Public Relations in New Media

Gone are the days of the senior public relations director who relied on the humble fax machine to send press releases to the local newspaper.  For years the Rolodex was a public relation's executive best friend, before its eventual replacement by the PDA.  Now the A-Z of contacts and professional appointments, that synchronize across multiple devices, fit snugly in your iPhone.  The Public Relations industry has undergone a radical change in the last few years, since the emergence and widespread adoption of social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter.  As a result PR people must be at the forefront in terms of responding to technological advances and experimenting with new tools and techniques to generate ever improved results.

Coupons and company discounts can be instantly texted to loyal patrons, and new products can be quickly added to available stock online and promoted on FaceBook.  Inquiries from the media and potential clients can be answered and addressed in moments.  With all the speed that technology affords us, I can't see someone being involved in public relations without being a social media and gadget expert.

There are so many things vying for the customers attention.  Company promotion materials must be evolved, on the fly, and go where the audience is looking.  Speed is everything.

Boston Marathon, Social Media, and the News.

I remember, not many years ago, my life was much more sheltered than it is today.  Events that happened even just outside of my state seemed to be worlds away.  Rarely did I ever know anyone involved in any major incident, and if I did, they would never talk about it because it was such an awful thing.  

I've always been aware of the 6° of separation, how all of us are connected through people we know, but now social media has brought those connections to the forefront of daily life.  Not only do I know someone, who knows someone, who was there, but my friends comment on that eyewitnesses experience, and through my facebook feeds, I'm transported there.  An eyewitnesses account of events on a national news channel has never had the impact on me as those same testimonies given by people I personally know.  

People no longer sweep horrible experiences under the rug, wanting to shelter sad events from women and children, instead they race to be the first one to post the event on BragBook.  On one hand I'm glad I'm aware of events from around the world that effect me and my family, on the other, I miss my ignorance.

Can Apps Create Happiness

Can Apps Create Happiness?

Pic from blog.teamtreehouse.com/the-business-of-apps

I love to investigate new apps.  When I think I've found one that can fill a void in my productive life, my hands start to sweat.  Adrenaline starts pumping through my veins as I watch with anticipation the download and installation status bar.  After having gone through this scenario multiple times, and having page after page of useless apps, I'm convinced apps equal disappointment.  The question of whether an app can make you happy comes down to the age old adage, can money buy happiness, or can anything outside of one-self make us happy?

As I introspect on my personal happiness, there are common emotions that stir in me the feelings of happiness.  

• The feeling of Powerful.  This is the "I've got my shit together" feeling.  I'm in control and am competent in what I do and say.
• The feeling of Passion.  This is the "Bring it On" emotion.  My ambition drives me to excellence.
• The feeling of Joy.  I love where I am, and who I'm with. I'm content to be.

Although no apps can create these emotion in me, they can be great tools in accomplishing the tasks that bring these emotions about.  Applications in and of themselves cannot make me happy, but they can give me a sense of empowerment and control that can assist in the happiness process. 

Applications don't have the ability to know if we are happy, but they could be used as a way of  monitoring our emotions.

Track Your Happiness is a new scientific research project that investigates what makes life worth living.   Using their app, people are able to track their happiness and find out what factors – for each individual – are associated with greater personal happiness. People can also contribute to the scientific understanding of happiness.  With an iOS device, clients are notified by email or text message and asked to report how they are feeling and what they are doing. They are able to decide when and how often they want to be contacted. 

Although I could see myself throwing my iPhone across the room if being asked how I'm feeling in a heated moment, I could see how self-monitoring happiness could empower our personal choice of happiness.

©2011-2013 ~MosiKashi http://mosikashi.deviantart.com/

To this day I don't know how he did it, but Steve Jobs brought joy to my life.  His passion and drive to make the world a simpler and better place inspired me time and time again.  He engaged me in the same emotions that drive my happiness.  An Apple conference keynote address became like a General Conference for me.  I hung on every word and felt those same emotions well up inside me every time I held one of his innovative devices.  I wish I had the Steve Jobs app on my phone.  That could stir the emotions of happiness and get me moving in the right direction on a daily basis.

I think that is why I'm constantly looking for the next great app.  The one that will fill in that next piece of joy.  I have been through hundreds of crazy apps that I never even visit anymore.  It's interesting that the relationships in my life, like the one I lived vicariously with Steve Jobs, are the things that bring me the greatest happiness.  Yet in my search for that next joyful app, I spend more and more time away from the relationships where joy is found.

My 48 Hour Fast

My 48 Hour Fast

I knew this was going to be tough for me.  I believe I've fallen prey to an electronic dependence that, in my mind, only others have.  Each night as I go to bed I do one last check in with the digital world: Facebook, Email, To Do's  top stories, sports scores and my calendar of events for tomorrow are all computed into my brain as I mentally close my day.  I then ritualistically place my iPhone and iPad into their designated place is if tucking in a child for the night.  

