Public Relations and Social Media
Public Relations (PR) and Social Media are closely intertwined fields that focus on the strategic communication of information to a broad audience. Since the rise of social media in the early 2000s, PR professionals have increasingly leveraged these platforms to manage and enhance their clients' public images. Social media offers a cost-effective means of reaching large audiences rapidly, with many tools available for free, making it accessible even for smaller organizations. However, the dynamic and uncontrolled nature of social media poses significant challenges; messages can be easily misinterpreted or transformed by users, leading to potential public relations disasters.
In this landscape, practitioners must navigate the fine line between effective engagement and the risk of backlash. For instance, well-intentioned campaigns can backfire if they overlook historical context or public sentiment. The speed at which information spreads on social media means that a misstep can quickly escalate into a crisis. Moreover, differing generational perspectives on technology and communication can create tension within PR teams, as younger members may advocate for rapid, open dialogue while more traditional practitioners may prefer cautious messaging. As such, PR in the age of social media requires adaptability, a deep understanding of the subject matter, and the ability to respond swiftly to public reactions.
Public Relations and Social Media
Abstract
The spheres of public relations and social media are in many ways perfectly suited for one another, because they are both concerned with the flow of information from a small group of people to a potentially much larger audience. Since the dawn of the social media age in the early 2000s, businesses have sought to use social media to manage their public image, partly because social media can reach large numbers of people in a short time, and partly because many social media activities can be conducted with little or no monetary cost.
Overview
Social media sites are one of many tools used by public relations professionals as part of their mission to communicate information to the public that will portray their clients in the best possible light. Most social media tools are free to use, at least for basic features, meaning that they can benefit public relations staff in two ways. First, the fact that the sites are free encourages large numbers of people to try them out. This would not be the case if there were a fee charged to participate in social media. The lack of an admission price encourages the development of a large network of people on a social media platform (Breakenridge, 2012). This works to the advantage of public relations professionals because if they can find a way to join that social media platform, they potentially have access to all of the platform’s participants; the larger the number of participants, the more people who can be reached by the public relations message. The second benefit of the low cost of social media participation by public relations staff is that even small companies without a sizable budget to devote to public relations can still create a presence for themselves on social media, potentially reaching far more people than they might be able to even by spending substantial amounts of money on advertising and other forms of information dissemination (VanSlyke, Valin & Paluszek, 2014).
However, public relations personnel should exercise caution when using social media as one of the tools within their professional toolkits. While social media can seem to be a fun, exciting, and inexpensive way to connect with others online, it is not without its pitfalls for the unwary. Some of the fundamental features of online communication are that it is difficult to convey subtle nuances of complex issues, and it is impossible to predict who may come across a message that was originally posted for a very different audience (DiStaso & Bortree, 2014). In the few short years that social media sites have existed, there have been so many scandals, gaffes, faux pas, and assorted backfiring of well-intentioned public relations efforts on social media that it is hardly possible to count them all. This has led many public relations professionals to observe that while using social media is free, that does not mean that it cannot inadvertently become very, very expensive.
Managing social media messages is extremely difficult to do well, a fact which justifies many of the fears and reservations about social media held by those who have been working in the public relations field for a long time. In essence, social media is for public relations staff a double edged sword, because while it is able to reach huge numbers of people with relatively small expenditures of money and effort (the public essentially does most of the work of distribution for free, when users share the public relations message with their social networks), it requires that the public relations staff be willing to relinquish control over the message, and it can backfire in spectacular fashion (Scott, 2010).
This can happen either due to honest error, or because of some form of controversy or negativity associated with the subject of the public relations message, which the public relations staff have failed to account for in their campaign plan. An example of the former occurred in 2014 when the clothing manufacturer American Apparel, as part of its promotion of sales and other events around the Fourth of July, posted a photograph of an explosion against a sky blue background. Unfortunately, the image posted was not thoroughly researched by the public relations team to determine its origin, and it turned out to be a photo of the Space Shuttle Challenger exploding shortly after being launched in 1986. The public relations team did not mean to offend anyone in this case; they were simply too young to have witnessed and remembered the Challenger disaster, and did not take the time to verify the nature of the photo they used.
