so this is mass communication?

The first-ever live stream of a presentation at UGA Connect WORKED. Well, sort of.

I was thrilled that Karen Russell allowed me to take a chance & live stream my presentation on relationship and ethics at Connect. From my perspective, the presentation was just like any other one that I ever done … the only change was that I clicked a button before hand to start the stream then ignored the laptop the rest of the presentation.

It was my intention to record the presentation so I could also post that … but, it being my first ever live-stream on demand, I failed to remember to hit record the broadcast. Sigh.

On my end, the chat didn’t work. That probably would have confused me anyway. I hear there was a lot of talk about me being sponsored by Herbal Essence (perhaps because my hairs were so loud & proud?) & requests for me to put my new puppy on the live stream. Sorry guys, no sponsor & Ali is across the street napping right now. She can’t be bothered. Apparently there was also some discussion of my mixing the phrase “big honkin’” with quantitative statistics.

I understand that Auburn’s Robert French also put the live stream up on PR Open Mic, which makes me happier than you can ever imagine. This is what social media is all about. Sharing information, experiences & get togethers. I love it.

I’m told there were more than 10 remote viewers across the nation - mostly practitioners, viewing remotely. It doesn’t get any better than that.

I hope more people try to experiment with live streaming conferences …. just remember to hit the record button!

Note: Image from Kevin Dugan (@prblog) of his desktop while watching my live stream.

During my presentation at the UGA Connect conference in Athens, I plan to present a pilot test experiment I did looking at the impact of ethics on relationship. I plan to mention following:

• Tom Kelleher & Barbara Miller’s seminal paper on blogs as relationship tools
• Sweetser & Emily Metzgar blog experiment on the role of relationship during a crisis (pdf)
• BMW Rampenfest campaign explained
• BMW Rampenfest campaign coverage on CNN
• BMW YouTube videos (trailer, part 1, 2, 3, fake filmmaker’s channel)
• Word of Mouth Marketing Association ethics

If you are able to tune in, please join the live video stream & chat around (give or take) 11:15 a.m. EST Saturday, Sept. 20.

Keeping with my online political public relations program of research, this study (with my amazing colleague Dr. Ruthann Weaver Lariscy at UGA) looked at a social media tool new to the 2006 midterm elections.

Kaye D. Sweetser & Ruthann Weaver Lariscy. (2008). Candidates Make Good Friends: An Analysis of Candidates’ Uses of Facebook. International Journal of Strategic Communication, 2, 175-198.

Through content analysis of Facebook wall comments in U.S. House and Senate races during the 2006 midterm election, this study describes young potential voters’ comments (quantity, valence, etc.) through the lens of the dialogic communication theory of public relations. Findings indicate that individuals who wrote on candidate walls perceive themselves on friendly terms with the candidates, overwhelmingly write messages that are shallow and supportive, and are positive in tone. Candidates rarely, if ever, respond to these messages; although the mere use of Facebook is a dialogic feature, researchers conclude campaigns are not using it for two-way symmetrical relationship building.

We have more work coming out from the huge multi-cell survey on the professional application of blogs in the journalism & PR fields. This study, just published in JMCQ, looks at the issue of credibility that professional journalists and public relations practitioners put on blogs, and relates it to use.

Kaye D. Sweetser, Lance V. Porter, Deborah Soun Chung, & Eunseong Kim (2008). Credibility and the use of blogs among professionals in the communication industry. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 85(1), 169-185.

This study examines use, credibility, and impact on the communication industry of blogs as seen by professional journalists and public relations practitioners. Informed by the uses and gratifications perspective and using an online survey, the study used factor analysis to reveal simplistic blog use categorizations as being either interactive or noninteractive. Results also indicate that those who are labeled “high users” in both factors assign more credibility to the medium. Differences between journalism and public relations professionals were examined.

Other studies from this line of research include:

• Uses and Perceptions of Blogs: A Report on Professional Journalists and Journalism Educators
• Blog power: Examining the effects of practitioner blog use on power in public relations

I was very pleased to present a paper, “On the Ballot & in the Loop: The Dialogic Capacity of Candidate Blogs in the 2008 Election,” on behalf of my team of co-authors at AEJMC last week in Chicago. The paper stemmed from a project in my undergraduate public relations research course at UGA.

In this paper, we compared 80 different blogs from gubernatorial, house, senate & presidential candidate blogs during the primary leading up to this November’s election. This paper focused on the female candidates and their use of blogs.

