A Paradigm Shift

Below are my thoughts on the changing role of communications. Take this with a grain of salt.  I’m hardly an oracle of communication theory, but I’d love to see what Edward Bernays would say about technology today. Much hubris of grad student with an inflated ego, who has a damn cool thesis topic. 

This is such a fascinating time to be studying communications. The very nature of the field is changing, making it so difficult to keep up with everything.

Web 2.0, social media, user-generated content, and new media. These are all buzzwords in the field right now. But what do they mean? To the latent person who only noticed the communications world on Superbowl Sunday, this means absolutely nothing. To the communications professional, this is an absolutely terrifying time because the tried and true models are completely changing.

Currently, there are two trains of thought:

1) New media is nice. We should slap our new commercial on YouTube and maybe get the CEO to blog if we have time. These are just a few extra tools in the tool-shed.

2) We are at a critical juncture in the world of communications. Top-down, broadcast, mass communication no longer works. For the first time, mass-to-one, mass-to-mass, one-to-mass, and one-on-one communication are possible, affordable and efficient. The traditional models are changing, and we need to be aware of this.

Why are the web people the only ones getting this. This is a completely unheard of thought in the PR field. The fact that I’m trained in classic PR and understand the strategy behind new media is a rare exception. There are only a few of us around.

Just as the PR field is starting to experience legitimacy, everything is changing. I do feel sorry for the established folk, who just don’t get it. The more I research my thesis on political activism, the more I realize this is a central tenet. Without understanding these concepts, you’re going to fail in the communications world within the next decade.

1) You can no longer control the message. Youtube and blogs have made this a very painful lesson. It’s not possible to control what information is out there about you. It’s better to try to innoculate and put as much out there as possible and then let the consumer decide. Talking points are great, but to the savvy Internet user (a growing majority of people under 36), they aren’t believable. This upcoming election will be really interesting to watch because campaign managers are starting to see this and prepping candidates to literally be “on” 24/7.

2) Communication is no longer an establishment. This is only starting to be seen. While the mainstream media will always be around and respected, there are multitudes of news sources out there reporting on anything and everything. Sure, accountability and credibility are major issues, but as new mediums start to catch on, self-regulation occurs. We’re starting to see this in the blogosphere. I anticipate it with videos, podcasting and any other new technology that emerges. As I love to say, the 4th Estate has been democratized.

3) If you don’t communicate, someone will do it for you. Technology has created more methods of communicating than ever before and decreased the prices. Just look at how much printing costs have decreased in recent years. If you don’t get your message out there, and use the method preferred by your audience, you’re in trouble.

I could probably add on to this, but these are some central changes that I see happening. The only problem is that these have barely been theorized. There’s not a lot of research to prove them, and I’m struggling to find quantitative data to back up my assertions.