It's always the way - you think you know what you are going to say, then your brain does a 360 and leaves the mouth behind.  Below are all the comments I intended to make during our discussions this afternoon, including the ones I left out, which of course, were the most relevant ones!

We only have to look at the events in Iran over the last weeks to understand the impact and implications of social media. Not only were people able to connect and communicate with the wider world, they were able to organise, help, support and in many cases, defend each other, using the connecting tools we take for granted.  

Twitter hashtags acted as a rallying and meeting point, the tweets themselves an alert mechanism. Facebook added Farsi, Google Maps overlayed the position of embassies taking casualties off the streets. Those outside Iran had, in many cases, a way to communicate with their loved ones when other avenues were closed to them.  As servers were blocked and services withdrawn, instant messages and tweets begged for proxy servers - and got them.

As we sit here, this situation continues and the potential application of all these tools is being pushed to the limits. The technology is remarkable, but more remarkable still is the imagination of  people using them and their ability to devise ways in which they can be used far outside the original intent.  Sometimes this is because we are faced with desperate times and must react, or, as is the case for many, because we have the luxury of time to explore how they can be used.

For those who still regard the social media environment with some skepticism - and there are many that do - or deem it to be a waste of time, then taking a look at the actions resulting from the use of social media tools in Iran might act as a prompt towards change.

Our own position means we have the luxury of time to explore how they can be used. A few years ago, I had the privilege of speaking at the PRINZ conference. I introduced Second Life and other emergent tools, YouTube was in its infancy and Twitter was just a gleam in the developers’ eye. My belief at that time - and my message to the practitioners at the conference - was ‘don’t get left behind’. Be aware of the social, political and economic disruption and change Web 2.0 technologies will create. Understand the technologies and how they are integrated into our daily lives. Make sure you can, on behalf of your organisations and clients, navigate through the myriad of possibilities that now exist.

Some time later, later my message has changed. Instead of ‘don’t get left behind’, I would urge all practitioners to make sure “you stay well ahead”. The semantic web is not far away; the mobile web is with us; new tools are added daily - Flock brings together all our networks, friends and actions and we take them with us by phone. Google Wave, just previewed, has the potential to shake things up in the same way that Twitter has done. There will be a dozen new platforms launched before we have finished our day and around a million status updates posted around the world.

So how are we, as communicators and practitioners going to navigate through all this for those we serve? What will our role be when mobile web turns into moulded web and we access the semantic web via contact lens or implanted chip? This is not so far away. Intel and Nokia have just signed a deal that will lead to products that transform our intersection with the web and each other.  It is more than ten years since the first chip was implanted into  human - a researcher of course - and the technology that makes us scanable and able to interact with ambient intelligence is functional. And as for the things we will lose - heck, I stopped worrying about newspapers years ago. Newsprint is only a commercial boundary that holds the news itself. As people we still want news and we still require journalists - just the boundaries change.  I am much more interested in what we will do as we gradually lose text based communication and move back to oral and visual communications - which is eclipsing all other forms of online content.

Enormous challenges lie ahead which is why we need some serious thinking to be done now, and why spaces like this that will facilitate serious thinking are extremely important.

Often in the social media environment, we fail to think before we engage, update, post or contribute - which leads to more than a few organisational and personal relationship problems.

And in the same way that social media challenges us to present ourselves transparently, frequently and openly to many different communities, so this centre can challenge the historic gap between academics and practitioners in the public relations field.

The social media environment will drive academics, who will have to get faster and smarter at research, perhaps changing the model of peer review (which was  built to serve older systems in older times) to one more suited to the collaborative nature of social media.

Equally, practitioners must be prepared to ‘donate’ their experiences to the researchers so that a closer look at some of the implications can be taken. In practice, we learn as we go, reflecting on our learning later  - a reverse process to academia.

To start the ball rolling, I have posted an approach to public relations measurement and evaluation in the social media environment  and would invite review, comment and contributions from both practitioners and academics. It is based on theory and practical experience and models of operation that I have developed in my own accelerated learning environment over many years.

I am sure - and hopeful - there will be more thinking and discussion as a result of this alternative approach to the peer review process.

In the meantime, there is much to explore; a long journey ahead before we truly grasp all the implications for society and certainly many challenges - personal and professional - for everyone to deal with. But one thing is certain. The application of these disruptive technologies means that things will never the same again. Even if the electricity goes off, the servers won’t work or you lose your phone, the way we approach our interactions and organisational relationships has shifted.

I’ll finish by returning to Iran. There were two updates this week that have stayed with me. One was Mousavi’s Facebook update :

“Today you are the media, it is your duty to report and keep the hope alive”.

The second, and the more poignant was this tweet, sent last Wednesday:

@IranRiggedElect: There are slogans written on all bank notes. People want their voices to spread in the country since media is not covering #iranelection

I truly believe that when voices need to be heard, people find a way: new channels are born - and it is our job to ensure they know how. Thank you for your time.

Posted by: Catherine Arrow

 

Google Wave is on the way and, from the previews, looks set to change social networks in the same way that Twitter and other microblogging platforms changed blog posting.
For the full introduction, take a look at the preview given at Google O/I - lengthy at an hour and twenty minutes, but you'll soon get the idea.
Also makes me wonder what is in store for webinar providers like WebEx and others and Wave has the potential to change their business model as radically as mainstream news media were changed by the online environment. A watching brief.

Posted by: Catherine Arrow

 

The focus is on social media, measurement and demonstrating the value of public relations according to recent research from the Global Alliance for Public Relations and Communications Management.  Full details available here