand the reasons why they need to engage
4. Oh yes... and that reason is about having real conversations with client's customers, listening to their feedback, praise and concerns and acting strategically
5. PR is about communicating with your audience...... or not as the case may be for Volkswagen:

"Volkswagen Commercial (VWC) ran a successful trial programme 12 months ago that saw its search engine optimisation (SEO) provider, Net-rank, use an algorithm that searches the internet to find the most authoritative web sites and bloggers. It then sends four press releases to them every month."

As a blogger I can't think of anything I'd love more than being selected by a robot to receive four unsolicited press releases a month. Wow!

Seriously, I know I bang on about this - and there are some notable exceptions to the rule - but am I missing something or is the UK PR industry really not getting doing PR in a digitally empowered society?

Technorati tags: PR Week, UK PR industry, not getting it, hang heads in shame

*UPDATED* UK newsrooms have woken up to digital... has PR?

Interesting front-page feature in this week’s Media Guardian from Roy Greenslade.

Roy took a tour of the Times, Telegraph and FT newsdesks and reports back on how the three broadsheet heavyweights are getting to grips with merging their onlone and print offerings.

The results, according to the article, are pretty damn good – with the possible exception of the Times which sounds like someone at the top in Wapping is resisting the physical change to merge online and print. But I’ve seen The Times’ vision for online from its online editor-in-chief, Anne Spackman, and they seem to understand whct they need to do, so presumably physical change will come at some point.

What stands out for me is this quotation from Roy:

“I was struck by the way in which their [the three newspapers] journalists have grasped, or are beginning to grasp, the benefits of integration, not only at a practical level but as a philosophy.”

That’s great news for the news industry. But I can’t help thinking while news, advertising  and marketing seems to understand the digital philosophy, PR (with a number of notable exceptions) still isn’t getting it.

How many PR executives think about the integration of online and print when researching or pitching stories? Not many I’d wager. The PR industry is in serious need of a wake-up call. More to come on this subject…

*UPDATED* Richard Sambrook has also blogged this one.

Technorati tags: Newspapers, publishing, digital media

Social objects work for Marcomms, but what about Corp Comms?

I’m mightily envious of Hugh Macleod trekking off in his rural retreat. But at least he’s still churning out quality posts like this one about social objects and marketing.

I was lucky enough to see Jaiku’s Jyri Engestom deliver his original presentation on object-centered sociality – a concept Hugh now elegantly applies to marketing and PR.

In a nutshell (and I love this) Hugh tells us that the best kind of marketing (and PR) is done socially via word-of-mouth – from one real person to another. But this is a problem is you’re a PR or marketing “professional” as you have no real control on the outcome of this kind of marketing. As Hugh puts it:

“a lot of socializing is random. Ergo, yes, a lot of marketing is also random.”

It’s so true and obvious if you think about it, but try telling that to the client or your manager.

In fact Hugh makes a philosophically significant point about the that fact to hide this fact, the marketing and PR industry has constructed ‘mythologies’ that are used to create accepted conditions - or ‘realities’ if you want to be contentious - that marketing and PR works within.

But enough of that... Hugh’s overview of marketing and social objects is great, but I’d argue that if we apply his thinking to PR (and we have) then we are talking quite specifically about Marketing Communications – Marcomms.

Where does the object-centred sociality fit within the world of corporate communications PR? What can become the social object is the firm is tasked with shaping corporate reputation – a concept that doesn’t necessarily deal in tangible assets?

I don’t have the answer but would love to hear what others think? I suppose we could try to create and build corporate communications around a tangible social object – but what if the social object was an idea or concept associated with the organization – the raw material that goes into shaping ‘key messages’?
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We’d have a random – ie. socially constructed – concept of the organization generated through conversations. It might not necessarily fit the desireed (ie. top down) Brand Image but it would be undeniably real and match public expectations. Just some thoughts…. Happy to hear others.

