Social Media and Public Relations

Social Media and Public Relations

Social media is having a profound, but not yet fully understood impact on pub￾lic relations. In the 24/7 world of perpetually connected publics, will public

relations function as a dark art that spins (or tweets) self-interested variations

of the truth for credulous audiences? Or does the full glare of the Internet and

the increasing expectations of powerful publics motivate it to more honestly

engage to serve the public interest?

The purpose of this book is to examine the role of PR by exploring the

myriad ways that social media is reshaping its conceptualization, strategies,

and tactics. In particular, it explores the dichotomies of fake and authentic,

powerless and powerful, meaningless and meaningful. It exposes transgressions

committed by practitioners—the paucity of digital literacy, the lack of under￾standing of the norms of social media, naivety about corporate identity risks,

and the overarching emphasis on spin over authentic engagement. But it also

shows the power that closely networked social media users have to insert infor￾mation and opinion into discussions and force “false PR friends” to be less so.

This timely, challenging, and fascinating book will be of interest to all

students, researchers, and practitioners in Public Relations, Media, and

Communication Studies.

Judy Motion is Professor of Communication at the University of New South

Wales, Australia.

Robert L. Heath is Professor Emeritus at the University of Houston, USA.

Shirley Leitch is Dean and Professor of Communication at the Australian

National University, Australia.

Routledge New Directions in Public Relations and

Communication Research

Edited by Kevin Moloney

Routledge New Directions in Public Relations and Communication Research is a new

forum for the publication of books of original research in PR and related types

of communication. Its remit is to publish critical and challenging responses to

continuities and fractures in contemporary PR thinking and practice, and its

essential yet contested role in market-orientated, capitalist, liberal democracies

around the world. The series reflects the multiple and interdisciplinary forms

PR takes in a post-Grunigian world; the expanding roles which it performs,

and the increasing number of countries in which it is practised.

The series will examine current trends and explore new thinking on the key

questions which impact upon PR and communications including:

• Is the evolution of persuasive communications in Central and Eastern

Europe, China, Latin America, Japan, the Middle East and South East Asia

developing new forms or following Western models?

• What has been the impact of postmodern sociologies, cultural studies and

methodologies which are often critical of the traditional, conservative role of

PR in capitalist political economies, and in patriarchy, gender and ethnic roles?

• What is the impact of digital social media on politics, individual privacy

and PR practice? Is new technology changing the nature of content com￾municated, or simply reaching bigger audiences faster? Is digital PR a

cause or a consequence of political and cultural change?

Books in this series will be of interest to academics and researchers involved in

these expanding fields of study, as well as students undertaking advanced studies

in this area.

Public Relations and Nation

Building

Influencing Israel

Margalit Toledano and David McKie

Gender and Public Relations

Critical perspectives on voice, image

and identity

Edited by Christine Daymon and

Kristin Demetrious

Pathways to Public Relations

Histories of practice and profession

Edited by Burton Saint John III, Margot

Opdycke Lamme and Jacquie L’Etang

Positioning Theory and

Strategic Communication

A new approach to public relations

research and practice

Melanie James

Public Relations and the History

of Ideas

Simon Moore

Public Relations Ethics and

Professionalism

The shadow of excellence

Johanna Fawkes

Power, Diversity and Public

Relations

Lee Edwards

The Public Relations of

Everything

The ancient, modern and postmodern

dramatic history of an idea

Robert E. Brown

Political Reputation

Management

The strategy myth

Christian Schnee

Corporate Social Responsibility,

Sustainability and Public

Relations

Negotiating multiple complex

challenges

Donnalyn Pompper

Challenging Corporate Social

Responsibility

Lessons for public relations from the

casino industry

Jessalynn R. Strauss

Strategic Communication,

Social Media and Democracy

The challenge of the digital naturals

Edited by W. Timothy Coombs, Jesper

Falkheimer, Mats Heide and Philip

Young

Social Media and Public

Relations

Fake friends and powerful publics

Judy Motion, Robert L. Heath and

Shirley Leitch

Motion, Heath, and Leitch have done excellent work in the past and this is no

exception. The area of social media and public relations has long needed an author￾itative and critical text and Social Media and Public Relations fills that void.