Thanks to Grady doctoral student Kristin English, we have video!

Everyone loves a list … so here is one for you, names in no particular order.

These are the folks I see as the leading scholars in communication fields actively doing research on various forms of social media. That means more than one article. These folks have research programs surrounding social media in communication. 

• Denise Bortree. Though she’s a PR professor, most of her social media research examines how teenage girls present themselves and negotiate identity in social media spaces. 
• Walter Carl. Dr. Word of Mouth, need I say more?
• Tom Johnson and Barbara Kaye. This political communication research duo started looking at the Internet as a political information source in 1998 & have moved into blogs over the past few years. Mostly focusing on use as an information source or credibility, their research is always top-notch. 
• Tom Kelleher. He published what I’m pretty sure was the first piece on social media in PR literature with his blogs as relationship strategy piece in 2006.  And yes, he’s even literally written the text book for online PR. Keep an eye out on Public Relations Review for more of his work. 
• Lance Porter. He started with looking at how simple online tools made public relations practitioners more powerful and promotable in their organizations then went full scale social media with his research. He’s a great bridge of advertising and PR efforts, and has a pretty impressive civilian resume having been the executive director for Internet marketing at Disney.
• Monica Postelnicu. From jibjab to YouTube, a lot of Monica’s work focuses on user-generated viral political videos. She has also looked at the use of MySpace and other social media tools in politics.
• Trent Seltzer. He rocked the AEJMC PR division when his paper on blogs in PR won an award back in the day & has since published articles on social media in PR.
• Mihaela Vorvoreanu. Looking through the lens of usability, Mihaela’s makes recommendations for how organizations can create rich interactive experiences for their publics online. 

Ahhh. There’s nothing better than something provocative with a bit of profanity splashed in, wouldn’t you say? It’s not often that I find a powerpoint that I understand well without the benefit of hearing it presented or find good enough to share with others. Then Todd Defren linked to this one!

 

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I love the simplicity here juxtaposing social media adoption numbers with the usefulness & impact of traditional adverstising.

Even so, I think it is a bit of cyber hyperbole to say that social media is more important than advertising. Or that if you’re not on social media then you are not on the Internet. And, to be fair, sometimes the numbers are actually comparing apples & oranges.

But I get it.

You need to make these big statements to get attention.

But there is a catch. The people who believe these big statements about the dominance of social media are likely already immersed in the technology. Those to whom these broad statements are aimed are likely to discount such grandiose statements.

In the end, though, I’m a sucker for the numbers & it is so simple that it can’t help but be provocative. 

If you haven’t, take a spin through the presentation. It’s worth the time. 

Reading a blog by fellow social media researcher, Lois Schiedt, I ran into a call for respondents for a podcasting study. Funny enough - I attended the Oxford Internet Institute’s first ever summer doctoral programme with Kris, the researcher looking for podcasters.

In hoping I can help increase her number of respondents & some of you might qualify, please consider taking her survey of podcasters:

Hello Podcasters!

My name is Kris Markman and I am a researcher in the Department of Communication at the University of Memphis. You are invited to participate in a survey of independent podcasters. The goal of this research is to find out more about what you are doing and what has motivated you to become a podcaster. The survey is online and your responses are anonymous. By participating in this survey, you have a chance to help spread the word about podcasting and increase the visibility of independent podcasters to academics and the general public.

To find out more information about the survey and to participate, please go to https://umdrive.memphis.edu/kmmrkman/www/podcasting.html

You can find out more about me and my research at my home page:
https://umdrive.memphis.edu/kmmrkman/www

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me at k.markman at memphis.edu

Thank you!
Kris M. Markman, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, Department of Communication
University of Memphis

Good luck to Kris on her study.

When I was an assistant professor at LSU, I had the pleasure of working and collaborating with Guy Golan. Guy & I joined our data sets from the 2004 presidential election (mine on blogs, his on tv broadcasts & spots), brought in agenda-setting mastermind Wayne Wanta, and this article was born. Many moons later it has seen itself into print:

Sweetser, K.D., & Golan, G.J., & Wanta, W. “Intermedia Agenda Setting in Television, Advertising, and Blogs During the 2004 Election.” Mass Communication & Society, 11 (2), 197-216.

