• Home
• Who?

Multiplexation

• On social media, public opinion, and slacktivism

  04May
  Categories: media Comments: 0

  Last Friday I had the opportunity to talk to Steve Goldstein at our local NPR station, KJZZ, about the role of social media in shaping public opinion and activism surrounding Arizona’s controversial new immigration law, SB1070.  The segment was shorter than originally planned, due to breaking news about the boycotts organized against Arizona and Arizona-based businesses, but I had a good time.

  (In case the embedded audio doesn’t work, here’s the link to the Here and Now show with Steve Goldstein.)

  I used several different tools to research social media activity for the segment, although we didn’t get to discuss the results of most of them. The Twitter Positioning System (TPS), for example, showed me that discussion of the bill was taking place all over the country, although it was naturally much more concentrated in the southwest and Arizona in particular. SocialMention, which looks at a vast range of both textual and visual social media channels, showed me that there was a core group of passionate people discussing the bill by name, whereas the general topic of “Arizona immigration” was something far more people were interested in–although most only to the point of commenting on it in passing. Viral Heat, a (fairly inexpensive) paid service, breaks down online discussions by source: Twitter, not surprisingly, proved to be the liveliest font of conversation about the issue, followed by Facebook and YouTube. When the last caller asked about YouTube, I was disappointed that the lost Internet connection prevented me from clicking through on Viral Heat to identify the top users posting videos on the subject.

  Technology is wonderful, but sometimes unreliable. And none of these tracking sources is infallible: the sentiment ratings on Social Mention, for example, need to be taken with a grain of salt, since no software can detect sarcasm. But we do have access now to vast stores of information about at least a segment of public discourse, as well as many tools that can give us a rapid general analysis. While they’re no substitute for more rigorous research, they’re fun to play with and can give us a useful starting point for discussion, in ways that would have been unimaginable even a few short years ago.

  Tags: activism, media, politics, public opinion, social media, social movements

• Media 2.0: Social Media

  24Mar
  Categories: Uncategorized, teaching Comments: 2

  Yes, that’s a buzzword-y title. (Also: uh, hi. It’s been a while. I’ve been busy.) It’s the official name of a course I’m offering this Fall, on the Tempe campus of Arizona State University. Unlike my classes at the Cronkite School, it’s open to all majors. It’s also capped at 129 students, so there’s plenty of room.

  In the course catalogue, the description reads simply, “Covers topics of immediate or special interest to a faculty member and students,” which doesn’t really say much. So I thought I’d post some more details about what I have planned. Not a syllabus (yet), just a statement of intent, so to speak. If you’re an ASU student looking for an elective, think about MCO494! I’m very excited to have the opportunity to really explore the world of social media from a variety of perspectives.

  The short and snappy description, if you’re in a hurry, is this:

  This class will explore and critically analyze the social, cultural, legal, ethical, economic, and technological dimensions of social media tools from Facebook to FourSquare, Twitter to Flickr, and beyond.

  More detail after the cut.
  Read more »

  Tags: social media, teaching, Web 2.0

• Sites and resources for teaching with social media

  02Mar
  Categories: teaching Comments: 0

  Today I gave a brownbag talk about using social media in the classroom. I focused not on why people might use these tools for teaching, but on the how, since I think having a good understanding of the latter can help answer the former. And I have no ambitions of being a social media evangelist–there are plenty of situations in which other tools are not only available, but do the job better.

  Of course, in the case of teaching in journalism, public relations, mass communication, and related fields, sometimes part of the purpose is to make students aware of what tools are out there, and give them some practice using these tools in appropriate ways. In this case, instructors sometimes find themselves working outside their comfort zone, since they may not be familiar or entirely comfortable with (or convinced of the utility of) certain forms of social media. Even though I’ve spent lots of time online in the past *cough* years (okay, fine, let’s just say more than a decade), I still don’t know everything that’s out there, and I have my personal preferences.

