mediations

Social Media key to Sunderland PR MA

I suppose it was predictable that some newspapers would pour scorn on Birmingham City University's MA in Social Media (check #masocialmedia). 

At Sunderland we are working hard on our new MA in Public Relations. Naturally, the need to understand the impact of social media is at the heart of the programme. 

We are not offering an MA in Facebook. But we do believe we would be failing our students badly if social media WASN'T a key element. 

Guilty secrets, forbidden books

Not long ago there was a story about the books people pretended they had read but hadn't really (bizarrely the short and readable 1984 was high on the list). I am not sure I have ever done that... but I have read quite a few books I would be quite embarrassed to admit I'd read. In fact I have two on the go at the moment that I might think about covering with brown paper before daring to be seen in public reading.

Officially I am engrossed in Jan Kjaerstad's The Discoverer but I have galloped through the first 65 pages of I Did a Bad Thing (but haven't we all!), by Linda Green. The thing is it has one of the those red on orangey-yellow, all handwritten curly letters chick-lit covers that I am far too cool and intellectual to even look at.

I was uneasy with this to start with - then my daughter picked it up and accused me of reading 'girly books'!

It's for work, I said, lamely.

And it is. The central character is a regional journalist. Quite early on she is treated rather shabbily by a boyfriend who worked on the Stockport Express, so I felt a bit guilty on her behalf, and anyway, this means it is prime material for my much-loved Scoop! project. Post(s) to follow.

The second guilty secret is Can We Do That? Outrageous PR Stunts That Work - and Why Your Company Needs Them, by Peter Shankman. This is tricky. It is public relations as publicity, column inches are everything, and written in a breathless self-help style that is close to the parody of my current favourite finally-bought-on-CD-20+-years-after-I-bought-the-record albums, Kissing With Confidence, by Will Powers (well worth a listen).

Dare I point my students to Shankman? Should I encourage them to read a such a stridently non-academic text? Believe me, this is not Grunig, Theaker or Gregory. It is not even Phillips and Young (Online PR 2nd Ed comes out in May!!!!).

But it has energy and ideas. I am enjoying it.

But nowhere near as much as Linda Green...   

Let's ban Facebook because kids like it...

People are saying horrible things about us - let's shut our eyes and put our fingers in our ears.

That seems to be the official line on social media taken by a lot of Further Education colleges. It is not, I hasten to add, the view of those who work in communications and marketing but does seem to be the prevailing attitude of those further up the foodchain.

I am analysing some useful feedback from delegates who will attend the Association of Colleges Communications Conference on Thursday. With Sunderland colleague Chris Rushton, I will be talking about Modern Media Trends and College Communications. To get us started, we did a survey, seeking to discover how college communicators used social media; the results were, let's say, ... challenging.

From the outset, I failed to anticipate that many, many colleges ban access to social media sites. One respondent tells us:

"We have a constant battle with IT over access to social media sites - in fact I had to send a staff member home to work on it - which I was then told was unacceptable in itself..."

The central theme of most replies focuses on 'policing' and 'control' - we are frightened that people will post negative comments etc. My response will be along the lines of "Live with it - they will say and are saying these things whether or not you engage with social media...."

Which is easy for me to say...

I would be very grateful for any practical advice I can hand on to communicators who are keen to contribute to social media conversations but need to persuade administrators, executives and... (heaven help us!) their IT departments that the possibility of hearing negative comments is not a good reason for missing out on a range of media channels that will go on being hugely popular - whatever FE College policy decrees.