Introduction to Social Media Concepts 1

“I think anyone on the internet with eyeballs at this time and place is a bargain. Because it’s so new, no one
really knows what they’re worth.”
Logan Paul (@LoganPaul, 2016)

“Much of the frenzy of access is facilitated by mobile devices.”

Pew Research Center (@pewinternet, 2015)

“We live in a time where brands are people and people are brands.”
Brian Solis (@briansolis, 2013)

On a cool mid-April day in 2013, tragedy struck at the finish line of the Boston Marathon. Two
bombs were detonated, injuring dozens of runners and spectators. As journalists scrambled to
learn what happened and event organizers worked with emergency responders, Twitter
instantaneously lit up with a burst of information, images and video. Some of the initial
reports by eyewitnesses and media were accurate, but there was also a stream of false
information spreading across users’ social networks. At Golin, their real-time public relations
newsroom The Bridge immediately alerted marketing client Cisco, which pulled content to
avoid appearing disconnected from unfolding events (PR News, 2013). It was a correct
decision, as the chaotic scene generated massive amounts of information, including numerous
factual errors.
Meanwhile, the Twitter social network site (SNS) hashtag (#) #BostonMarathon had been
used for live tweeting photographs and positive news about the annual event, but now it was
the online space to track responses to the attack. Unfortunately, even mainstream news media,
such as CNN and ESPN, reported inaccurate information in the early hours and days of
coverage, as in this tweet: “@SportsCenter: An arrest has been made in the Boston Marathon
bombings, CNN reports” (April 17, 2013). The incorrect tweet was retweeted 13,930 times and
made a favorite 2,476 times. A 2015 documentary, The Thread, later revealed the role that the
Copyright © 2017. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved.

social media site Reddit and its “Redditors” played curating content during the manhunt, and
the “fake news” problem foreshadowed a rise in false information during the 2016 election—
from a bizarre “Pizzagate” conspiracy theory about Hillary Clinton to claims of paid protesters
of President-elect Donald Trump (Silverman, 2016; Maheshwari, 2016). Massanari (2015) views
Reddit as an SNS (though less “chaotic” than its 4chan related form), in which participation
through upvoting and downvoting aggregated stories is about culture, community and play:
“Voting is intended to show others what material deserves more (or less) attention from the
community” (pp. 3, 47). In the case of the Boston bombing investigation, Reddit was seen as
having “potential for enabling collective action, whether for good or for ill” (p. 6). The use of

Lipschultz, J. H. (2017). Social media communication : Concepts, practices, data, law and ethics. Taylor & Francis Group.
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 social networking for “collective intelligence” (p. 47), however, may devolve into “mob
justice” or a vehicle for “underlying distrust of law enforcement” (p. 49).
As the Boston Marathon bombing investigation continued, social media also shared graphic
YouTube video of the explosions and aftermath. Six months later, the bombing event
continued to attract social media attention—from the Boston Red Sox World Series parade
stop at the marathon finish line to the photograph posted online of an inappropriate
Halloween costume. A 22-year-old from Michigan dressed as a Boston Marathon bombing
victim, and she sparked a large negative reaction from her Instagram photo that was also
shared on Twitter.
The online publication BuzzFeed reported on the story of Alicia Ann Lynch, 22, from
Michigan, who received thousands of negative tweets and even death threats. One called
Lynch “an absolutely disgusting human being.” Clearly, Lynch’s dress was insensitive, but
Twitter users went so far as to identify her by sharing a photo of her Michigan driver’s license.
After deleting social media accounts, Lynch briefly returned on Twitter before having her
account suspended. Lynch claimed that this later online apology reported by media came from
someone else: “@SomeSKANKinMI: Plz stop with the death threats towards my parents. They
did nothing wrong. I was the one in the wrong and I am paying for being insensitive”
(November 1, 2013). Lynch apologized with a simple “I’m sorry” on Twitter, but the attacks
continued. Eventually, some on Twitter accepted the apology and called the continuing online
“rage” an example of cyber-bullying and online mob behavior (Zarrell, 2013).
A practitioner of journalism, public relations (PR), advertising or marketing needs to
understand how to effectively operate within social media. There is no single way because
social media communication can be political and cultural. For example, Shezanne Cassim, 29,
spent nearly one year in a Dubai prison for posting a parody YouTube video before the
Minnesotan was released in late 2013 (Gumuchian and Sidner, 2013). What might have been
considered harmless in the U.S.—poking fun at suburban teens liking hip-hop music culture—
was found to be criminal in the United Arab Emirates. However, by developing strategies
through planning and creating tactics, it is possible to avoid social media pitfalls and serve
many goals within media and other organizations.
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Box 1.1
Air Berlin’s Failed Customer Online Engagement

