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Local government communications
Since the early 20th century public relations has played an increasingly important role for local authorities in the UK. L’Etang (2004) traces the origins of the public relations profession to “developments in local government, both in terms of the growth of public relations work and in terms of the professionalisation of civil servants”.
Modern day public relations practitioners working in local government typically manage two types of communications campaigns: public information campaigns and public communications campaigns (Yeomans, 2006). The distinction between these two types is that “information” campaigns involve one way (sender to receiver) communications, while “communications” campaigns involve two way communications (sender to receiver to sender).
Information campaigns, by virtue of their one-way nature, fit into Grunig and Hunt's public information model of public relations (Grunig and Hunt, 1984). This characterisation is reinforced by the requirement for accuracy in local government which is consistent with the importance of truth in the public information model.
It has also been argued (Dozier et al, 2001) that public communications campaigns can be considered as examples of two-way asymmetric communication, where the sender's intention is to influence knowledge, opinions and actions of the target audiences. The increasing responsibilities of local government to engage with publics and stakeholders are likely to support increased two-way asymmetric communication and in some cases development of new two-way symmetric communications. The rate of adoption of social media among some target audiences represents an opportunity in this respect. [need a ref for this] However it is debatable whether this shift extends to the more attitudinal aspects of the two-way symmetric model or will remain focused on the mechanics of providing balanced two-way communication flows between local government and its publics. Has social media led to a genuine desire for mutual understanding between local government and its publics, or is it just a new channel through which dialogue can take place but over which the traditional degree of control is still strived for?
Considering the objectives of such campaigns, various authors (Dungan-Seaver, 1999; Henry & Rivera, 1998; Coffman, 2002) have drawn a distinction between campaigns that aim to change individual behaviour and those that seek to influence public will and in turn support for policy change. However UK local government communicators need to be careful when seeking to influence public will where it relates to policy decisions, as the code of recommended practice on local authority publicity (1988) stipulates that "local authorities…should not use public funds to mount publicity campaigns whose primary purpose is to persuade the public to hold a particular view on a question of policy."
{{do I need something in here about place shaping, increased community engagement? local govt-specific context?
also The Public Relations Handbook. Contributors: Alison Theaker - author. Publisher: Routledge. Place of Publication: New York. Publication Year: 2004. Page Number: 327. }}
Social media
Definitions of social media are numerous and, to a degree, inconsistent. Wikipedia (2008) identifies social media as
"an umbrella term that defines the various activities that integrate technology, social interaction, and the construction of words and pictures. This interaction, and the manner in which information is presented, depends on the varied perspectives and "building" of shared meaning, as people share their stories, and understandings."
Scoble (2007) identifies a number of defining characteristics that identify a platform or service as social media. The characteristics are are being able to change or correct information publishing, interactivity, real-time feedback, provision of a persistent archive, use of a mix of media types together, little or no editorial control on content that is published, infinite scalability (compared to traditional media where there are time or space limits on what can be published), reusable (where content is easily and quickly republished and analysed) and mashable (meaning it can be easily combined with other forms of content to provide a valuable new form of content).
Meadows-Klue (2008) produced a similar set of defining characteristics and notes that social media "represents paradigms of communication unique to the digital networked society".
While many definitions of social media, including those identified here, have much in common, there is no universally accepted definition of social media or consensus on what does or does not consitute a social media platform. For the purposes of this research I will adopt Constantinides and Fountain's (2008) typology of social media that identifies five types of social media activity:
- Blogs / podcasts
- Social networks
- Content communities (eg video, images, bookmarks, encyclopedia)
- Forums / bulletin boards
- Content aggregators (services allowing users to customise content they wish to access)
Ruck (2008) suggests that social media represents a form of mass communication, where a small number of message initiators send messages to a large, anonymous and usually heterogeneous audience (Lane, 2000). Initially this assertion seems questionable given the enabling role of social media in allowing anyone with internet access the opportunity to become a message initiator and the lack of anonymity in most social media activity.