  My presentations don’t lend themselves well to Slideshare, since I use very little text and prefer to fill in most of the content orally. So it’s difficult for me to share everything I discussed. However, I’m happy to post the contents of the handout I gave, which has some sites and resources about social media in general, a few specific to journalism or public relations, and a couple specific to educators. Hopefully there’s something useful in here, anyway. I’ve also tossed in a few sites I mentioned or showed in the presentation but didn’t include in the handout.

  Note: I do talk a little about directionality as one of the criteria for assessing a social media tool, and deciding whether and how to use it. The terms I use are familiar to most public relations scholars, but might seem strange to others. In particular, people often struggle with the difference between two-way symmetrical and two-way asymmetrical modes of communication. In brief, asymmetrical communication takes place when people can give feedback, for example in the form of comments on a photo or blog post, but it’s difficult to engage in real back-and-forth dialogue. Blogs that offer threaded comments make symmetrical communication more likely, although what really takes place depends entirely on the people involved. I think one-way and multi-way communication are pretty self-explanatory.

  So, here’s the list of resources:

  Read more »

  Tags: social media, teaching

• Making it work: PR and… that other PR

  20Jan
  Categories: teaching Comments: 2

  Today is the first day of class, so I’ll be meeting a whole new crop of students. Some of them will probably be a little nervous, either because they are naturally overachievers and are always nervous about new classes, or maybe they’ve heard rumors about what a tough class this is. (Maybe they’re even nervous because they’ve heard rumors about me, but I neither confirm nor deny any of those.)

  I make no secret, starting on the first day, about the demands they’ll be facing in this course. It’s their senior capstone, so it’s supposed to be challenging. Bringing together knowledge and skills in an applied project, working with a group, learning to analyze cases and think about theory and practice, meeting regularly with clients, trying to come up with proposals that are both creative and viable, managing client expectations, keeping up with the reading, maintaining the class blog… it’s a lot to handle. Especially when you factor in their other classes and, for many of the students, jobs and internships, maybe even family demands. Plus the fact that most are in their final semester, busy applying for jobs or grad school or trying to figure out what to do when they suddenly find themselves college graduates in May.

  One way I try to help them understand why the course is designed this way, and how it is intended to help prepare them for their professional careers (and frame it in a much less frightening way than I did in the paragraph above) is to compare it to another PR: Project Runway. I’m not (too) ashamed to admit my love for this show, and I think it has a lot to teach anyone who hopes to work in a field that combines the creative and the practical. To wit:

  Read more »

  Tags: PR campaigns, public relations, teaching

• Tweaking the campaigns course

  14Jan
  Categories: teaching Comments: 1

  Once again this semester, I’m teaching two concurrent sections of Public Relations Campaigns. I’m in the process of changing the course a bit, though, trying to better adapt it to the changing PR landscape. Since this class is the capstone for seniors majoring in public relations, I want to do everything I can to prepare them for a professional career.

  In my view, part of doing that means shifting the emphasis away from media-based campaigns. I continue to be surprised at how many students come into the class thinking that press releases, media kits, and a Blackberry full of journalists’ contact info represent the core of their future career. This capstone course is my last chance to shake them free of this idea. At the same time, they definitely need to come out of this class knowing how to research, develop, and evaluate a strategic plan. There is only so much time in a semester to give them the conceptual and methodological tools they need, practice dissecting campaigns to figure out what does and doesn’t work, expose them to enough examples to remind them just how vast a territory is covered by this field, continue their socialization into the profession, and coach teams as they work on their specific client projects. It’s a delicate balance. I push them hard, because I know I’m doing them a favor that way, but even so there are objective limits on how much you can do.

  I’m still fine-tuning the syllabus (and probably will be right up until Tuesday morning before the first class), but I think the course description now says everything I want it to. Read more »

  Tags: PR, PR campaigns, syllabus, teaching

• Evolution of the class blog

  24Dec
  Categories: teaching Comments: 8

  (Note: There is something wonky going on with the formatting here, and I can’t figure it out. I’m sure it has something to do with the CSS.)

