There has been an increased interest, in recent times, among academics, public relations professionals and industry professionals in the importance of social media in the role of public relations. This study aims to contribute to the understanding of the communication model that suits social media, in particular Twitter, most effectively, from a public relations point of view.
A qualitative research design was chosen for this study, and the primary method used to gather the data were six semi-structured interviews with SMEs that had won awards for their social media work and social media consultants.
All interviewees were chosen because of their knowledge and insight pertaining to the topic at hand.
The research findings show the communication model that is recommended for SMEs, using Twitter as a public relations tool. Throughout the research process, the author learned about the PR benefits that arise from the use of Twitter as a way to engage with the range of publics that a business possesses.
It can be concluded from the research that there are both advantages and disadvantages to using Twitter as a communication tool, as it does not yet reach the widest audience possible online due to the fact that the site is not yet mainstream in Ireland. In addition, if the site is used incorrectly, the reputation of the company can be damaged.
SMEs in Ireland are experimenting on Twitter and those who are using the right communication model are, on this site, beginning to reap the rewards of this new phenomenon.
A quantum leap in technology advancement happened in a prosperous lab on the 6th of August 1991. Whether we regard it as a good or bad revolution, it changed the way mankind interacts with each other. In the early hours of an incandescent summer’s day, an astute MIT professor named, Tim Berners-Lee invented the internet. Even though the internet can be traced back to 1950's when the Soviet Union launched a satellite, the internet was not available to the public until 1991.
No one could have predicted how this brain wave could have had such an effect on society’s mode of communication.
Tim Berners-Lee
Berners-Lee’s idea to have a single information network to help CERN physicists share all their information through one network, turned out to be the first spark of innovation in the technetronic era.
Fast forward 20 years, to present day and we can see how that spark has ignited into a gleaming metamorphosis.
These hyperspace modifications have lead to a number of issues we face today such as online personal identity, the negative aspects associated with internet culture and the impact of social media on interpersonal relationships.
These net improvements have also begun other phenomena like the rise of internet culture and decrease of traditional forms of media thanks to the web.
Secrecy
Facebook has consistently pushed its users to make more personal information public over the last several years. It believes in doing so, it will allow them to offer better products to users, and to the marketers and developers who want to reach them.
Some users, privacy groups and politicians have matched its moves with vocal protests, lawsuits and more recently, official investigations.
The controversy only appears to be intensifying.
Facebook’s Privacy Policy, as of this year, is now longer than the U.S. Constitution without its amendments. 5,830 words to be exact versus the Constitution’s 4,543 words. Comparing that to over 1,000 words that existed in the policy back in 2005, that’s a 480% increase in complex language, that details how your information is seen by roughly 200 million people who use the site on a daily basis.
Facebook privacy
I believe Facebook’s ambiguity over privacy issues will backfire on users in the future. The people who will be affected the most will be those who do not fully understand how to alter their privacy settings on their account.
We are now in an age where all our future leaders will have an online imprint of all their activity on the information superhighway, ready like ammunition to entangle them in a controversy. The arguments about whether Facebook or the user’s own photos on the social media site, will in my opinion, result in hefty lawsuits in years to come.
Menacing
This leads me to the other side of the internet, the safer but more sinister edge of cyberspace.
This is the growing popularity of being anonymous on the web!
Should people be able to go online anonymously and say what they like, without fear of humiliation or ridicule?
Christopher "moot" Poole aka the anti- Zuckerberg believes so; he is a firm believer in online anonymity. Moot started renowned website 4chan from the tender age of 15 years old. Users generally post anonymously on the site and it has been linked to internet subcultures and activism.
At this year’s South by Southwest Interactive, the annual Austin, Texas festival of geekery, 22-year-old Christopher Poole took to the stage as the keynote speaker.
The key message of his address was “Anonymity is authenticity.”
In April 2009, moot was voted the world's most influential person of 2008 by an open Internet poll conducted by Time magazine. The results were questioned even before the poll completed, as automated voting programs and manual ballot stuffing were used to influence the vote. 4chan's interference with the vote seemed increasingly likely, when it was found that reading the first letter of the first 21 candidates in the poll spelled out a phrase containing two 4chan memes: "MARBLECAKE. ALSO, THE GAME."
