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

Comments

[David Brain]

Simon. Agree with some of this but I take a much bleaker view than you. The first point is that you should not expect the PRCA or the IPR to lead on anything. They never have as far as I can remember and to be fair to them it is probably not their job (though I do feel as you know they should do more on social media and at worst get out of the way). Leadership from this comes from the companies that invest in training for their staff on it; from clients who increasingly understand they have to partner agencies who di get it and from employees who increasingly go to the places they think they will be trained and encouraged in this stuff. Will the 'industry' as a whole ever be 'up to speed'? I doubt it, but it has come quite a way in a short time.

[David Brain]

I meant LESS bleak view. Sorry

[Simon Collister]

Yes. Agree with your point re. trade bodies - "get out of the way" makes sense, or perhaps "get in the way constructively"; that's what womma has done in the US and hopefully WOM UK will do overhere.

[David Phillips]

Simon, there was an attempt way back in 1999, when Anne Gregory and Mark Adams among a number of luminaries worked on the joint CIPR/PRCA Internet Commission. The findings still hold good today and were published as a document called 'The Death of Spin'.

I was the group leader.

Now, what I see is demand for tactical involment and tools used ad lib.

Social Media is regarded as a channel by many in PR.

We have to get beyond that and the PR institutions are, well, institutions - a pole apart from the online conversation.

[TJ Walker tjwalker.com]

People can attack "spin" all they want, but there will always be a role for people who can put the best, most positive perspective on an issue. The ability to focus an intellectual and emotional rationale for a position is not going away. TJ Walker

[Wendy McAuliffe]

Simon, thanks for continuing the conversation here, as I feel it's a good 'un.

I totally agree with the points you make about UK PR lagging behind in social media, but my question back would be is this enough to protect 'spin' as we know it for the foreseeable future? The more traditional PRs among us will undoubtedly continue to try to exert their power of persuasion and rhetoric over the general public (within politics in particular), but for how much longer will this be convincing and viable?

I agree with TJ Walker that there will always be a role for 'creative' communications within social media, but this is not the same as 'spin' where often the motive is deception. To clarify my line of argument therefore, I feel
truth will undoubtedly win out over spin/deception/clever rhetoric in the future.