Imagine a world where everybody can write the news

There's an interesting post on the BBC Editor's blog at the moment in which BBC News website editor, Steve Herrmann, explains the editing decisions which led to a moment in which the late Benazir Bhutto told Sir David Frost that Osama Bin Laden had been killed being edited out of footage used.

Herrmann explains:

"Under time pressure, the item producer responsible for publishing the video on the BBC website edited out the comment, with the intention of avoiding confusion. The claim appeared so unexpected that it seemed she had simply mis-spoken. However, editing out her comment was clearly a mistake, for which we apologise, and it should not have happened. There was no intention on our part to distort the meaning of the interview, and we will endeavour to replace the edited version currently available via our website, with the original interview as broadcast by Al-Jazeera, which, in the meantime, you can find on YouTube here."

Personally, I think their explanation is insufficient but that's not what interests me here.

What is fascinating is a suggestion by one of the commenters (someone called Kendrick Curtis if you;re interested) who suggests the BBC publish a 'page history' for news stories on their site.

Curtis suggests that if:

"every published version of an article was available via a link from the page (and each revision had hardlinks for deep-linking purposes) then it would be thoroughly obvious when a revision was made. New revisions could even carry a tagline to indicate what had changed between the previous version and this one."

Now that strikes me as a brilliant and hugely radical thing to do. Except it's not that radical as it sounds to me like the edits History page on Wikipedia. Add to that a Discussion section on BBC news stories like Wikipedia's Discussion and you have a near perfect system for improving the authority of news stories.

You do so through building the news round social knowledge. I won't go into a deep definition of 'social knowledge here and now but David Weinberger's intention for the phrase is the way in which Wikipedia accepts up front that there is no definitive version of the truth in the same way there's no definitive version of the news.

Social knowledge allows a record of the multifarious voices in any situation (news story) to be heard and mapped out, ultimately providing us a slightly messy if not better and more accurate version of reality. See pp. 140-147 in Weinberger's Everything is Miscellaneous.

However, I don't know how likely the BBC - or any other 'traditional' media outlet would be to implement the idea. As Weinberger points out:

"A similar delaminating of authority and knowledge would have serious consequences fo traditional sources of information because their economic value rests on us believing them."

Technorati tags: BBC Editors, censorship, social knowledge, David Weinberger

Three lessons PR firms need to learn

Antony Mayfield has an update on Will McInnes' post about whether the PR industry has a future... or at least a future in its current form.

Antony's three top points are very pertinent and echo my posts passim about business models being turned upside down by the internet. PR firms then tell their clients that but propose a solution that just uses existing techniques and tools but in a different medium. Over to Mr Mayfield:

1. Old models are being disrupted everywhere - everyone and everything is on the line. Smart people can move into PR as easily as PR people can move out. The marketing disciplines definitions aren't that useful anymore. The smartest agencies, Edelman and PorterNovelli (if we are to read Mat Morrison's hire there as a strategic commitment to bring stratgic digital thinking into the business- and I doubt he would let them make it anything less) seem to be two of the PR agencies that look most serious about embracing the opportunities that disruption brings. Ach, the point is that it's not the survival of PR that's at stake, it's everything that's at stake.

2. PR agency models may be less able to assimilate than be be assimilated: One of the curiosities of the PR agency business is that aside from the very largest agencies (and even including a few of them) most are businesses comprised of generalists, with business development, marketing, HR, client management, creative, copywriting, event management, media relations and measurement all done by the same people. I've never met the PR agency that has a project manager or a quality assurance person. This makes it hard to scale these businesses and it also means than they are perhaps less able to bring in new disciplines and approaches than businesses that are structured like, well, businesses.

3. Spin has no place in networks. PR's not all about spin - but some of it is. While listening to what people need and responding quickly to what people need (good PR skills attributes) spin, disingenuousness and messaging legerdemain are more easily exposed.

Oh... and thanks for the nod to Edelman. :)

Technorati tags: Future of PR, Antony Mayfield, Will McInnes, Edelman

Goldsmiths University: the Futures of News write-up

As promised, here are some notes from the Futures of the News conference at Goldsmiths University  last Saturday. For my initial reaction, see my previous post.