I believe his views to be true to an extent, as a lot of people are now very conscious of what they post on sites like Linkedin, Twitter and Facebook. This is because people are connected to a huge variety of people on these sites; like family, friends and work colleagues, so now people are very tactful on what they post online.
In some companies it is mandatory to be connected with fellow workers and managers on Linkedin. Staff members are encouraged to activity post on industry related groups (only things that will reflect well on the company of course!).
It is these reason why people are not acting like themselves online. People are now flocking to sites where you can be face-less. It is a place where you can relax and post about what annoys you about the world today; it’s similar to talking to a psychiatrist, everything is confidential and you feel like a burden has been lifted afterwards.
People are safe in the knowledge that a rant about a particular political party or your views on a controversial issue won’t land you up the creek!
Check it out
Throughout all of our childhood we tried to escape the dreaded question from our parents of:
Where were you?
What time did you get home?
Who were you with?
Yet, as adults we are freely giving that information away to every inhabitant of the web.
This is a result of the new internet cultural phenomenon called “geotagging”. Geotagging is the act of adding geographical identification to our social media activity.
But there is a new threat lurking in the perceived harmless act of checking into your favorite coffee shop, called cybercasing, this menace has derived from the advancement of geotagging. Cybercasing uses data available online to rob your home. Thanks to Foursquare check-ins, status updates on Facebook, location-based messages on Twitter and geotagged photos on Flickr, the bad guys know when you’re out of town!
Facebook check in.
This is a serious issue for even the most sporadic social media dabbler. This is not just an issue for the type of person that feels the need to check into every place they visit on a Sunday afternoon stroll. This is because geotagging is an issue for everyone that engages in social networking, this is the case because geotagged information can be automatically embedded by digital cameras and smart phones without you knowing. Hackers are so adept at this form of espionage that there has even been cases of people that use fake names online being tracked down to an exact location.
ASL
Social media is impacting heavily on how human beings interact with each other. Forming a relationship with someone you met online is no longer a taboo; in fact 19% of all Americans that got married in the US in 2010 had met their partners online.
People are now forming relationships with people online and perceive these relationships as being more intense and more committed than they really are.
These people run the risk of alienating the people who populate their daily lives in pursuit of intimacy with online friends.
Catfish, a 2010 American documentary is a shining example of this type of unhealthy online behaviour.
The film follows New York photographer Nev Schulman, who strikes up an intimate relationship with Michigan based artist, Angela Wesselman.
They exchange photos of each other and Angela sends Nev recording of herself singing. Angela even introduces Nev to family members and Nev build’s strong friendships with them also.
Catfish movie poster
The two people’s lives become ingrained within each other’s so much that it is like they are in a committed relationship even before they met.
What transpires is something no one could have expected, Angela is not the 20 something year old artist and singer that Nev is infatuated with. It turns out that she isn’t even the person in the photos she sent him.
Angela is a married middle aged woman that stole a random models facebook profile and she copied other people’s covers of song and pasted them off as her own. The plot thickens even more when Nev visits Angela only to find out that her other family members that he became friends with were in fact just Angela operating multiple facebook accounts.
As it turned out she was acting like a catfish, hence the title, which is an internet term, which means “someone who pretends to be someone they're not, using Facebook or other social media to create false identities, particularly to pursue deceptive online romances”.
Internet Culture
Pop culture is very much a top-down structure, created by a handful of people, distributed through a one-way medium. In a way it is imposed upon society and it is very much controlled by a small-scale group.
Internet culture on the other hand has a bottom-up structure; it tends to take pop culture and remix it and subvert it into a meaning that is different than the original.
One of the main aspects of internet culture is the emergence of internet memes. The term meme was coined by Richard Dawkins. Simply put, it is a self-replicating idea that takes root in your mind and is transmitted to other people.
An Internet meme is an idea that is propagated through the World Wide Web. The idea may take the form of a hyperlink, video, picture, website, hashtag, or just a word or phrase. A meme may spread from person to person via social networks, blogs, direct email, news sources, or other web-based services.