A more distressing incident, and one that is an example of the controversy/negativity type of social media backlash, occurred when the public relations team for famed comedian and actor Bill Cosby launched a social media campaign in which Twitter users were urged to use images of Cosby to create their own memes (Foster & Foster, 2012). The public relations team expected that people would draw on their memories of watching Cosby perform on various programs over the last several decades, and use these memories to create images that would celebrate Cosby’s incredible career in show business. Instead, the campaign presented an opportunity for critics of Cosby to speak out about numerous, longstanding allegations against him regarding inappropriate and even criminal behavior toward women. What was intended as a social media homage almost instantly transformed into an onslaught of embarrassing and repugnant references to Cosby’s alleged conduct—a true public relations disaster, and one that was instigated by Cosby’s own public relations team.
The incident with Cosby brought home to many public relations professionals the need to be intimately familiar with one’s subject matter, both the positive that they want the public to know about and the negative that they would prefer not to discuss. Long ago, when public relations work was under tighter control and moved at a stately pace, it was possible to proclaim the good while covering up the bad (Capozzi & Rucci, 2013). In the modern world, this is rarely an option. Instead, public relations staff are better off knowing everything about their subject so they can spread the good news and prepare to "spin" (a euphemism for reinterpretation) the bad news.
Public relations as a business has fundamentally changed with the advent of social media. In the past, a bad public relations campaign might be ignored by those it targeted, but would be unlikely to cause any harm. In the era of social media, even the most well-intentioned communication can quickly go awry. For each benefit conferred on public relations staff by the wonders of technology, greater risk has been added (Giannini, 2010).
Further Insights
Despite the huge role that social media use has come to play in the lives of people of all ages, its use as a public relations tool has not been without controversy. In one sense, this can be attributed to factors that have very little to do with social media itself. The workforce is comprised of employees from many different generations, from older workers nearing retirement age, to Baby Boomers who have been around long enough to ascend to high level positions, to millennials and generation Z workers just starting their careers (Swann, 2014).
Each of these generations has its own attitudes towards technology such as social media, and its own ideas about what types of communication to the public are in accordance with their notions of professionalism. It is not uncommon for the public relations department of large companies and nonprofits to be led by "the old guard" of a more traditional mindset, with much of the footwork being done by younger staff. There are frequently differences of opinion between the public relations staff, who embrace social media and the technology it runs on, and the administration.
The traditional view of public relations message development is that it is important to take one’s time, craft the perfect messaging and distribution plan, and then implement the distribution of information while maintaining tight controls over the whole process, so that the only information released is that which the public relations department wants to have released. Social media, as younger and more technologically literate public relations staff point out, does not work this way. In the world of social media, things move very quickly (Seitel, 2014).
For example, when a newscaster makes a silly mistake on the air—perhaps mispronouncing the name of his own city—within moments, people all around the world have seen the error and used social media to comment on it, thus spreading news of the incident far and wide in a phenomenon known as "going viral." In addition to the factor of speed, social media is also different from the traditional model of public relations in the fact that it usually involves a loss of control over the content of the message being conveyed. This happens because users modify the message themselves as they share it with their networks, often adding or removing elements in an attempt at humor or social commentary. For example, a political campaign might wish to send out the public relations message that their candidate cares about what happens to children, so they distribute a photograph of the politician cradling a baby in his arms. In the world of social media, users will take this photo and alter it in ways that they find entertaining. Users might alter the image so that it shows the politician cradling a bag of money, or a life preserver, or even a cheeseburger.
This loss of control can be quite disturbing—even outrageous—to those used to the traditional model of public relations, in which the distributor of the message might not have reached as large an audience, but retained more control over the content of the message (Belch & Belch, 2012). The new public relations approach demanded by social media appears to be one that is less about control of the message from start to finish in the communications process, and more about being able to continuously respond to the constantly fluctuating social media landscape in ways that are both graceful and consistent with the branding image of the client, whether an individual or an organization.
