The Ninth Week.

Chapter 12: The 21st Century Media.

In to my second last chapter readings, I have touched on to the new media of today.
I learnt in this chapter how much importance the Internet is to Public Relations today. Even the academics and practitioners are beginning to recognize the potentially transformative impact of technology on PR and its important contribution to the ability of organizations to be socially responsive.

“The implications for twenty-first century practitioners are all at once far reaching, terrifying and enormously exciting.” (Paine, 2007)

A key point I learnt is that traditional public relations techniques are no longer appropriate in much of public relations practice as they fail to connect with an internet-savvy public. For example, hundreds and thousands of articles on the same topic is easily accessible through Google, Wikipedia, Yahoo, and MSN.

“Everybody is a publisher and everybody is connected to everybody else.” (Holtz, 2002)

The creation of the new media would mean that the communication environment is more complex and more immediate. The publics are more powerful and can form across geographical boundaries. Through blogs, we can write about topics close to our heart at homes and in turn, it could actually be a political issue affecting the perception of a government.

It is their capacity to generate and share information that allows them to challenge organizational information, ensuring greater transparency and accountability on the part of organizations. Publics now expect to be consulted and informed about policies and processes that may affect them.

I learnt that to view the Internet as merely additional PR tactics, or new channels of communications, is to largely misunderstand the impact and function of such technology on the communication profession.