Michael L. Kent, Professor, University of Tennessee Knoxville, USA

Social Media and Public Relations provides an insight into a growing area of focus

in social media while tying in emerging trends and historical perspectives in

public relations. This book helps explore the current issues, risks, opportu￾nities, and challenges involving social media from the audience perspective,

which can be applicable for practitioners and researchers – adding a needed

area of discussion in social media research and practice within public relations.

Karen Freberg, Assistant Professor, University of Louisville, Kentucky, USA

Social Media and Public Relations disrupts the notion that social media has ame￾liorated public relations. Motion, Heath, and Leitch question the relationship

between public relations and social media to reveal the complexities and ten￾sions between social media cultures and the promotion-oriented goals of public

relations. Sharply written and scrupulously documented, this is a must read for

scholars, practitioners, and students interested in the future of social media in

public relations.

Adam J. Saffer, Assistant Professor, The University of North Carolina at

Chapel Hill, NC, USA

Social Media and Public

Relations

Fake friends and powerful publics

Judy Motion, Robert L. Heath

and Shirley Leitch

First published 2016

by Routledge

2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

and by Routledge

711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

© 2016 Judy Motion, Robert L. Heath and Shirley Leitch

The right of Judy Motion, Robert L. Heath and Shirley Leitch to be identified as

authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with sections 77 and

78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or

utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now

known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any

information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the

publishers.

Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered

trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to

infringe.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Motion, Judy.

Social media and public relations : fake friends and powerful publics / Judy

Motion, Robert L. Heath, Shirley Leitch. -- 1 Edition.

pages cm. -- (Routledge new directions in public relations & communication

research)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. Social media. 2. Public relations. I. Heath, Robert L. (Robert Lawrence), 1941-

II. Leitch, Shirley, 1960- III. Title.

HM742.M68 2015

302.23’1--dc23

2015021332

ISBN: 978-0-415-85626-3 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-0-203-72779-9 (ebk)

Typeset in Bembo

by GreenGate Publishing Services, Tonbridge, Kent

Contents

Preface viii

Acknowledgements x

1 Identify the problems: social media and public relations 1

2 “Don’t do anything stupid”: social media affordances, policies,

and governance agendas 16

3 Create yourself: corporate identity for interconnected publics 35

4 Speak the truth: transparency, power/knowledge, and authenticity 46

5 Engage: one-way, two-way, and every-way 66

6 Connect creatively: worlds, identities, and publics as content

production and co-production 84

7 Engage critically: activist power 106

8 Protect yourself: issues of privacy and regulation 126

9 Know your risks: a collective orientation 144

10 Navigate the issues: situating power/knowledge within

public relations 164

11 Reshape policy: public–private clashes and collaborative

dialogue 184

12 Conclusion 206

Index 216

Preface

As we began this project, we knew that we would have to overcome two

obstacles, at least. One was the study of a topic that was in its formative stages.

Given that social media are continuing to develop, as are the patterns of users,

we would be writing on a topic for which little historical perspective was avail￾able. We knew that it would be challenging to know what was going on and

how people and public relations practitioners were using and responding to

social media trends. Scholars, practitioners, social media developers, and skilled

users were deeply engaged in making something happen. In the midst of all of

that uncertainty, we were confronted with the notion that social media were

(or were constrained from) being used for sociopolitical activism, terrorism,

and marketing. As we immersed ourselves in social media, we joined various

communities and sought to understand not only public relations practices but

also gain insights into user perspectives. Social media became a distraction, a

fascination, and at times, a procrastination technique. As critical scholars, our

attention was drawn to the cultural clash between the promotional cultures of

public relations and participatory cultures of social media; the shift in power/

knowledge relations; and the ways in which sociality played out in various

social media. At the heart of our inquiry was a concern for democratic prin￾ciples and equity practices. It seemed to us that social media was driving a

cultural transformation in which identities were formed and performed as users

engaged in collaborative relationships, exchanged information and meanings,

and shared their everyday lives more publicly. We have sought to document,

theorize and critique these cultural changes and the ways in which public rela￾tions seeks to influence such processes.