Public relations, advertising, and marketing professionals have embraced internet memes as a form of viral marketing to create marketing "buzz" for their product or service. Internet memes are seen as cost-effective way to create a fashionable and trendy image for their product.
Companies such as Weetabix and Wrigley’s, tagged on to one of the web’s most successful memes called “Loituma Girl”. This meme involves a Japanese anime clip being played repeatedly while a traditional Finnish folk song is played in the background. This amalgamation resulted in a hysterical, nonsensical clip which was adored by millions.
In a way of trying to “get down with the cool kids”, Weetabix and Wrigley’s used the Finnish song in their adverts in an effort to position their brand as youthful and on the pulse. The Finnish band Loituma, were shocked by all the attention they were receiving as they didn’t even know the clip existed.
What will be, will be...
The concept of the internet being in charge has never been truer than in the case of the future of mass media. For the first time ever news exclusives are no longer coming from traditional mediums like print, TV and radio.
The internet has empowered a whole host of tech savvy opinionated citizen journalists. People are now of the belief that if you have something worthwhile to say then the online world is your audience.
Innovations on the internet has almost made print media and to an extent TV obsolete, people (myself included) know the main story’s of the day before they get they out of bed, this is because people are reading free news apps on their Smartphone’s.
Mark Glaser, a freelance journalist who frequently writes on new media issues, said in 2006: “The idea behind citizen journalism is that people without professional journalism training can use the tools of modern technology and the global distribution of the Internet to create, augment or fact-check media on their own or in collaboration with others”.
Internet rules all
The internet has managed to achieve and deceive (facebook in particular) all of this in a relatively short space of time. Here’s one person who is looking forward to the next ten years with anticipation and elation, but my frame of mind would quickly change if I arrived home after writing this piece to find the entire contents of my house to be cleaned out thanks to my need to check into my local coffee shop for a tweet-up!
Besides the high profile examples of Dane Cook, Arctic Monkeys and Esmeé Denters. There is an increasing number of people using web 2.0 to launch there entertainment careers.
Dane Cook is credited as one of the first comedians to use a personal webpage and MySpace to build a large fan base.
Arctic Monkeys are heralded as one of the first acts to come to the public attention via the Internet, with commentators suggesting they represented the possibility of a change in the way in which new bands are promoted and marketed
Esmeé Denters regularly covered other artists like Justin Timberlake and Natasha Bedingfield’s songs on YouTube. It was because of this that led Justin Timberlake to notice her and subsequently signing her to his record label.
These were more of the main stream examples of people who leveraged their career through the use of technology; now let’s have a look at the people under the radar.
People you may not of heard of but are carving out their own niche in the online world;
Fred
Fred is a fictional character created and portrayed by American actor Lucas Cruikshank. The videos are centred on Fred Figglehorn, a fictional 6-year-old who has a dysfunctional home life and anger management issues. Cruikshank created the character for his channel on YouTube, he filmed his first Fred video in late 2006. This was the first Youtube channel to gain 1 million subscribers.
His celebrity on Youtube has lead to him filming a motion picture for Nickelodeon, which is hoped to become a franchise.
Kassem started out doing stand up in the local LA stand up scene and gained some ground in a short amount of time opening for Dane Cook & Daniel Tosh at sold shows. He was disillusioned with the stand up scene. He began to upload comedy videos of himself interviewing passers-by on Venice Beach in a similar style to Sacha Baron Cohens comedy. Kassems massively popular “California On” web series has been the main reason he has attracted over 130 million views on Youtube. Kassem had over a million followers on YouTube and is one of the most viewed comedians online.
Kassem has featured in huge number of comedy shorts on Youtube, including a spoof Apple commercial with Jane Lynch of Glee fame. He has subsequently joined the online comedy show the Station and by popular demand (from his 1 million followers) he is due to return to the comedy scene.
Amir Blumenfeld
Amir Blumenfeld is a senior writer and actor at College Humor (College Humor is a comedy website based in New York City. Amir rose to internet prominence with the Jake and Amir web series, and Prank Wars with Streeter Seidell.
It is from these endeavours that have led him to presenting Pranked on MTV. He is due to appear in the third film of the highly successful Harold and Kumar pictures.
