After spending 15 weeks teaching public relations theory and ethical practice at Kent State, I’m fairly marinated in several PR theories, especially the work of the Excellence study. At first blush, I saw Excellence as a hopeful, uplifting theory of PR practice, an idealistic view of how PR could make a big difference in our profession.
This seemed especially appropriate when applied to social media – Twitter in particular, but also blogging, Facebook and elsewhere. After all, going back to the Cluetrain Manifesto, if markets are conversations and the Internet facilitates such conversations, then the tools of social media seemed perfectly suited to advancing that perspective.
As the semester progressed, however, and I continued my personal social media experiment (this blog, my Twitter activities (@commammo), and commenting on myriad other blogs, I began wondering whether the social media conversation was actually more of a monologue. From a marketing angle, that seems certain; there are likely many more “brands” on Twitter (for example) merely shouting to the social media crowd than actually engaging in dialogue.
My minimal observation wasn’t conclusive. That made me interested in looking more carefully at social media activity with a theoretical view – if I looked at six weeks of tweeting, and looked at several different organizations’ social media involvement, what would I find?
What are social media’s operating theoretical principles?
Knowing that just doing that kind of research for no purpose was a recipe to never get it done, I pitched a potential paper for the Institute for Public Relations’ International PR Research Conference for 2010, where I’d spoken in 2008 (and won the Jackson-Sharpe Award for research by an academic and practitioner with Dr. Julie O’Neil from Texas Christian University). The subject: “Theoretical perspectives in social media: Excellence versus simple information provision,” and my proposal was accepted. I’ll be at the conference, March 10-13, 2010. That the conference is held in Miami, Fla., held no sway in my interest…Riiiiight.
Of course, this now meant a significant commitment to actually doing the research and writing the paper during the break between Kent State semesters. Fortunately, we’ve no plans to travel during the next few weeks.
I’ve got a number of potential sources to help me understand the current research on social media, but it seems that precious little of it is specifically focused on theory. Seems a little surprising to me, unless, of course, social media is a temporary fad that no serious scholar is interested in tackling.
So I’ll ask you, Dear Reader – two-way conversation or one-way information subsidy?
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Sean Williams, Sean Williams. Sean Williams said: http://bit.ly/5K08YK I'm marinated in PR Theory, and wondering which apply most to social media. Weigh in, please. #li [...]
Glad to see you’re spending your break thinking, Sean. I’ve spent mine trying to avoid it, but Twitter won’t let me.
I’ve long argued that the “relationship” concept preached in social media (especially by the authors of Cluetrain) is an old idea wrapped in new technology. Anyone who’s studied the theories guiding PR will see that the concepts of symmetrical PR and Excellence mirror Cluetrain’s “markets as conversations” idea.
I made these comparisons in two professional presentations, which eventually led to a post titled “Symmetrical PR Meets the Cluetrain Manifesto.”
http://bit.ly/7B18h1
In our academic PR world, symmetrical practice is the reigning paradigm. But like you, I don’t see the transfer to practice, even on SM platforms like Twitter. While conversations are ongoing, Twitter is full of companies and individuals tweeting to establish their brands. But is that a bad thing? Starbucks sells a lot of coffee because of its efforts in social media, and Dell moves a good many computers. I don’t follow either company, because Starbucks still burns its beans and — well, I’m a Mac guy. But that’s my choice.
On the individual side, I might not have seen your post today had you not promoted it with a tweet. I follow you because I’m interested in your ideas, and that often leads to conversation — though usually not one confined by 140c.
So to your question: Twitter is part one-way, part two-way. Just like real-life PR! In fact, if you subscribe to Grunig’s “4 Models” of PR, you’ll find each of them playing out in social media every day. Those who don’t like it may unfollow — or even block the “offenders.”
BTW, my post on the “4 Models” has drawn more than 10,000 visits in the 16 months since I posted it, so people are interested in this stuff. http://bit.ly/ZDmZj
Disclosure: I was the one responsible for luring Sean to Kent State’s adjunct faculty. Read this blog and you’ll understand why.
I use it for dialog and also as a filter to provide me news from sources (humans and organizations) that interest me. So my lame answer to your question is both.
I think you’re right that social media is less of a conversation and much less about relationships than many of the old-school gurus have advocated. I’ve blogged about this myself, looking at some of the studies and data about engagement on various sites, to support my theory that “It’s Not All About the Conversation” (http://bit.ly/1Al3v4).
Also, as I blogged about in another post, Social Media Marketing Needs to Grow Up, (http://bit.ly/cK17l) I think that as the various networks become more mainstream and take on changing demographics, and as more and more varied types of businesses flock to social media, you necessarily see changes in the way social media is used. Although younger generations do participate more in conversations, etc., there are significant numbers of people who remain observers, rather than active participants. They are receiving messages. Marketers need to keep that firmly in mind, and not expect nor build their campaigns to require interaction/conversation as the main measure.
I’d love to see the results of your study. I think this area can use more focused research and analysis, rather than relying on inference from other studies.
Social comments and analytics for this post…
This post was mentioned on Twitter by CommAMMO: http://bit.ly/5K08YK I’m marinated in PR Theory, and wondering which apply most to social media. Weigh in, please. #li…
Bill, Mark and Neicole, thanks for dropping in.
Bill — it’s a bit like ordering a filet of elephant sandwich. They won’t start a whole elephant for just one sandwich (buh-dum BUM). Symmetry, with its demand for mutual change (as distinct from two-way) is awfully difficult in a mainstream media-centric world. Social media should present the opportunity to have influence run both ways, and for all I know, it’s doing so in some fashion.
Mark — Definitely the user’s perspective would support that dual purpose, point taken. And maybe that’s the reality. I’ll have my nose to the Tweet stream (at least a little piece of it) in an effort to find out. I suspect that for every @Comcastcares there’s a @VerizonWireless.
Neicole — I remember your “conversation” post well, and for that matter, the other one you reference. It reminds me of the Dennis Leary ads for IBM in the 90′s — the ones where a grandma and a little kid tout their skill with PCs and Leary gives the, “yeah, yeah, whatever, get outa the way, there’s work to be done.” Growing up isn’t easy – and someone takes away your toys.
Everyone, thanks again for taking the time to comment.
Oh, and I hadn’t realized Mr. Leary had come back, in 2006, with a similar campaign for Lotus Domino: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V135wZna0FI
[...] is also a frequent commentator on ROI at his blog Communication AMMO! His recent post on the theoretical underpinnings of social media provides a basis for thinking about ROI in that area. Sean’s future research will be a real [...]