Socially Speaking

While Wednesday’s Strategic PR class was a nervous experience for a few public relations virgins, I must shamefully admit that this was not my first time to be an advertising student curiously experimenting with the subject. However, it has been a while, so I appreciated the brief introduction into PR with which we were all provided.

Some of the slideshow’s information was far from forgotten, as previous professors’ relentless attempts to drill it into my head had proven successful. But interestingly enough, even in just my five years of college, technology has had a dramatic effect on how pretty much everything is done, so it seems that every year, I am learning a new way to do things.

Regarding PR, what I and many others believe to be one of the most influential tools to come about in recent years is social media. And it was a point that Professor Bufkins made during this section of her presentation that got me thinking. She stated that social media platforms—like Twitter, Facebook, blogs and others—have come to have just as much power in conveying important information as traditional media outlets.

While I definitely feel that there has been a positive shift in favor of certain social media vehicles, I wonder if the messages projected via these methods have yet to fully reach the level of credibility in the eyes of the public as something, say, printed in a newspaper. Some still feel that the fact that anyone can publish content online diminishes the effect of even legitimate information accessible online. But then again, this only reinforces the idea that media literacy—especially in the digital arena—is an important responsibility of the general public.

The same way that it is now generally considered common knowledge that a story printed in Star Magazine and that sort are not to be taken very seriously, there is a need for people to become similarly selective in their online media choices for information. I am curious to see how this develops over following years. And hopefully it does; the Internet provides amazing means of information delivery and communication that definitely deserves to see continued growth in the future.