In a less dramatic example of online engagement, Air Berlin found out the hard way that
engaging customers on Twitter might produce unintended results. When the airline lost a
business traveler’s luggage, the exchange between a social media content manager and
customer turned into a very public branding #fail.

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 @_5foot1: Arrived in Dusseldorf without my bag. @airberlin are useless. No
apology, no idea. What happened to German efficiency?
@airberlin—@_5foot1: We’re sorry for the inconvenience caused. Did you
contact the Lost & Found at Düsseldorf airport?
@_5foot1—@airberlin: of course. Bag left in LDN. No assurance it will be on the
next flight. I’m here for business meetings with no clothes.
@airberlin—@_5foot1: We understand how annoying this is and apologise!
Unfortunately we can’t help you right now, the Lost & Found will contact you.

The next day:

@_5foot1—@airberlin: Do you have a number i can call and speak to a human

being. The tracking number is giving me no info.
@airberlin—@_5foot1: Unfortunately there is no number I can give you, the Lost
& Found will get in touch as soon as they found your bag.

While Air Berlin was correct to engage the customer, the conversation probably
should have been taken off Twitter and onto a telephone with an eye toward solving the
problem through traditional customer service. Perhaps the airline could have offered to
buy the customer a set of clothes for his business meeting. The poor experience also
could have been converted into positive social media message engagement.

Source: Waldman, K. (2013, September 4). I’m Here for Business Meetings with No
Clothes. Slate.
www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2013/09/air_berlin_lost_luggage_the_german_airline_

When Hurricane Sandy hit the East Coast in late October of 2012, it marked what the
technology site Mashable later called a “Social Storm.” The storm, tracked on Twitter with the
hashtag #Sandy, was perhaps the first large-scale natural disaster in which officials coordinated
to “disseminate emergency information to residents and provide emergency services in
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response to residents’ posts” (Berkman, 2013, para. 6). On the one hand, citizens were urged to
stay indoors and remain safe. On the other hand, the city monitored social media for reports
from those venturing outside. One official said, “At no point, did we actively ask the public to
collect media.”
“You see an enormous number of people who are using social media and consuming social media, both producing and
discovering information, to a much higher extent than you would at any other point,” Rachel Haot (@rachelhaot), chief
digital officer for New York City, told Mashable.
(Berkman, 2013, para. 7)

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 In 2005 only about 5% of people in the U.S. used social media, but Pew Research Center
reported in early 2017 that seven in ten were active (Pew Research Center, 2017)—in just 12
years we moved from a relatively small band of college student users to presidents and world
leaders tweeting policy to millions. One could argue that social media were at the center of
political change that included the rise of the “alt-right” movement, promotion of racism,
spread of fake news and even a potential contributor in the election of Donald Trump
(Romano, 2016). Aja Romano (@ajaromano) at Vox.com concluded that: “All of this happened,
to a large degree, because of the internet—specifically because of social media, and the
convergence of elements that played out across social media” (para. 5). Pew data found that
“20% of social media users say they’ve modified their stance on a social or political issue
because of material they saw on social media, and 17% say social media … helped to change
their views about a specific candidate” (Anderson, 2016, para. 3)—more than enough to impact
an election outcome. Among content choices was Russian-funded RT America television. It
had more YouTube subscribers than BBC World, CNN/CNN International and Al Jazeera
English, even though RT had comparatively fewer Twitter followers (Drum, 2017). The 2016
U.S. presidential election year clearly was a complex mix, as reflected in Twitter’s top hashtag
list that included the Olympics, politics and entertainment: 1. #Rio2016; 2. #Election2016; 3.
#PokemonGo; 4. #Euro2016; 5. #Oscars; 6. #Brexit; 7. #BlackLivesMatter; 8. #Trump; 9. #RIP;
and 10. #GameofThrones (Kottasova, 2016). From the user desire to filter content to the need
for social media literacy skills, global media encompass the most important aspects of private
and public life.
The desire of individuals to engage and participate has its roots in technological
developments more than five decades ago. The origins of this social media revolution can be
found in the development of Internet structures, beginning with a 1960s military project called
ARPANET. Early personal computer users’ interest in local bulletin board systems (BBS) in the
1980s was a harbinger of interest in networked communication. The explosive growth of
email, which remains the leading online function, and the World Wide Web in the 1990s
sparked scholarly interest in the study of computer- mediated communication (CMC). The
early site LiveJournal demonstrated that individuals like to share personal information with
Copyright © 2017. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved.

