mediations: Cocoon-ed

Mediations: Philip Young

Mediations coments on public relations, journalism, and communication ethics, often in the context of social media. Philip Young is a senior lecturer in public relations and journalism at the University of Sunderland, specialising in media ethics. He is also a lead researcher for the Euprera EuroBlog project. All views expressed here are personal and should not be seen as representing the University of Sunderland.

Mediations wiki

MediationsWiki
Background for students and practitioners researching topics covered by Mediations, including media ethics and the impact of social software on PR and journalism practice.
PR Books
Recommended sources for public relations. An excellent site with comprehensive UK content.
PR Bibliography
The Public Relations Bibliography, run by David Phillips, offers student resources for internet mediated PR and PR Evaluation.
NewPR Wiki
Simply the best resource for anyone trying to understand the global impact of the New PR
Philip on Facebook
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meditation

Scoop!

Scoop!
Journalists appear in fiction in many guises and play many roles. Sometimes they provide central characters, often they intrude on the action, their attentions as unwelcome as they often are in real life. Scoop! gathers together these appearances under a variety of themes, some amusing, some trivial, some giving an insight into how the Press works and how it is seen to impact on our society.

Checking my email as a yet another distraction from the pressing need to finish the new edition of Online Public Relations I find a message from Peter Kwong who wants to know if I will review a new phone for the O2 Cocoon blog. This afternoon I am actually writing something about how PRs should go about engaging with bloggers so it will be an interesting real time experiment....

I am not sure I am the ideal person to comment on mobile phones (basically I don't like them!) but at least Peter has taken the trouble to have a look at Mediations and includes a reference to recent posts in his intro. This is definitely a good sign.

I will enjoy road-testing the phone - and analysing Peter's PR skills - with the help of a new bunch of students who are even now packign their bags and preparing for the great adventure that is studying at the University of Sunderland. Proud parents will pack them off to college thinking they are going to hear erudite lectures grounded in rigorous academic research; in fact they will probably spend the first few weeks talking about my new Cocoon phone and messing around on Facebook.

(They will probably do that in every other class they go to, too, but the thing about PR is that we can plausibly describe it as relevant to their studies...).

UPDATE: Interesting to see that Neville Hobson responded to Peter's pitch in pretty much the same way I did. Now we have both written about Peter and the Cocoon, and our posts are linked, 'creating reputation' and starting a conversation - even before either of us have seen the phone...