I believe a huge side effect I'm experiencing as a result of my iPhone-iPad-toting life, is the inability to have a traditional work/life balance. It makes it hard for me to fully switch off at the end of the day. It's not work life / home life anymore, It's just... life.  A few times I've attempted to go to sleep without knowing where one of my electronic children are, but I toss and turn until the turmoil for resolution pulls me out of bed in a cold sweat.  Misplacing a charge cable is like loosing a child's binky, I know how important it is to them, so to be safe I buy extra.


Day one started off great.  I felt a sense of empowerment as I slid my devices in a drawer and shut down my iMac.  Knowing where they were, and that they would be waiting for me at the end of my fast, give me great comfort.  I knew that as long as I kept myself busy, I could avoid the digital yearning to be connected.  And busy I was.  I cleaned the garage, tuned up the kids bikes, washed the car and cooked an amazing meal all before the kids got home from school.  "This is great!" I remembered thinking.  I credited my time efficiency on the clearing of my schedule to preform the digital fast.  As I reflect on it now, I realize the only thing I cleared was my time on devices.  

As my day winded down, I finished some reading for school and took the time to tuck in all of my children into bed.  I was slammed by the realization of just how much time I spend in front of digital displays.  In my justificative thoughts, I spend my screen time out of necessity for my career and school, but I have a bright recollection on all my wasted time on social media, streaming video and web surfing. 

I had no idea that this disruption could have such a physical as well as a psychological impact on my body.  That night, after just 24 hours into the electronics fast, I felt sick.  I was going through withdrawals of being connected, while at the same time, being totally frustrated at the emptiness I've had in my life.  All the wasted time that has gotten me nothing but a pile of broken dreams and fat belly.  An emptiness filled with time wasting media.


Day two began with confessions to my wife about the impact of the previous day.  I told her about the personal commitments I'd made to myself during the sleepless night.  I went to my iMac to jot down all of the things that were swirling around in my head.  Funny, it was powered off... then I got it.  Even my commitment for change and self development revolved around the media screen.  "Wow,"  I said looking at my wife.  She gave me that look she give our kids when she knows they have learned something powerful.  I walked over to the bookcase and pulled out my journal, and blew off the dust.  This was where I used to place my goals, dreams and aspirations   The last entry 2003.  In it I wrote about my excitement of getting a new laptop.  How ironic that was my last entry.

Everyday I am faced with the challenge of monitoring my children's media time.  They would spend endless days with media if I would let them.  However, countless times they've interrupted me on my device to ask if they can have their iPods yet.  Apparently I'm the epitome of hypocrisy.  I now know that I get to place the same restrictions on myself as I do my kids.  The lure of the device is seductive.  Applications are enticing  and Justification is boundless.  Perhaps if I control my media diet, who knows, maybe I'll have time for a food diet.

The Zing of Authenticity

The Zing of Authenticity

"Wait, I've got to let the Twitter know the senator is gay!"

Don't tweet this yet.  Don't post it on your news site.  Not until you check to see if I am who I claim to be.  Or that my news flash is really... Real.

Am I really a journalist or a conspiracist?  Do I know what I saw, or do I attribute events to unnamed sources who thought they overheard something?

Twitter has been praised for helping to break major stories, from the Trayvon Martin shooting, or the Boston bombing. It can be a powerful tool.

But along the way, the world of Twitter has led journalism through its own atrocities, or at least train wrecks. And Twitter's use by reputable news sites, professional reporters and opinion writers at times remains about as sophisticated as law enforcement during the days of Wyatt Earp and the shootout at the O.K. Corral. (Lanson, 2013)

Now more than ever, news organizations must have policies that establish the importance of being right, not just being first. A reporter's first responsibility is to be accurate, check things out before  passing things along. Establishing guidelines on when to tweet, how to tweet and how to check the validity of tweets.

For example, the ethics code of The Los Angeles Times sets this standard for its staff: "Our job is to tell readers what is true, not what might be."  Yet increasingly journalists are trafficking in the fast lane of rumor, throwing out "what might be" and then scrambling to see whether what they’ve published is true or false (LA Times, 2013).

Even the most upstanding news sites can't always ignore what's whirling around on the Internet.  NPR's new Ethics Handbook, unveiled in February, includes a special social media section. It warns reporters to "Conduct yourself online just as you would in any other public circumstances as an NPR journalist. ... Verify information before passing it on."

That seems like good advice. But then NPR seems to suggest it won't always happen:  "One key is to be transparent about what we're doing. We tell readers what has and hasn't been confirmed. We challenge those putting information out on social media to provide evidence. We raise doubts and ask questions when we have concerns ... And we always ask an important question: am I about to spread a thinly-sourced rumor or am I passing on valuable and credible (even if unverified) information in a transparent manner with appropriate caveats" (NPR, 2013).

I feel that all journalists should verify information rather than passing on rumors and saying it "may or may not be true." But in an age in which polls suggest that millions of Americans still believe our president is a Muslim born in Kenya, that our government brought down the World Trade Center, and we never landed on the moon. It appears that millions of us thrive on the shocking and sensationalized what could have happened. 