The second problem was time and geography. What seemed to be a

workable timetable failed for many reasons, and distance led to the diffi￾culties of coordinated work. On this last point, we decided that each of us

would be the lead author on various chapters, but no one would have the

task of making style and presentation totally consistent. Each of the authors

had special interests, read each other’s chapters, and made comments. Most

importantly, rather than severely differing over matters we tended to help

one another make points clearer and more forcefully. We shared articles,

cases, and encouragement.

In that spirit, rather than having the book read like something that was an

edited work, we agreed to acknowledge the individual chapters and the writer

who was primarily responsible for them, but the work is ours as a team. Judy

led Chapters 1, 2, 7 and 12, and co-authored Chapter 5 with Bob, who also

authored Chapters 6, 9, 10 and 11. Shirley authored Chapters 3, 4 and  8.

However well we presented the technical elements of social media, we do

believe that we shared a critical perspective, a pragmatic sense of the pos￾sibilities and limits of social media, and confidence that something important

is happening, something that needs early on a critique of purpose and prac￾tice. This book represents the culmination of many years of critical discussions

about public relations and its role in society. We believe that communication,

through the practice of public relations, can make society more fully function￾ing, and a better place to live. But we also know that swords have two edges

and cut both ways.

Acknowledgements

Our very sincere thanks to the many people who have contributed to this

book. So many wonderful students, academic colleagues and practitioners

have supported our work over the years—we are deeply appreciative of your

warm generosity. We would also like to acknowledge the series editor, Kevin

Moloney, who encouraged us to tackle this topic and Sinead Waldron, the edi￾torial assistant, whose encouragement and constant assistance was invaluable.

It is important for us to thank people who have contributed to our individual

chapters:

Judy: Thank you so much to Dan O’Reily-Rowe who helped me get started,

Kathleen Williams and Susanne Pratt for the scholarly provocations and encour￾agement, Madeleine my inspiring cheerleader and muse, and my beloved Tony

whose complete disregard for social media served as a valuable counterbalance.

Bob: Having advised public relations students in the 1990s that the Web

would be their playground, I thank those students, and colleagues, who helped

make my prediction come true. Thanks also for explaining to me how social

media work, and how people relate to them. Thanks to my four grandchildren,

I am at the cutting edge of technological and social use among youths.

Shirley: I dedicate my contributions to this book to: Summer—who taught

me all I know about social media; Jeanette, David, Ian, Dianne, Tony and

Gail—for the many, wonderful dinners at which they indulged my social

media obsession; Leo and Oscar—for their boundless joie de vivre; and NJ—

for always seeing the possibilities.

1 Identify the problems

Social media and public relations

Social media has opened up new possibilities and raised many questions for

public relations practitioners and academics. In the world of perpetually con￾nected publics, is public relations to be a dark art that spins (or tweets) the

truth for credulous publics? Or is this the time to conceptualize public relations

under the full glare of the Internet and the expectations of increasingly power￾ful publics? These questions speak to both the continuing relevance and ethical

basis of public relations. Answering them depends upon our better understand￾ing of the fundamental shifts that social media has wrought. Such analysis also

must be cautious to examine actual changes in practices and influences, and

not merely get caught up in designer or practitioner promotions of what social

media are and can accomplish.

The purpose of this book is to increase our understanding of the role of

public relations in social media through an exploration of the myriad ways

that social media is reshaping the core concepts and practices of public rela￾tions. These concepts include authenticity, power, knowledge, social capital,

dialogue, relationships, sharing, meaning, risk, transparency, and truth, as they

are played out in a social media contexts. Our intention is not to create a series

of dialectics that pit one notion or definition against another. Instead, we seek

to offer a series of problematizations and multiple theoretical insights into the

implications of changes that have been driven by working in social media

ecologies for public relations practice, scholarship, and pedagogy.

Problematization is a method of inquiry, interrogation and interpretation that we

adopt to query how particular meanings and practices have come to dominate.