However within the body of mass communications thinking, the theory of diffusion of innovations (Lazarsfeld, Berelson and Gaudet) would seem to bear more relevance to social media. Rogers (1995) summarises this theory as "the spread of abstract ideas and concepts, technical information, and actual practices within a social system, where the spread denotes flow or movement from a source to an adopter, typically via communication and influence". This approach would seem to be more applicable to the emerging communication dynamics of social media.
Lazarsfeld, Berelson, and Gaudet (1968) also suggested that the flow of mass communication is mediated by opinion leaders, alluding to a two-step flow from mass media, through opinion formers, to recipients. This model would appear to be relevant to selected social media tools, such as blogs and podcasts, where a social media actor plays a part in message transmission. This application is noted by Tomaszeski (2006).
However the two-step flow theory would not appear to be relevant in the context of social media where the communication does not have its origin in the mass media. In these forms of social media, the message does not originate from mass media, instead being originated from the actor himself. An example of this would be image or video sharing where, while some content is "remixed" from mass media content, other content is created independently by the actor.
Wejnert (2002) considers the important of social status of such actors within diffusion of innovation. She notes that the prominence of an actor's relative position within a population of actors determines the likely adoption of an idea, concept or message among a population of relatively culturally homogenous actors. Weimann (1994) identified that opinion leaders within a two-step flow context hold a central position in a social network, and actively make their opinions and views known, presumably to the influence of other lesser actors within the network. While there is no research that appears to validate these two applications of theory in the context of social media, it would be reasonable to assume that Wejnerts' and Weimann's assertions are relevant to social media.
Bibliography(needs ordering and formatting into Harvard style)
Public Relations in Britain: A History of Professional Practice in the Twentieth Century. Contributors: Jacquie L'Etang - author. Publisher: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Place of Publication: Mahwah, NJ. Publication Year: 2004. Page Number: 24.
Yeomans 2006 in Tench and Yeomans (2006)
Dozier, D.M., L.A. Grunig and J.E. Gruning (2001). 'Public relations as communication campaign' in Public Communication Campaigns, 3rd edition. R.E.Rica and C.K.Atkin (eds). Thousand Oaks: Sage
Dungan-Seaver, D. (1999, December). Mass media initiatives and children’s issues: An analysis of research and recent experiences relevant to potential philanthropic funders [Electronic version]. Paper prepared for the McKnight Foundation.
Grunig, J.E. and Hunt, T. (1984) Managing Public Relations. Orlando, FL: Holt, Rinehart and Winston
Henry, G. T., & Rivera, M. (1998, October). Public information campaigns and changing behaviors. Paper presented at the meeting of the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management, New York.
PUBLIC COMMUNICATION CAMPAIGN EVALUATION An Environmental Scan of Challenges, Criticisms, Practice, and Opportunities Prepared for the Communications Consortium Media CenterJulia Coffman Harvard Family Research Project May 2002
code of recommended practice on local authority publicity: http://www.communities.gov.uk/publications/localgovernment/coderecommended accessed 10 March 2008
Wikipedia 2008 Social media http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media
Robert Scoble 2007 What is social media?
http://scobleizer.com/2007/02/16/what-is-social-media/
Danny Meadows-Klue - Falling in Love 2.0: Relationship marketing for the Facebook generation Journal of Direct, Data and Digital Marketing Practice (2008) 9, 245–250.
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Lane, DR (2000 ) http://www.uky.edu/~drlane/capstone/mass/ acessed 10/4/08
Rogers EM. 1995. Diffusion of Innovations. New York: Free. 4th ed.
Barbara Wejnert; Annual Review of Sociology, 2002. Integrating Models of Diffusion of Innovations: A Conceptual Framework
Tomaszeski, M. S. (2006). A baseline examination of political bloggers: who they
are, their views on the blogosphere and their influence in agenda-setting via the
two-step flow hypothesis. [Internet]. Unpublished Masters thesis. Florida State
University. Available from: <http://etd.lib.fsu.edu/theses/available/etd-11092006-
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