The morning session was opened by Martin Turner, Head of Operations for BBC Newsgathering. His presentation was far and away the most on-the-money one of the whole morning, but it was telling that the conference chair had only made one note on it, compared to copious notes for other speakers.

Martin outlined the shifts happening in media right now and suggested the corresponding changes in organisational behaviour may not be enough to save the media as we know it. In fact, he was the first (and, I think only) speaker on the day who acknowledged that real innovation is being driven by small firms and people outside the major media players. 

Martin suggested that the only innovation by major media businesses have been ad (and thus revenue) focussed.Coupled with healthy(ish) online ad spend this has helped reinforce the notion that if there’s still profit in the broadcast/linear media model why would you drop it?

I think Martin was also the only speaker to talk about:

• aggregation
• algorithms
• community filtering of news

All of which he claimed were part of the future of news and the media. But Martin also suggested that with a proliferation in user-generated content, will the desire to produce news dry-up or change dramatically? Unsurprisingly he had no answers.

In the afternoon, Goldsmith’s Natalie Fenton presented on the research project’s predicted directions. In Making Sense of the News in a Digital Age: Journalism and Democracy, she proposed the thesis: "Forms of news journalism can contribute to the process of democracy – which is both a marker of modernity and an inherent feature in modern life and democratic structure."

Well, that all gets my vote and so did the parameters of the work Goldsmiths is set to undertake, which will investigate how speed of access, poly-centricity and multiplicity and interactivity and participation all affect the news production and consumption process. What is being attempted, we were told, was: “a macro-societal investigation into micro-organisational changes.” But, of course!

However, a couple of the other presentations presented interim research that seemed to look at online developments from the perspective of ‘what will journalism/media etc look like in the future’.But yet some of the ideas they discussed (e.g., the BBC’s responses to multi-platform media production) were – while interesting – not particularly ground-breaking. 

I asked as much during the Q&A session and although the answers recognised that staying ahead of the curve was a challenge when setting out research parameters, there was an amazing outburst from one of the project leaders.

She raised her hand to ask a question but then delivered a rant about why citizen journalism doesn’t really exist. She added the caveat she spoke as a former journalist but her argument that CJs were nothing more than super-sources missed the point entirely for me. Haivng heard Dan “father of CJ” Gilmor discuss the same issue I found Goldsmith’s take pretty dismal.

Obviously, I drink the social media Kool-Aid good ‘n’ proper and accept that any solid research needs to be as unbiased as possible, but then again the woman from Goldsmith’s seemed to be as against social media as I am for, so that can’t be too even-minded!

More to come....

Technorati tags: Goldsmiths University, Futures of News, Martin Turner, Natalie Fenton, citizen journalism

What can C21st companies learn from renaissance poets?

While everyone’s going crazy about the secret rules for making viral videos, Matt Hurst at Data Mining has some short but stimulating thoughts on read/write culture courtesy of Lawrence Lessig.

One very interesting point Matt covers off is the idea that technology "improve[s] access to the tools that support the creative process and the distribution channels."

True, Lessig Matt observes, but consider the barriers to entry for Elizabethan poets… paper and pens were pretty accessible back then apparently.

What really made a difference to market entry – and I suppose between success and failure - was ‘patronage’. According to Lessig Matt: “patronage was the great enabler (either via a wealthy individual or via cooperatives that created and performed pieces of culture).”

The lesson here for companies in the 21^st century is to offer patronage to individuals. Treat all your customers as potential poets – facilitate and enable them to become a success. Forsooth.

Technorati tags: Data Mining, Lawrence Lessig, William Shakespeare, patronage

Goldsmiths: Futures of News?

I'm back from Goldsmith University's inaugural symposium for it's major research project: The Futures of News, funded by the Leverhulme Trust.

I'll try to give the day a full write-up soon, but it's Saturday and I've had a couple of glasses of Rioja gran <