friends. The popular social sites Friendster, LinkedIn and MySpace launched in 2002–03.
LinkedIn’s growth continues, as the site was purchased by Microsoft in 2016 and focuses on
cultivation of professional networks through the sharing of business-oriented content.
MySpace remains very active within the music industry and other targeted areas. There was a
lot of early 21st-century interest in “participatory media, online community newspapers, and
citizen journalism” (Mathison, 2009, p. 311). During a subway bombing in London in 2005, the
BBC used camera-phone video for the first time, along with information from thousands of
emails and photographs.
YouTube’s first video, “Me at the Zoo,” had four million views at a time when video

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 streaming was slow and cumbersome. The brief San Diego Zoo video demonstrated that there
was audience interest in non-professional video content.
At about the same time, the Craigslist site had grown from an email list developed in the
mid-1990s to a website with nearly two billion page views. Wikipedia also was growing in
online popularity. Facebook in 2006 evolved from a university student platform to a public
site. Twitter was about to burst onto the scene, ushering in communication brevity with its
140-character limitation for each tweet. One of the early defining moments of the social
media era in the U.S. happened about a decade ago. A US Airways jet made a crash landing in
New York’s Hudson River, and entrepreneur Janis Krums (@jkrums) posted a dramatic
photograph on Twitter before news media could arrive at the scene.
Copyright © 2017. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved.

Figure 1.1 The first YouTube video was not very dramatic.

Lipschultz, J. H. (2017). Social media communication : Concepts, practices, data, law and ethics. Taylor & Francis Group.
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 Figure 1.2 “@jkrums: There’s a plane in the Hudson. I’m on the ferry going to pick up the people. Crazy.”
Source: https://twitter.com/jkrums, posted at: Sarno, D. (2009, January 15). Citizen Photo of Hudson River Plane Crash Shows
Web’s Reporting Power. Los Angeles Times. http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2009/01/citizen-photo-
o.html#sthash.X2PUIScJ.dpuf.

The news value of the photograph came to symbolize the powerful combination of millions
of citizens and their mobile phones. Other top moments in the development of social media
include:

TMZ reported the death of entertainer Michael Jackson in 2009

(http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2009/12/top-10-social-media-
events.html).
The Library of Congress decided in 2010 to archive all tweets since the Twitter 2006
launch (www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/12/29/social-media-moments-
2010_n_802024.html).
Wyclef Jean’s Yele Haiti Foundation raised $1 million through $5 donations on
Twitter and mobile following the 2010 earthquake
Copyright © 2017. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved.

(www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/12/29/social-media-moments-2010_n_802024.html).
Rebecca Black uploaded a music video to YouTube in 2011, and it went viral with
more than 160 million views in its first few days
(http://mashable.com/2011/12/15/social-media-moments-2011/).
The meme became popular in 2011. After University of California campus police
pepper-sprayed student protesters who posted a video, the event was mocked
through a series of viral images (http://gawker.com/5861431/uc-davis-pepper-spray-
cop-is-now-a-meme/).