  Last semester, students in my Public Relations Campaigns class were responsible for maintaining a class blog on trends and issues in PR. The main goal of the assignment was to allow them to get their feet wet in social media, encourage them to read a variety of PR blogs, gain experience writing in a format unfamiliar to most of the students, and provide a forum in which they could discuss professional topics. I taught two sections of the course, and each section was broken into teams for their larger client projects. Teams from both sections contributed to the blog, which was also a way for them to interact amongst themselves despite being in different classes.

  I didn’t provide many guidelines for the assignment, since my main purpose was to get them writing, and I didn’t want us to get bogged down in rules. Teams were required to post once a week, and individual students to comment on at least two posts by other teams. They were required to include at least one link, preferably to a public relations blog, and to explain the significance of their chosen topic to public relations. That was basically it. As a result, the quality of the posts was uneven, but at the end of the semester most of the students noted that they had enjoyed the assignment and learned a lot from it.

  Next semester, the assignment is going to change considerably. For one thing, we are in the process of creating a microsite for our PR program within the larger school web site, and the student blog will be featured content. This greater visibility means that readership is likely to be wider, bringing in casual visitors to the site, potential students, local practitioners, and others. Furthermore, due to recent curriculum changes, more students coming into the class are likely to have a basic understanding of the mechanics of blogging and some experience with maintaining at least a personal site. And finally, although I incorporated plenty of social media into the course last semester, this time around I want to make sure that SM practices are even more deeply embedded into the course content and assignments. Somewhat paradoxically, I’m convinced that doing so will help prevent some of the “have hammer, will find nail” effect that leads students to attempt to incorporate social media strategies and tactics into their campaigns in ways that don’t really suit the client’s goals and objectives.

  Since I try to give very detailed explanations of my assignments, outlining both the purpose and my expectations, I’ve been working on the assignment sheet for the new and improved class blog. What better place to look for feedback than among fellow PR bloggers? Details of the assignment are tucked away below, and your input is welcome.
  Read more »

  Tags: public relations, social media, teaching

• Pearls of wisdom

  12Dec
  Categories: teaching Comments: 2

  The semester is winding to a close. This afternoon, my students will give their final presentations to an auditorium audience of classmates, clients, local PR professionals, and the occasional person who just happens to wander in. I’m very excited for them: I’ve seen the proposals and practice presentations, and I am looking forward to hearing feedback from clients and others.

  Meanwhile, on the last day of class I asked them to write down, on index cards I provided, three pieces of advice to next semester’s students. I promised them that I would pass on all of their tips, although I reserve the right to point out bits that are ill advised or incorrect. Many of the recommendations were repetitive, and underscore things I’ve said myself–although I suspect they will carry more weight coming from students who have been through the class. Some of the comments are wise, some amusing, some downright worrisome or simply baffling. Here, for your edification, is the complete collection of tips on what you should know if you ever find yourself in my Campaigns class, according to this semester’s students:

  Read more »

  Tags: PR campaigns, PR Students, teaching

• More on NCA, and some thoughts on crisis and Mumbai

  29Nov
  Categories: Uncategorized Comments: 0

  My previous entry was partly for my personal records, and also a response to a Twittered request by Constantin Basturea for details about social media-related panels at the conference, which I was happy to oblige. However, my conference attendance or interest wasn’t limited solely to presentations regarding the online world. Aside from a very interesting panel on mentoring, sponsored by the Mass Communication Division and which I hope becomes a regular feature of the conference, my NCA experience also centered around one of my central research interests: crisis communication and management.