ABSTRACT: This study examined whether the candidate-controlled public relations tools of political ads and candidate blogs were successful in influencing the issue and news agenda of the major television news networks during the 2004 presidential election. Data showed strong correlations between blogs and the media agenda. Advertisements did not correlate with the media agenda. Cross-lag analyses showed that the media set the candidates’ agenda. The authors suggest intermedia agenda setting occurred as the media transferred their agenda to campaign blogs.

Keywords: blog, advertising, television, spots, ads, political communication, campaign, election, political public relations, intermedia agenda setting

My univerisity doesn’t have access to the most current issues of the journal online so I can’t download the PDF. If someone out there can & would be willing to send me the PDF then I would greatly appreciate it! If/when I get a PDF, I’ll post it here & on my CV page.

At the Edelman Digital Bootcamp, I presented a number of social media assignments that I have worked into my traditional PR classes. This assignment is one of those assignments.

—
This assignment is ideal for PR Research, PR Cases Studies, Administration and to use for the research function of capstone Campaigns courses.

In this assignment, students monitor the online conversation occurring about an organization on posted by that organization’s publics (i.e., environmental scanning of blogs for discussion of company issues). Adoption trends show that the number of people reading blogs jumps each six months and more than half of journalists turn to blogs for sources, story ideas and to “break scandals.” Academic research finds that people who read blogs cite them as credible sources of information and there are several notable anecdotes about stories jumping from blogs to the mainstream media. As such, it is important for public relations students to learn how to monitor blog and other social media content in a systematic way that provides the same insight that more traditional environmental scanning methods do. Remember though, these scans are good only if they include the entire online world — don’t just look at blogs but include microblogging sites like Twitter, and multimedia sites like YouTube or Flickr.

Directions to students: Many people will discuss your organization and its products/services on their own Web sites, outside of traditional media. Just as it is important for you to know what the media and your community are saying about your issues and organization, it is important to know what is being said in social media sites like blogs and message boards. In this assignment you will listen to the “cyberchatter” about an assigned client for one week. During this time you will (1) monitor social media sites, (2) assess the importance/impact of each site that discusses your organization and (3) write a short analysis of the week’s conversation. Additionally, you may make suggestions for action or engagement based on this analysis.

> Learning objectives

• Apply environmental scanning and issues management approaches to non-traditional information sources
• Practice research skills in diverse information environments
• Connect environmental scanning practices with emergent technology
• Familiarize yourself with potentially powerful, persuasive and relevant conversations occurring about your organization outside the mainstream media

> Layout and content recommendations

• Assign a client to students or allow them to pick their own clients (suggest large Fortune 500 companies)
• Identify key search terms with students for their client. Don’t just rely on the organization’s name. Include CEO, product names, issues and common misspellings for associated organizational terms.
• Demonstrate key word searches on various blog search engines like IceRocket, Technorati, blogsearch.google.com
• Show students how to set up Google alerts on key words
• Explain RSS feeds, how to identify them, subscriptions & readers such as BlogLines or Google Reader (note: you can do an initial search on the blog search engines & then subscribe to that search to make life a little easier)
• Explain tags (often used on blogs, Flickr, YouTube, etc)
• Explain that blog site importance/impact can sometimes be determined through reading the “about” page of the blogger and reading the comments on posts

> Tips

• Monitor inbound links to the company’s Web site through Technorati or IceRocket and by typing link:url (with url being your company’s URL) into Google
• Do Web searches on the company name (including common misspellings) and products/services
• Start with quality search terms
• Follow key words on Twitter
• Always follow links in a blog post – the link may contain all of the meaning
• Always read all of the comments on a blog post – the post may appear neutral then the comments might contain a heated discussion
• See these resources for additional tips
  • http://redcouch.typepad.com/weblog/2006/01/blog_monitoring.html
  • http://www.globalprblogweek.com/2005/09/21/wyman-reputation-management/
  • http://hyku.com/blog/archives/001728.html
  • http://hyku.com/blog/archives/000189.html
  • http://technorati.com/weblog/2007/05/354.html
  • http://radiofreeblogistan.com/2005/04/29/assessing_blog_authority.html

> Grading rubric

When grading the online conversation monitoring report, treat it much like you would any traditional environmental scanning report. The only difference here is that the net for area to be monitored is cast much wider. The best thing a student can come away from this assignment understanding is that one is always monitoring one’s organization – and it is important to add social media sites to this list of sites monitored. Once systems are in place (e-mail alerts, etc.) the work is streamlined and much easier.