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This week on Inside PR Terry Fallis, David Jones, and Martin Waxman discuss how social media has changed the media landscape and ask if PR professionals can step up, understand this new environment and honour the new strictures of social media while still serving the needs of their clients.
Show Notes:
00:26 Terry opens the show.
01:14 Terry discusses an email exchange that led to today’s topic: An exchange occurred recently between Ira Basen of CBC radio and Joe Thornley. This stemmed from a speech that Ira made at a Canadian Institute conference on Social Media, which Joe twittered. Joe presented this exchange on his blog. He also provides Ira’s speech on his blog.
02:59 Terry introduces today’s topic(s): How social media has changed the media landscape and Can PR professionals step up, understand this new environment and honour the new strictures of social media and still serve the needs of their clients?
04:41 Martin discusses the changing media landscape.
07:20 Terry discusses social media’s effect on the media landscape.
10:09 Dave discusses Ira’s speech and the notion of the editorial gatekeeper.
19:11 Terry discusses the idea of the gatekeeper.
20:20 Terry reads from Ira’s speech. ref: Jay Rosen.
23:42 Dave discusses Ira and his opinion of Pr practitioners.
27:30 Terry discusses Whirlpool’s American Family podcasts and social media.
30:04 Terry closes the show.
Our theme music is Streetwalker by Cjacks and is courtesy of the Podsafe Music Network; Roger Dey is our announcer.
This week’s episode was produced by Janna Guberman.
Enjoyed your discussion about my Canadian Institute speech. I thought it was fair, accurate and thoughtful. In other words, it was everything Joe’s original Twitter comments were not.
I don’t get the impression from your discussion that you believe I presented an “odious cariacature” of PR, or that I made provocative comments without providing sources, and yet those were just some of the things Joe accused me of. But of course, people following Joe’s Twitter stream would have no way of knowing whether his comments were accurate or not.
It was only after I raised a stink that Joe invited me into the conversation by publishing my e-mails to him, and my speech. I appreciate the fact that he did that, but shouldn’t I have been invited in from the start? Wouldn’t that be a better way to ensure that a real conversation takes place? Wouldn’t that represent the true spirit of social media?
Perhaps you could have another conversation about the etiquette and ethics around the use of social media tools. What is really accomplished by sending out Twitter messages about a speech that no one outside the room can reference? Why not at least wait until its over and take time to reflect on the message? What are the obligations to fairness and accuracy? Can we not still value things like civility and respect, even in the space of 140 characters?
Anyone using social media knows that posts on Twitter (or blogs, or FaceBook, etc) are personal opinions. They are meant to start conversations. Similar to networking during a cocktail party, you can choose to join a conversation in a group, stand on the outskirts and listen, or catch a piece of the discussion and move on to something in which you’re more interested. Regarding etiquette and ethics, in the corner of the cocktail room a group could be discussing their opinions of the 3-piece band that played a set for their entertainment. They wouldn’t necessarily call across the room to have the band members join in their discussion, especially if they were making negative comments. In MY OPINION, this type of real-life example is the same as what should be expected when using social media for discussion purposes.