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| Image: Bem Le Hunte |
Professor Judy Motion from the JMRC will present one of JMRC's research seminars this year.
Tuesday 14 May 2013, 3.30-5.00pm
Robert Webster Building 327
Half awake in a fake empire: what’s wrong with public relations in social media?
There is an emergent fetishization of social media by idealistic academics and practitioners who argue that, with the advent of social media, public relations has transformed into an interactive engagement practice that is no longer predicated on spin and persuasion. Yet it is evident that both approaches still operate within social media ecologies. The tension between the two public relations modalities of persuasion and engagement is significant in social media spaces – the need to promulgate client’s messages collides with the realities of how social media spaces function. Rosen (2006) suggested that ‘the people formerly known as the audience are simply the public made realer, less fictional, more able, less predictable’. Social media participants do not behave as passive or malleable audiences – they have expectations and norms about appropriate communication and may perceive commercial or promotional interventions as an intrusion (Marwick and boyd, 2011). The aim of this paper is to develop theoretical frames for understanding the role of public relations in social media spaces, including explorations of issues of truth, power, control and meaningful participation.