  I noticed that there continues to be an emphasis, in the public relations research on this topic, on rhetorical strategies regarding image restoration/repair/renewal.This year, I was happy to see a shift away from concentrating solely on the mid-crisis or immediate post-crisis stage, and more discussion of crisis preparation, prevention, and learning. The “pre-crisis” period–aka, any point in time when a crisis is not (knowingly) in full swing, or just ended–also overlaps with risk communication and issues management, and I enjoyed several presentations on these topics. Read more »

  Tags: complexity, crisis, NCA, public relations, terrorism

• NCA postmortem

  24Nov
  Categories: Uncategorized Comments: 0

  Despite my embarrassing neglect of this space over the last few months, I’m neither dead nor trapped under a heavy piece of furniture–unless you count the metaphorical heavy furniture of a busy new job and numerous research projects in progress. To compensate a bit, and also for my personal records, I thought I would write a bit about this year’s NCA conference. I’m currently sitting in the San Diego airport waiting for my flight home, so it’s all very fresh in my mind.

  This year’s conference was a short one for me: given last week’s Cronkite Week celebrations, particularly the luncheon on Friday to honor our award recipients Jim Lehrer and Robin McNeil, I didn’t get to San Diego until Saturday. I was supposed to arrive early in the morning, but fog caused such serious delays I didn’t make it to the Manchester Hyatt until around noon. So I missed both the Top Papers session and business meeting for the PR division, unfortunately. Read more »

  Tags: NCA, public relations, social media

• Life emergence

  14Sep
  Categories: Uncategorized Comments: 0

  Much of my work deals with theories of complexity, seeking ways to operationalize the concepts of these natural science theories for use in social science research, and develop new complexity-based concepts for the study of social phenomena. Eventually I’ll write a blog post (or six) that deals with some of these concepts in greater depth, but here’s a quick and dirty summary of some of the key characteristics of complex systems:

  • they are made up of individual elements, or agents;
  • these agents engage in local, recurrent interactions based on rules that may change as circumstances evolve;
  • these interactions lead to patterns of self-organization among agents, as they form groups and develop modes of behavior to adapt to internal and external changes (self-organization is also often referred to as emergence);
  • as a result, the system is dynamic and unstable, subject to both gradual and sudden change;
  • everything that occurs within the system is dependent on what has come before: history plays a central role in self-organization and system change, even when the changes are nonlinear (cannot be immediately traced to a proximate cause);
  • the boundaries of complex systems are highly permeable and not clearly defined: the extreme level of interdependency makes it difficult to say what lies “inside” the system, and what lies “outside”;
  • for similar reasons, complex systems cannot be reduced: extracting part of the system, or statistical sampling, will necessarily lead to the loss of significant sets of relationships among agents, and thus obscure some sources and/or reflections of change.

  One reason that the complexity sciences have resonated so deeply with me ever since I first discovered their existence, several years ago, is that I can so clearly see evidence of complexity in my own life. Seemingly random interactions form recognizable, emergent patterns over time, and an insistence on expecting linear a+b=c results is bound to meet with disappointment. Personally, I’ve found it less stressful and more satisfying to embrace nonlinear outcomes and allow myself to be surprised by where life takes me. (This doesn’t mean accepting fatalism: the importance of history and local interactions means that I have to focus on my own efforts, actions, and relationships. They just may not end up leading to where I think they will.)

  My professional interest in complexity has produced some emergent patterns as well. First, it led me to pursue a doctorate, which wasn’t at all my initial plan, and to write the book that came out this past summer. Both were the result of my master’s thesis and my resulting relationship with Priscilla Murphy, who was the only person writing about public relations and complexity back when I first began studying these issues. It has led me to study networks and narratives, which in turn have introduced me to certain people and bodies of literature. And at the moment, it has led me to projects as diverse as my current research on Twitter in public relations, collaboration with my colleague Yushim Kim in the School of Public Affairs here at ASU’s downtown campus, and with the Consortium for Strategic Communication led by Steve Corman at the Hugh Downs School of Human Communication in Tempe.

  As recently as six years ago, I never could have foreseen any of the above, yet in retrospect it all fits together perfectly. (That’s what I would call the narrative dimension of complexity.) I love seeing the emergent patterns in my life and my work.

  Tags: complexity, life