Overview
Managing social media messages is extremely difficult to do well, a fact which justifies many of the fears and reservations about social media held by those who have been working in the public relations field for a long time. In essence, social media is for public relations staff a double edged sword, because while it is able to reach huge numbers of people with relatively small expenditures of money and effort (the public essentially does most of the work of distribution for free, when users share the public relations message with their social networks), it requires that the public relations staff be willing to relinquish control over the message, and it can backfire in spectacular fashion (Scott, 2010).
This can happen either due to honest error, or because of some form of controversy or negativity associated with the subject of the public relations message, which the public relations staff have failed to account for in their campaign plan. An example of the former occurred in 2014 when the clothing manufacturer American Apparel, as part of its promotion of sales and other events around the Fourth of July, posted a photograph of an explosion against a sky blue background. Unfortunately, the image posted was not thoroughly researched by the public relations team to determine its origin, and it turned out to be a photo of the Space Shuttle Challenger exploding shortly after being launched in 1986. The public relations team did not mean to offend anyone in this case; they were simply too young to have witnessed and remembered the Challenger disaster, and did not take the time to verify the nature of the photo they used.
A more distressing incident, and one that is an example of the controversy/negativity type of social media backlash, occurred when the public relations team for famed comedian and actor Bill Cosby launched a social media campaign in which Twitter users were urged to use images of Cosby to create their own memes (Foster & Foster, 2012). The public relations team expected that people would draw on their memories of watching Cosby perform on various programs over the last several decades, and use these memories to create images that would celebrate Cosby’s incredible career in show business. Instead, the campaign presented an opportunity for critics of Cosby to speak out about numerous, longstanding allegations against him regarding inappropriate and even criminal behavior toward women. What was intended as a social media homage almost instantly transformed into an onslaught of embarrassing and repugnant references to Cosby’s alleged conduct—a true public relations disaster, and one that was instigated by Cosby’s own public relations team.
The incident with Cosby brought home to many public relations professionals the need to be intimately familiar with one’s subject matter, both the positive that they want the public to know about and the negative that they would prefer not to discuss. Long ago, when public relations work was under tighter control and moved at a stately pace, it was possible to proclaim the good while covering up the bad (Capozzi & Rucci, 2013). In the modern world, this is rarely an option. Instead, public relations staff are better off knowing everything about their subject so they can spread the good news and prepare to "spin" (a euphemism for reinterpretation) the bad news.
Public relations as a business has fundamentally changed with the advent of social media. In the past, a bad public relations campaign might be ignored by those it targeted, but would be unlikely to cause any harm. In the era of social media, even the most well-intentioned communication can quickly go awry. For each benefit conferred on public relations staff by the wonders of technology, greater risk has been added (Giannini, 2010).
Terms & Concepts
Going Viral: When a social media posting is unexpectedly popular, causing it to spread around the world rapidly due to users sharing and resharing it through their networks of social media friends, the post is said to "go viral." This is a reference to the way viruses spread from host to host in a short time; the term "meme" is defined as an idea that spreads like a virus, and is often used to describe posts that go viral. Having a post go viral can either be very bad or very good for the person or organization that initiated the post—careers have been made and destroyed by viral posts, all in a matter of a few hours.
Instagram: Instagram is a social media service similar to Tumblr in the fact that both focus on the sharing of photographs. Instagram’s focus is slightly different, however; whereas Tumblr tends to emphasize humor, Instagram is more about interesting images and the manipulation of those images using various filters that allow users to adjust an image’s brightness, sharpness, contrast, lighting, and so forth.
Messaging: Messaging has a dual meaning in the context of public relations and social media. In social media, it refers to the use of various apps to send messages to other users, both public messages and private messages. In the arena of public relations, messaging refers to the crafting of both tone and content for the information that is to be shared with the public by an individual or an organization. For instance, a political campaign responding to reports about a senseless act of violence will want to make sure that its messaging strikes the right balance between sympathy for those injured and outrage at those responsible.