Hopefully journalists know that they need not contribute to the confusion.  It is one thing for a news organization to deconstruct a widely-spread rumor, to track down where and how it started, to dissect what aspects of it have been verified and what aspects are simply false. That is responsible journalism if, at times, a distraction from breaking news that really did happen.

It is quite another thing for news organizations to pass on rumors, without an effort to verify, without in some cases so much as a comment from the subject of the rumor.  That is the antithesis of good journalism and a practice that can only damage even more the already shaky credibility of the journalism profession.

On the Media host Brooke Gladstone asked Alex Goldman, a producer for the show about his tweeting throughout the night of April 19 during the manhunt for the Boston bombing suspects.  When much of the information that he re-tweeted turned out to be nothing but speculation, Gladstone pressed him on it during her show.

"You know I was really caught up in the sort of adrenalin of the moment tweeting all that stuff," Goldman said. "In the the cold light of day, today, I do feel a little embarrassment about it."

"So you did something that we criticize a lot of people for, which was report things before their corroborated by police officials" Gladstone asked. 

Goldman responded: "As much as I hate to admit this... there really is a thrill to being the first or being as close the first is possible to report a story.  I don't think that there’s anybody who reports news that doesn't fall prey to that, and there is a real immediacy and sort of a stimulus response to tweeting... its very seductive."

If news is defined as the facts of: Who, what, when, where, why, how, so what, and what’s next, 

I wonder if twitter news should even be called news.  A more appropriate title would be twitter speculation, or twitter life sensationalized.    

Reference

Gladstone, B. (2013) Twitter Coverage Through the Night. On the Media.                     

http://www.onthemedia.org/2013/apr/19/twitter-coverage-through-night/

Lanson, J. (2013) Let's Establish Ethics Codes for Using Twitter in Journalism, Media Ethics Magazine.   http://www.mediaethicsmagazine.com/index.php/browse-back-issues/143-spring-2012/3998417-lets-establish-ethics-codes-for-using-twitter-in-journalism

LA Times Ethics Code                                                                                                                                 http://latimes.image2.trb.com/lanews/media/acrobat/2005-07/18479691.pdf

NPR Ethics Handbook

http://ethics.npr.org/

Google Glass: Humanity's Privacy Invasion

As my college instructor, Eric Young, reviewed Google Glass in class, my hands started to sweat.  The all so recognizable feeling of euphoria that's pulses over my body began to surge as I see the magic that is the "next big thing."  Wow, with Glass I can relive life's experiences through my prospective.  Share with others what I see, from my point of view as I remembered it.  Not from some third party perspective or having a hand held device come between me and the experience.

The one thing that technology has never been able to duplicate is the "holy grail" of what makes us human.  Face-to-face connected communication.  Eye contact.  One soul staring into the eyes of another creating human connection.  Although we repeatedly watch conversation in television and in movies, having the actors look directly into the camera is disturbing and only used for dramatic effect.  In the news, although the reporters look at the camera, they do not address us personally or follow our movements.  Plus it is obvious they are reading from a teleprompter.  I would consider video messaging a more intimate way of communicating, although due to the lenses location, away from the screen, the person in cyberspace is not really looking at you.  Even if they were to look right at the camera, they are looking at an inanimate object, void of the energy that is created by interpersonal connection.

With all the technology of the day, when people are in public, there is no longer an expectation of privacy.  Cameras capture our actions in multipal locations throughout our day.  Banks, parking lots, traffic cams, security systems, ATM's, retailers, and the 8-year-old with an iPod, all monitor our actions without us giving it a second thought.  My image and likeness is not me.  Even as I see myself on video, that guy is not who I see in the mirror.  The guy in the mirror looks into me.  He is the same person who looks into others, connecting on a human level.

Legally what we say, and what we publish in print, are two different things.  No single one-on-one communication is ever used to convict someone of a crime.  This would be considered hearsay, or "your word against mine."  It is easily dismissed as "I was only joking" or that was opinion or taken out of context.  In this way interpersonal communication is sacred.  Although the words we say in a dyad may be repeated, the communication and connection of the exchange is unique to the moment and are private.   

I see Glass as more than recording pictures and getting directions.  I see enormous point of view (POV) applications in video games, advertisements, reality entertainment and even porn.  But I see darker applications.  Criminals documenting robberies, murder and rape.  Children and teens watching unfiltered content with no way of parental monitoring.  However I feel the most pressing issue is privacy.

People act differently when being put in front of a camera, and the first thing that leaves is human connection.  Already we are seeing a loss in human interaction as a whole.  Texting is replacing conversation, FaceBook and other social media sites replacing truly being social, and hours of each day being spent with mindless media.  Yet adding something that could inhibit interpersonal communication due to the fear of being monitored could hinder connection even further.  The one thing that makes us human.

I imagine as Google Glass type products become mainstream, we will have no choice but to assume we are always on camera, even in private conversation.  How will this effect human behavior?  Will we have to monitor everything we say and do in interpersonal connection?

As we lovingly stop to enjoy a moment of connection and stare into each others eyes.... is someone else watching?  Google Glass could be the greatest privacy invasion of humanity, and we may not even care, because it is the next big thing.

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