The next EuroBlog survey will go online in November and the research team is looking for partners to help with publicity across Europe.
We are looking for people to help us attract as many responses as possible from European PR and communications practitioners by using a full range of publicity techniques. And we are also keen from anyone who wants to contribute case studies, or edit or contribute to a country-specific page on the EuroBlog wiki, or to contribute papers to a symposium we will hold in Ghent, Belgium, in March 2007.
EuroBlog 2006 was a great success and gave researchers and practitioners the first clear picture of how weblogs and other social media is impacting on PR/comms practice in Europe. The research team believes there has been significant change over the last year and it is important that we track, record and interpret that change.
If you are interested in contributing in anyway to our work please contact Philip Young straight away.
More than happy to pass it on to my European colleagues if that's of any use.
Posted by: Stephen Davies | October 15, 2006 at 02:35 PM
Thanks, Stephen, I will take you up on this kind offer. Looking forward to seeing you Delivering the New PR in London next month.
Posted by: Philip Young | October 15, 2006 at 02:43 PM
And of course: people who think they can make a nice contribution to the Euroblog symposium (16/17 March 2007) should be even more interested knowing that the organisers will do their utmost to make sure there are some nice cafés, restaurants and pubs (think Belgian beers, local dishes, ...) in the neighbourhood of the event venue... :-) Although, naturally, that is only an additional reason to join!
Posted by: Serge | October 16, 2006 at 06:58 PM
From anecdotal evidence I would agree with you that the use of social media in Europen PR practice has changed considerably over the past year.
But I'm afraid that comparing data from two online surveys using what was described in the Euroblog 2006 results as a "self-recruiting snowball" sample is not going to tell us much about any such changes.
Generalising from surveys using such a convenience sample is just not on. It's the online equivalent of generalising from a survey of passers by on your local High Street of a Saturday afternoon.
Posted by: Derek Hodge | October 16, 2006 at 08:05 PM
Derek, thanks for your comment. I think we will have to agree to differ on this. I am sure the EuroBlog team would be interested to hear any suggestions you might make on ways to improve the survey within a realistic budget.
Posted by: Philip Young | October 16, 2006 at 08:46 PM
The trouble is that there's no way you can carry out a survey of European public relations practitioners from which you can generalise within a realistic budget.
We don't have a comprehensive list of European practitioners to use as the sampling frame for any kind of probability sample and we don't have enough data on European practitioners to be able to draw up the specifications for a quota sample.
But then we don't even have a commonly accepted European definition of "PR practitioner".
Just ask those nice young people working outside bars in Ibiza.
Posted by: Derek Hodge | October 17, 2006 at 08:37 AM
Happy to help you out. I'm more on the online communication agency side then the real PR stuff, but everything is converging anyway isn't it.
And I happen to live just a few kilometers away from Ghent in Belgium, so that may be of use too.
Just let me know what I can do for you.
Posted by: Bert Van Wassenhove | October 19, 2006 at 07:28 AM