Philip DeFranco
Philip DeFranco is an American video blogger on YouTube, and a YouTube celebrity. His videos are centred around current events, politics and celebrity gossip in which he gives his opinion, usually presented ironically and with frequent jump cuts to create a fast-paced feel. He has over 1.4 million subscribers, and is the 11th most subscribed YouTuber of all time.
It has been claimed he makes over $250,000 from a number of sources on the Internet, not just YouTube, but he has denied it in several videos. He has been paid by companies to create videos to promote Carl's Jr.'s burgers, and the US television series Lie to Me and Fringe.
In October 2008, DeFranco started acting and he became the star of Hooking Up, a promo from HBOLabs (the online arm of HBO). Hooking Up is a scripted 10-episode Web-based series set at a fictional university where the students spend most of their time emailing and using Facebook, but still manage to miscommunicate.
By the show's second day on YouTube, it had received more than 450,000 views. Bobbie Johnson of The Guardian said that many Web surfers had "scoffed at what they see as a cynical attempt to cash in."
Lisa Donovan
Lisa Donovan is an American actress and writer. She self-produces comedic short films, published under the username LisaNova on YouTube.
Donovan moved to Los Angeles with the hope of becoming an actress. Upon the realisation that it is very hard to get noticed in the industry, she set up her own production company (Zappin Productions) specializing in viral videos.
Donovan has parodied a number of celebrities and public figures, including Keira Knightley, Hillary Clinton, Sarah Palin, Lindsay Lohan, Heidi Montag, Lauren Conrad and Kim Kardashian. LisaNova is listed as the 33rd most subscribed of all time and 9th most subscribed for directors with 594,423 subscribers.
She is also part of the YouTube channel 'The Station'. She worked in parodies with other YouTubers such as ShayCarl, Davedays and Ceciley.
Donovan was chosen as the Youtube representative to interview Katy Perry for a feature interview for the site.
Lisa once said in an interview that she would love to meet Jane Fonda, this sparked a splurge in online traffic from Lisa’s followers to Jane Fonda’s blog. The comments that Lisa’s followers left on the blog convinced Jane Fonda to agree to the interview which took place 5 days after Donovan said she would love to meet her!
Lisa Donovan was given a featured player role in MADtv. She debuted in a spoof of The Ellen DeGeneres Show, where she played Salma Hayek.
There is a new wave of what I like to call self made reality TV shows on Youtube. People are filming their mundane lives and putting them on the web for the world to see. I believe this is an incredibility weird thing to do but the secret behind it is that these people are making a lot of money out of it. For a number of people and families in the US this is their main source of income!
2 Vlogs that are at the forefront of this movement are;
The main character here is Shay and he is from Pocatello, Idaho. The show follows him and his wife Mammytard and his children BabyTard , PrincessTard , and SonTard. Shay never says their real names to protect their identity (so he playfully and quite disturbingly calls his family “tards”). The show has amassed an amazing following and he has 734,081 subscribers on his Youtube channel and since the shows inception it has had 261,668,303 Million views!!! The reason the show has become so popular is simply because Shay is such a likeable person, a typical episode would be 15 minutes long and would feature him and his family just going to the park and playing with their dogs and that would still get half a million views!
The show has meant Shay could quit his job and him and his family now live on ad sales from Youtube, Merchandise of the show and public appearances.
Shay has subsequently joined a Youtube sketch comedy show called “The Station” which brings together fellow Youtube "celebrities" to make comedy skits.
Internet Killed Television
Another "home-made reality show" is, the show with the inspired name, Internet Killed Television. This follows Charles Trippy and his fiancée Alli Speed. The episode on which Charles proposed has been feature on numerous chat shows and it won the 2009 Mashable Open Web Award for the Youtube Video of the Year. The future Trippy’s are now on to their second year of making a video every day. They have amassed 137,745,288 total views and they are the 36th most subscribed comedy channel on Youtube. That’s quite an amazing achievement for normal people that just decided one day to film themselves.
Like or loath these forms of entertainment, they are incredibly popular.I wonder what people will be watching if or when the Internet does kill television!