The aim of problematization is to examine the “assumptions, the familiar, unchal￾lenged, unconsidered modes of thought that we accept” (Foucault, 1988, p. 154).

One such problematization is considering whether social media are just another

channel or a unique channel. Also, we can muse about social media with a lens

provided by Marshall McLuhan: Is social media a message or merely a medium?

A starting point for adopting problematization as our mode of inquiry and

critique is questioning our ways of thinking about and making sense of the

relationship between public relations and social media. Here we pose a set of

questions that are designed to open up possibilities, identify vulnerabilities and

examine common transgressions:

2 Identify the problems

• What is the nature of the relationship between public relations and social

media?

• How do power relations play out within the practices of public relations

in social media?

• What are the implications of public relations practices within social media

contexts for identity and relationships?

• In what ways does social media open up or reconfigure discursive pos￾sibilities for public relations?

• Does social media increase transparency or merely give it one more kalei￾doscopic twist?

The potential for an improved, engaged form of public relations within social

media spaces needs to be considered in conjunction with contemporary scholar￾ship. Public relations, Heath (2001) suggested, is a rhetorical practice concerned

with influencing meaning production and sense-making. Meaning oriented

approaches have primarily interpreted public relations efforts as attempts to fix

certain meanings and overturn others (Motion and Leitch, 1996). In contrast,

relational approaches (Ferguson, 1984; Hutton, 1999; Ledingham and Bruning,

1999) have interpreted public relations as a strategic relationship building and

management process. Within both of these approaches public relations is often

theorized as an instrumental resource for corporate advancement; either from

functionalist perspectives in which the role of public relations is understood to be

about improving the effectiveness of public relations at achieving strategic goals,

or from critical perspectives that aim to identify and change inequitable power

relations (Trujillo and Toth, 1987). Functionalist perspectives are criticized for

serving the interests of status quo, elitist power relations, falling into the trap of

isolating problems from their societal contexts, and attempting to achieve a type

of “scientific” certainty, which is illusory. Critical perspectives are accused of

unconstructive negativity and of lacking relevance and utility for public relations

practice. The problem with these generalizations is that although they capture

the weaknesses of each approach, they do not acknowledge that increasingly the

boundaries between these two approaches are blurring and shifting as scholars

work across multiple theories and themes (Motion et al., 2013).

More recently, Heath (2010, p. 1) identified three dominant paradigms of

public relations that he termed “management adjustive, discourse engagement

and normative/critical/ethical.” These conceptualizations of public relations,

we suggest, may be usefully applied to understand the role of public relations

in social media. The management adjustive paradigm takes into considera￾tion current developments in the very dynamic nature of managerial theory

and practice about organizational responsiveness to complexity and chaos.

Do organizations organize to communicate or communicate to organize? An

issues management approach underpins the paradigm and emphasizes a pro￾active philosophy that aligns multidimensional, layered and textual interests

to develop mutually beneficial relationships through managerial processes and

societal engagements.

Identify the problems 3

Within the discourse engagement paradigm, public relations strategies

are increasingly played out within engagement and participative communi￾cation processes that open up dialogic spaces and allow publics to reframe

and debate salient issues ( De Bussey, 2010; Hughes and Demetrious, 2006;

Motion and Leitch, 2008). Key ideas that are applied within the discourse

engagement paradigm include change, power relations, legitimacy, and

cocreated meanings. The discourse engagement paradigm challenges the

pseudoscientific promotional practices that seek to close down debate and

generate acceptance or acquiescence. Engagement theory forces academics

and practitioners to abandon a prevailing assumption that dominant coali￾tions’ elites can dominate discourse processes to predetermined ends. Such

linear thinking is giving way to a much more fluid paradigm that sees public

relations as flow through engagement.

