Examining How Social and Emerging Media Have Been Used in Public Relations Between 2006 and 2012: A Longitudinal Analysis

• Main Authors: Donald K. Wright, Michelle Drifka Hinson
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Insitute for Public Relations 2012-09-01
• Series: Public Relations Journal
• Online Access: https://prjournal.instituteforpr.org/wp-content/uploads/2012WrightHinson.pdf

This seventh annual survey measuring how social and other emerging media are being used in public relations practice found the use of these new media has increase each year. Those who practice public relations continue to consider social networks – especially Facebook – the most important social media in the overall communication and public relations efforts followed by micro-blogging sites such as Twitter, search engine marketing, video sharing sites such as YouTube, blogs, electronic forums and podcasts. Communication or public relations continues to be the most likely organizational function to be responsible for monitoring and managing an organization’s blog and social media communication. Marketing was a distant second. Practitioners believe social and other emerging media continue to improve in terms of accuracy, credibility, honesty, trust and truth telling. They also think these new media effectively serve as a watchdog for traditional news media, impacting corporate and organizational transparency and advocating a transparent and ethical culture. The time public relations people spend with blogs and other social media during an average workday continues to increase with 35 percent of our 2012 respondents spending at least 25 percent of their average workday with these new media. Only about half of 2012 survey respondents represent organizations where research is being conducted measuring what others have communicated about these organizations via blogs or social media and less reliable output measures clearly outnumber more valuable outcome research showing the impact these messages have on the formation, change and reinforcement of attitudes, opinions and behavior. Once again this year, most of the statistically significant demographic differences involved age.