Communicate Your Success

Jonathan Richardson February 25th, 2007

The U.S. government is using social media tools and tactics in an attempt to maintain a voice outside U.S. borders.
 
Karen Hughes, Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs at the State Department, has hired Arabic-speaking bloggers to monitor international blogs and post comments in an effort to correct misconceptions and refute propaganda. She’s also giving exchange students video cameras to record their experiences in America and post them to YouTube. Hughes herself is participating by recording State Department trips to other countries.

Read more about Hughes’ efforts in this Austin American-Statesman article:
http://www.statesman.com/insight/content/editorial/stories/insight/02/18/18hughes.html

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Jonathan Richardson February 2nd, 2007

This year, the FCC will revisit regulations governing a company’s ability to own more than one broadcast medium in the same market and decide whether to relax current regulations that keep a single corporation from controlling what you watch, hear and read. And while organization including the Newspaper Association of America and Gannett lobby for relaxed regulations, activists are leading the charge to stop big media from homogenizing information and the media industry.

By allowing a company to own television, radio and print outlets in a community, consumers in that population face the risk of losing alternative sources of information and the character and culture an independently owned media outlet can bring. Even with other sources of information such as the Web, the possibility to influence public opinion or promote a specific agenda becomes very real when listeners and readers are presented with only one option.

Media deregulation also can hamper public relations practitioners working to advance their organization’s goals in a smaller community. Decisions made at the corporate level can squeeze programming or content out of a medium in favor of additional advertising space or self-promoting agendas. Time that was previously devoted to local stories or events is discarded to the angst of news directors and editors and now used to increase the bottom line of a company in another state.

Eric Klinenberg, author of Fighting for Air: The Battle to Control America’s Media, recently gave a great presentation at Vanderbilt University that outlines the dangers of media consolidation in detail. His speech is available via the Vanderbilt News Service as a podcast for those who would like to learn more.

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Jonathan Richardson October 16th, 2006

Watching CNN’s reports of the earthquakes in Hawaii yesterday, I noticed something that I hadn’t seen the news agency do before. During their coverage, a CG at the bottom of the screen prompted Hawaiian residents to contact the network with photo and video accounts of the event. To accommodate the request, CNN established a Web site where residents could post photos and video of the event that may then be aired during their coverage.

Talk about your citizen journalism. It used to be you would wait for the evening paper or news broadcast. Now, with so many camera phones and high speed internet connections, individuals can now report on location long before a camera crew can reach the scene of a breaking news event.

Marketers and communicators aren’t the only ones that are now faced with turning over the controls to their consumers. But we can take solace in the fact that this doesn’t have to be a bad thing. The residents who submit content and CNN can both benefit from this symbiotic relationship, albeit a short one.

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