Within the normative/critical/ethical paradigm an emphasis is placed on the

responsibilities and societal obligations of public relations and the potential for

building harmony and resolving discord. A significant corpus of public rela￾tions research now focuses beyond the organization to individual, national, and

societal imperatives that intersect historical, philosophical, political, cultural,

technological and environmental concerns. Emergent multidisciplinary and

multidimensional approaches include, for example, postmodern (Holtzhausen,

2000; McKie 2001, 2010), poststructuralist ( Motion and Leitch, 2009), and

postcolonial critiques ( McKie and Munshi, 2007), themes of power, globaliza￾tion, diversity and change ( Bardhah and Weaver, 2011; Curtin and Gaither,

2007; Edwards and Hodges, 2011; Heath et al., 2010; Sriramesh and Vercˇicˇ,

2009), and ethics and corporate responsibility ( Cheney and Christensen, 2001;

L’Etang, 1995). The guiding principles of proactive adjustment, collabora￾tive communication, and responsible behavior that Heath (2010) identified

for public relations practice also apply to participation in social media spaces.

Heath’s (2010) suggestion that an organization should reflectively adjust its

behavior to focus on mutual interests and benefits that meet societal ideals

and expectations, communicate collaboratively through discourse to develop

shared meanings, and behave ethically, could form philosophical guidelines for

organizations seeking to develop social media policies and open up significant

possibilities for expanding what is understood as public relations and how it is

practiced in these spaces.

Defining social media

Teasing out terminological distinctions and deploying current social media

expressions is essential for public relations professionals, scholars and educa￾tors. Social media terminology is constantly changing as technologies evolve

and practices change—what was once known as Web 2.0 or “new media”

is now commonly referred to as social media or, more formally, social net￾work sites (boyd and Ellison, 2008). The evolution of Web 2.0 into an

assemblage of Internet applications that facilitate “participation, connectivity,

4 Identify the problems

user-generation, information sharing, and collaboration” (Henderson and

Bowley, 2010) informs many of the definitions of social media. The tech￾nologies, platforms and applications that underpin social media may also be

itemized to provide an integrated, inventory-oriented definition, for example:

The notion of social media is associated with new digital media phenomena

such as blogs, social networking sites, location-based services, microblogs,

photo- and video- sharing sites, etc., in which ordinary users (i.e. not only

media professionals) can communicate with each other and create and

share content with others online through their personal networked com￾puters and digital mobile devices.

(Bechmann and Lomborg, 2013, p. 767)

The interactive, participatory characteristics of social media may prove a more

useful and stable definitional feature; definitions that itemize the technologies,

platforms and applications have the potential to rapidly date.

The social meaning of digital technologies, according to Stadler (2012,

p. 242) is “shaped and reshaped by how they are embedded into social life” .

Conversely, Castells (2009) observed that digital technologies are transforming

the way that society is organized and characterized the reorganized structure as

a networked society. For public relations professionals, engagement with net￾works that operate in a mediated space requires an understanding of networked

practices and how they fit into a wider societal context (boyd, 2007). Within

social media spaces users form or join networked communities to engage in

social interactions and share and filter content such as textual information or

conversations, photos, pictures or videos (boyd, 2007). Social media is, funda￾mentally, a space for connecting and conversing with people.

In addition to understanding the implications of a restructured, networked

social life, public relations professionals need to take into account deinstitution￾alization, user-driven content, networked interactive communities and Web

2.0 features (Bechmann and Lomborg, 2013). Media organizations no longer

control content delivery and channels of distribution, a phenomenon that is

referred to as deinstitutionalization. Bechmann and Lomborg (2013) explained

that “most theories of social media suggest some degree of collapse or oscilla￾tion between producer and audience when users create content”—in contrast

to the “media producer-text-audience model” (p. 766). As a consequence,

user-created content is reconfiguring the role (and possibly power) of tradi￾tional media institutions such as print or television news organizations. The

role of intermediaries has become less significant or is changing, and (as will

be discussed in Chapter 4 in relation to authenticity) may actually lead publics

to devalue communications as inauthentic precisely because intermediaries are

involved. The sources and types of value that public relations may offer for

users within deinstitutionalized social media spaces is therefore problematic.

However, although the decentralized structure has impacted on traditional

media, Castells (2009) notes that deinstitutionalization is only partial—social