Trending: Trending is a term that is used mostly with regard to Twitter. Trending topics are those which many people are posting about at the same time, such as election results, celebrity weddings, or natural disasters. Because of its entry into the popular lexicon as a means of describing anything that large numbers of people are interested in, the term is now used on many other social media sites, such as Facebook.
Tumblr: Tumblr is a social media site in which the primary mode of communication is the posting of images. Some of these images are simply pictures that users enjoy looking at and sharing, while others are a form of social commentary on political events, celebrity behavior, and similar occurrences.
Twitter: Twitter is a social media service based on micro-blogging. Users post brief updates of no more than 140 characters, which are received by the user’s followers. Twitter was designed to use cell phones’ text messaging capability as its means of information transmission, and this is the reason for the character limit. Twitter has played a major role in many emergency situations such as earthquakes, power outages, violent attacks, and similar events. This is because such incidents often cause phone lines to be jammed with people trying to make calls to check on the welfare of loved ones, but even at such times it is possible for Tweets to get through.
Bibliography
Belch, G. E., & Belch, M. A. (2012). Advertising and promotion: An integrated marketing communications perspective. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Irwin.
Breakenridge, D. (2012). Social media and public relations: Eight new practices for the pr professional. Upper Saddle River, NJ: FT Press.
Capozzi, L., & Rucci, S. R. (2013). Crisis management in the age of social media. New York, NY: Business Expert Press.
DiStaso, M. W., & Bortree, D. S. (2014). Ethical practice of social media in public relations. New York, NY: Routledge.
Foster, J., & Foster, J. (2012). Writing skills for public relations: Style and technique for mainstream and social media. London, UK: Kogan Page.
Lee, N., Sha, B., Dozier, D., & Sargent, P. (2015). The role of new public relations practitioners as social media experts. Public Relations Review, 41(3), 411–413. Retrieved January 3, 2016, from EBSCO Online Database Business Source Complete. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=bth&AN=108299210&site=ehost-live
Giannini, G. T. (2010). Marketing public relations: A marketer's approach to public relations and social media. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Neill, M. S., & Schauster, E. (2015). Gaps in advertising and public relations education: Perspectives of agency leaders. Journal of Advertising Education, 19(2), 5–17. Retrieved January 3, 2016 from EBSCO Online Database Business Source Complete. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=bth&AN=111206213&site=ehost-live
Scott, D. M. (2010). The new rules of marketing and PR: How to use social media, blogs, news releases, online video, & viral marketing to reach buyers directly. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.
Seitel, F. P. (2014). The practice of public relations. Boston, MA: Pearson.
Swann, P. (2014). Cases in public relations management: The rise of social media and activism. New York, NY: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group.
Valentini, C. (2015). Is using social media "good" for the public relations profession? A critical reflection. Public Relations Review, 41(2), 170–177. Retrieved January 3, 2016 from EBSCO Online Database Business Source Complete. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=bth&AN=108299204&site=ehost-live
VanSlyke, T. J., Valin, J., & Paluszek, J. (2014). Public relations case studies from around the world. New York, NY: Peter Lang.
Suggested Reading
Kennedy, A. K., & Sommerfeldt, E. J. (2015). A postmodern turn for social media research: Theory and research directions for public relations scholarship. Atlantic Journal of Communication, 23(1), 31–45.
Khang, H., Ki, E., & Ye, L. (2012). Social media research in advertising, communication, marketing, and public relations, 1997–2010. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 89(2), 279–298.
Men, L. R., & Tsai, W. S. (2015). Infusing social media with humanity: Corporate character, public engagement, and relational outcomes. Public Relations Review, 41(3), 395–403. Retrieved January 3, 2016, from EBSCO Online Database Business Source Complete. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=bth&AN=108299223&site=ehost-live
Vardeman-Winter, J., & Place, K. (2015). Public relations culture, social media, and regulation. Journal of Communication Management, 19(4), 335–353. Retrieved January 3, 2016 from EBSCO Online Database Business Source Complete. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=bth&AN=110516941&site=ehost-live
Waddington, S. (2015). Chartered public relations: Lessons from expert practitioners. London, UK: Kogan Page.