Social media brings changes to public relations, journalism
3November 5, 2013 by EmilyCRios
Social media is changing the way many industries go about conducting business and reaching their audience. Two industries that have had to change and evolve with the increasing dependency on social media are journalism and public relations.
Social media allows journalism, PR and any professionals the platform to reach and engage with their audience directly and instantaneously.
Lisa Barone offers several ways that those working in PR can utilize what social media has to offer when working on campaigns. According to Barone PR and social media can be integrated through:
- Media Relations: Allows people to build real relationships over time. Tools such as Journalists Tweet, Technorati and MuckRack can be utilized to identify influential journalists and bloggers.
- Consumer Outreach: Brands can bow speak directly to their audience.
- Use Pitchable Assets as Conversation Starters: Use what you have available to tell a story or get someone’s attention.
- More Measurement: Brand’s and PR professionals can track how many fans a brand has, what the fans are saying and who they are sharing their opinions with.
In order to compete journalists have had to adapt to the popularity of social media and find a way to deliver the news to their audience in non-traditional ways. “As daily Internet usage becomes increasingly ubiquitous, suddenly people have started going online, specifically to social media networks like Reddit or Facebook, to get their news and print media syndications have begun to die off as a result. Nearly 60% of people use Facebook as a recurring news source while magazines like Newsweek struggle to move a substantial number of magazines (Jayson DeMers).
Social media has put journalism in the hands of anyone is who has profiles. This was evident during the 2011 Egyptian uprisings. In an effort to stop the flow of information leaving the country Egyptian officials blocked access to Facebook and Twitter, but individuals who wanted the world to see what was going on in the region created posts via HootSuite that were then sent to their profiles. In addition to making crowdsourcing easier for journalists social media, according to Alyssa Kritsch, is changing journalism by allowing the opportunity to track and listen to what people are talking about, amplify your story and evaluate how you are doing through analytics tools.
An increased reliance on social media is changing the way journalists break their stories and just because everyone can break and share news via social media does not mean that they can be trusted,
In what ways do you see social media changing how industries )other than PR and journalism) operate?
Where do you get most of your news from?
Emily C. Rios 
I think SM will constantly change and evolve as more platforms are developed, and existing ones mature. Think about Facebook has evolved from the original concept. For a business like mine, I truly believe it is just a matter of time before ecommerce is done exclusively through social media. Why shop around at different websites when it can all essentially be linked through Facebook (or the like)?
It is interesting to watch social media sites change and evolve as new sites are constantly being added into the mix. Ecommerce through social media would be great for consumers and for business especially small businesses.
I get most of my news from posts made by news organizations. I use Facebook as a news aggregator. It is quick and I don’t have to be going to different websites to find information. Although I do use Apps to read the news. I find that I want news to come to me not the other way around. This is a challenge because people have gotten used to receiving information without much effort.