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. 

Do You Love Me? A romantic critique of PR evaluation...

The best lectures are spontaneous, when students take the topic off into interesting new areas and start to teach me things I hadn't realised before. That's why Wednesday's Level One session on evaluation was great...

I always begin a powerpoint with a picture... usually something silly. This time it was a couple of rabbits, rom a children's book...

I had actually forgotten where it came from but somebody recognised it, saying it was something about love.

How do you measure love, I wondered? Just as clients want to evaluate PR, we all want to know whether that special person loves us (are we getting a return on our investment?!?)... Perhaps predictably, the first suggestion was "Count how many times you have sex." Good start - this is something quantifiable and countable - and probably at least as useful as Advertising Value Equivalence.

New editor for Times Higher

I took on a new role yesterday, as editor of the Times Higher Education Supplement.

Well, for an hour at least. THES editor John O'Leary was in Vilnius, Lithuania, to share some trade secrets with delegates to a Euprio conference, bringing together university PROs from across Europe. He did an engaging session with Nic Mitchell (University of Teesside) but wasn't able to make the second sitting so I sat, giving his part of the show. It was interesting experience, trying to put myself in the shoes of one of the most influential men in education media, perhaps the single person the UK delegate would most want to impress. More later...

Essential reading: new PR texts

One of the tasks for this time of the year is to updated Reading Lists. Happily, this means working through some particualrly strong new titles...

As mentioned before, Exploring PR by Tench and Yeomans (Prentice Hall) is set to be the foundation for most UK PR degrees (I am working on a review for the next Behind the Spin).

Others set to become essential reading are:

• Public Relations: Critical Debates and Contemporary Practice, by Jacquie L'Etang and Magda Pieczka (Laurence Erlbaum)
• Rethinking Public Relations: PR Propaganda and Democracy (2nd ed), by Kevin Moloney (Routledge) (see Richard Bailey's review)
• Public Relations Theory II, by Carl Botan and Vincent Hazleton (Laurence Erlbaum)
• Ethics in Public Relations: Responsible Advocacy, by Kathy Fitzpatrick and Carolyn Bronstein (Sage)   

Maybe not everybody's idea of beach reading (though I reckon Maloney is a real page-turner) but these are all impressive titles and highly recommended for anyone trying to keep up with developments in the critical undestanding of PR and its impact on the world.

Anything I've missed?

Student blogs as PR tools

There were quite a few people from university press and comms teams at Delivering the New PR. They might be interest to see how the University of Michigan Medical School is using student bloggers to boost recruitment (thanks, Andrea). Under the banner Dose of Reality, 12 students "at each level of the program give you an intimate look at their med school lives - their insights, ‘ah-ha’ moments, frustrations and excitement."

The page says it is maintained by the UMHS Public Relations & Marketing Communications team but there is no real indication of how the students were chosen or if and how the blogs are edited, but it is an interesting initiative. UK universities currently involved in an industrial dispute may be less inclined to let the world hear how some of their students feel at the moment, but, as we kept saying yesterday, those conversations, both for and against the action, are happening anyway....    

Face of the New PR

Will blog skills help student job-hunters?

EuroBlog 2006 suggested a majority of PR practitioners across Europe will engage with blogs in the coming months - but it is clear many organisations have a steep learning curve ahead of them. In a piece for the next issue of Behind the Spin magazine I asked some of the key speakers at the University of Sunderland's Delivering the New PR conference - Tom (PR Opinions) Murphy, Neville (FIR) Hobson and Stuart (PR Guru) Bruce and others what they thought student bloggers like Stephen PR Blogger Davies (left) could bring to the industry. Meanwhile Richard Bailey has drawn up a job spec to help would-be recruits - and prospective employers - think through these fast-emerging issues.

• The next issue of Behind the Spin is out in early May - watch this space
• Delivering the New PR is in London on May 12
• Download the_new_pr_conference_flyer_london.pdf

Here's a version of the Behind the Spin article...

If you believe some commentators, exciting new technologies are set to dramatically change the way public relations is practised. Weblogs and podcasts are springing up all over the place, and “social softwares” like MySpace, You Tube, and MSN are an essential part of daily life for many.

EuroBlog 2006 (www.euroblog2006.org), the first major study of the impact of weblogs on PR in 33 countries, painted a picture of a “two-speed Europe“. Some practitioners see wide-ranging benefits, from tracking competitors and monitoring industry trends, to bypassing journalists and communicating their own messages directly.  Others failed to see benefits for their companies or clients.

Almost one-in-three respondents said they regularly write or contribute to weblogs, and 42 percent of those who didn’t already maintain blogs intended to do so within the next 12 months.

Certainly the number of agencies and organisations sending delegates to “New PR” conferences, such as those run by the University of Sunderland, suggests a real desire to understand the new technologies. And there are signs that some are looking to new recruits to help them meet the challenges and threats they may pose.

One thing most agree on is that the blogosphere is a turbulent arena and that there are pitfalls in wait for a PR who jumps in without understanding its conventions.

One person who has tested the water to good effect is Stephen Davies, the best known PR student blogger in the UK. His PR Blogger site is read avidly by some of the biggest names in the PR blogosphere and his online reputation has helped him secure a work placement at Lewis PR.

  Tony Bradley, president of the CIPR and a partner in Newcastle-based Bradley O’Mahoney Public Relations, believes sharp students can be a real asset to established agencies.

“Understanding the changing mechanisms of communication is increasingly critical these days – and this is where new entrants into the industry can teach us old hands a thing or two. 

“How can we tap into the latest developments like blogging and podcasting to engage more effectively with stakeholders? How can we do what we do but do it better? These are questions which graduates like Stephen Davies must help us answer.  He’s been working as an intern in my own consultancy, and in the short time he’s been here he’s forced us to rethink our stance on technologies such as blogging, podcasting and how people interact with websites.”

Why do PR?

Tom Murphy of the excellent PR Opinions blog is has posted a piece in response to someone asking him whether he would recommend a career in Public Relations. 

Here's what we are telling people who are considering studying Public Relations at the University of Sunderland:

What is Public Relations?

Public Relations is about reputation. It is about telling people what an organisation or business, a charity or a rock band, does - and why it does it.

Public Relations practitioners are the voice of an organisation, spreading the message about what is happening, and why it is happening. PR is also its eyes and ears, watching, listening and learning about what others are saying.