After web 2.0 and the web 3.0, PR 2.0 and now we are moving to other public relations that not everyone look deeper and interested to this world of public relations, which are government public relations. This field of public relations also moving to another stage of the public relations which is gov2.0 as after the new media are born in this world.
According to the Social Media Guide, Social media is user generated content that is shared over the internet via technologies that promote engagement, sharing and collaboration. In another view, media is an instrument on communication, like a newspaper or a radio, thus social media would be a social instrument of communication
Social media offers numerous opportunities for public relations practitioners to interact with the public while adopting new forms of technology and integrating them into their everyday lives.
The use of social media is so viral, there now are several recently published books that explore how blogs, social media and other new technologies are changing the way organizations communicate with strategic publics such as employees, customers, stockholders, communities, governments and other stakeholders.
Social media somehow plays a big role now as a form of communication because of its convenience and benefits, it is such a widely use method of communicating. Public relations Practitioners should try to make full use or the most of social media. Failure to do so might result in disappointments later on.
Speculations are raised when the government party faced a loss in the 2008 General Election 2008 all because of the use of social media. The 12th Malaysian general election witnessed a drastic change until it was named ‘political tsunami' had hit the nation (The Star,2008). The National Front (BN) lost quite badly to some opposing parties in Terengganu, Penang. But nevertheless, these were all just speculations and word of mouth from people.
Social media became more viral as after these incident. All the politicians start to use social media to react and get closer to the public. As well government departments, they also started to use social media in order to disseminate information towards the public as they realize these is the best medium in these new technology advanced era.
The social media can be used in many situations including crisis management, promotions, marketing, persuasion, publicity and many more. Do the practitioners apply the use of social media in all of these aspects?
This may be implied in the Malaysian government as well which leads to the low level of social media usage compared to private sector. The process of adopting new tools and managing the related changes in work processes and policies is not easy for any type of organization.
Governments at all levels are beginning to put more exertion into deciphering social media devices that includes investigating better approaches for working and moving correspondence designs. It likewise includes the production of new arrangements and guidelines to urge fitting
utilize and to alleviate the dangers of social media instruments. Not surprisingly, given the emergent nature of social media, relatively few U.S. governments actually have a formalized set of policies to guide their own efforts, as well as for others to draw on or learn from.
As a consequence, governments are faced with reinterpreting and applying old policies that govern the use of the Internet or creating completely new policies (Hrdinová, Helbig, Peters, 2010).
As more people start to be familiar with the simplicity and convenience of communicating through social media sites, the use have expanded to the work place. In the last few years, governments have seen more and more requests by their employees to use social media to do their work. Recognizing the different reasons government employees engage in social media use and how they sometimes overlap is valuable in creating a social media policy. This is where the fret is raised because organizations are afraid practitioners or employees will misuse social media for their own benefits. However, many government agencies are still adapting to these new trend of communicating and efforts still needs to be done.
In the Nutshell, The development of media from traditional to new media has exposed many people to adapt to changes including Public Relations Practitioner. Social media not only allows public relations practitioners to reach out to and engage their publics in conversation, but also provides an avenue to strengthen media relations and also get closer to their stakeholders.
Written by,
Aizad Osman
Article review based on
http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2009/01/government-20-how-social-media-could-transform-gov-pr005/
http://www.accenture.com/SiteCollectionDocuments/PDF/Accenture-Digital-Citizen-Social-Media.pdf
http://forbesindia.com/blog/technology/governments-love-hate-relationship-with-social-media/
I feel bad for always repeat the same comment by stating how important social media at the moment, but as for this post - it wont be any different. Speaking about how social media is currently affecting the political world too, we can relate to a local example that was given by Aizad Osman on how BN lost most of their seat during the GE 2008 because they overlooked the importance of social media. Not only that, it is believed that in 2008 Obama defeated Romney partly because Romney's a social-media deaf while Obama's a social-media savvy.
ReplyDeleteHowever, just because a politician or the pr that representing him/her is active on Twitter or Facebook, wont guarantee anything. They also need to use these social media wisely to ensure people will always have a good impression towards them. So to conclude my point, I think it's very important for a PR practitioner or in this matter, government PR to use social media wisely in order to get trust as well as building a good rapport with the public.
so basically this article is talking about.....well social media and pr. very straightforward. impressive writings. so anyway, as we're all clear about the important of companies today to manage their social media well, it is also rather important to have a team, or of course, a pr team that is skilful in handling these mediums. we've witnessed many issues on the consequences of taking the wrong steps in these medias, so i would say, brief discussion, fast-decision, better insights, proper reference should be gained and practiced from time to time to help a party from coming out with irrelevant statements.
ReplyDeletewell i agree with syahmi about having to repeat the same comment that social media is important. well thats the truth and thats the fact. we cant deny the fact that many pr and politicians use social media to communicate and interact with their followers. first of all President Obama really did a great job in 2008 by using the power of social media for his campaign. indeed it was the best strategy for him and people are now using it, the power of social media. and recently we can see YB Khairy J was awarded for being the most active social media user (Twitter) on ShoutAward 2013. This award usually won by celebrities or any tweet famous. but for the first time we see a politician won for that award. wow! thats just amazing. politicians nowadays are just using these benefits to get closer to their public in order to serve the citizen better.
ReplyDeleteWow this takes me back to the GPPR subject we took in part 3. But yes, it has become the trend now for social media in politics. Even when its not the campaigning period, there's constantly the topic of politics and politicking on the internet. Not just in Malaysia. Like Syahmi said, Obama was very active in using new media and he did a good job with it, I must say. #teamobama #idontevenliveinamerica
ReplyDeleteBut you can't doubt it, new media is every where we go!