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 LinkedIn skyrocketed to 90 million registered users by 2011.
Actor Charlie Sheen joined Twitter in 2011 and had accumulated more than one
million followers in just over one day.
Pinterest, Instagram and Tumblr broadened the social media landscape in 2012 by
offering significant competition for user attention
(http://mashable.com/2012/12/23/social-media-2012/).
Vine became the hot app of 2013. By limiting users to six-second looping mobile
video, it created Twitter-like communication boundaries (www.youtube.com/watch?
v=0wRUDazRh9I), but then Twitter announced in 2016 that is was closing the once
popular app.
Instagram, owned by Facebook, grew from more than 150 million users in 2013, as
Facebook grew to more than 1.5 billion across the globe. By the beginning of 2017,
AdWeek.com estimated that Instagram had 600 million users, passing Twitter’s 320
million active on the site (www.adweek.com/news/technology/instagram-gained-
100-million-users-6-months-now-has-600-million-accounts-175126;
www.businessnewsdaily.com/7832-social-media-for-business.html).
Snapchat was the fastest growing social media site among young users, with more
than 150 million daily—more than 60 million of those in the U.S. and Canada (18% of
users, 30% of millennial users), with about ten billion daily video views
(http://expandedramblings.com/index.php/snapchat-statistics/).
About six in ten Americans now get news from social media, and nearly 20% are
frequent social news users (www.journalism.org/2016/05/26/news-use-across-social-
media-platforms-2016/).
Copyright © 2017. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved.

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 Figure 1.3 This University of California “Sunday Afternoon” pepper spray meme spread as a viral social media image.

Social media are distinguished from other online uses by a high level of interactivity, the
importance of user identity formation and an openness to share content across developing
communities. Social media reside within a broader context of social networking:
Similar to other social media, the overall dynamics of online social networks can be tied to centrifugal forces of
globalization that are gradually bridging cultural divides… . Being part of the globalization trend, the use of online social
networking continues to vary due to social, cultural, and political reasons …
(Kurylo and Dumova, 2016, p. 2)

Social networks are technical infrastructure, interactive, increasingly mobile, yet ambiguous
and paradoxical in terms of power, control and emerging social movements. In part, this is
because the use of networking and social media as tools of social change typically is met with
harsh responses. In Turkey, for example, about 1,656 social media users were arrested “for
Copyright © 2017. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved.

allegedly supporting terrorist organizations or insulting officials on social media” after a failed
coup (AP, 2016, para. 1). Thousands more were under investigation.
Definitions vary, but the fundamental character of SNS engagement is the linkage of
individuals through online technology as a way to communicate using a variety of media
forms. Social media also are characterized by the creation of new sites. Many of the newest
are focused on mobile communication, catering to smartphone and tablet users. This
dynamic and evolving nature of technology has helped social media spread in popularity to
most of the world. Less is known about decisions to use or not use social media, leaving a site
but returning later, addiction urges (“withdrawal, sudden urges, limited self control, etc.”) and

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 negotiation of boundaries through perception of “surveillance and impression management”
(Baumer, Guha, Quan, Mimno and Gay, 2015, p. 10).
The global Internet is huge. China blocked sites such as Facebook and Twitter but hosts
government-sponsored social media services. There were about 591 million users three years
ago, and this jumped to more than 721 million by the end of 2016—nearly as many as all other
countries combined (Internet Society, 2016; Desilver, 2013). China mirrors international trends
of rapidly growing mobile Internet use projected to grow to more than half the population in
the next few years. While Facebook, YouTube, Google+, Twitter and LinkedIn are among top
global sites for social media, Snapchat, Instagram and Pinterest are rapidly growing, and sites
such as Orkut, Badoo, Sina Weibo, Bebo and VKontakte (VK) also have large numbers of
international users (Lunden, 2014).
This book focuses on the emergence of social media communication as a primary source of
information for people across the world. Drawing from the historical Edelman PR media
cloverleaf and its more recent iteration, social media are among four overlapping
environments, which also include traditional media, owned media and hybrid media. Print and
broadcast media once were leaders of most public discussion and some public opinion. With
the development of the Internet and Web in the 1990s, companies began to develop websites.
These owned media, along with application software (apps), turned all of those with online
identities into media companies. In this century, hybrid media emerged from blogging.
HuffPost (The Huffington Post) was one of the earliest hybrid media to take advantage of the
shift by commercializing it and activating a network of citizen bloggers. Medium, LinkedIn
Pulse, Tumblr, Blogger (previously Blogspot) and WordPress fueled interest in directly
reaching targeted audiences through blogging. Finally, social media, through early popular
sites such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, empowered individuals to interact as their own
media brands, promote content and engage new people across social networks.
The rapid diffusion of social media over a few short years changed job roles for news
reporters, PR people, marketers and others in a wide variety of positions. At the same time,
social media are transforming the fields of advertising and marketing.
This book examines social media from a communication perspective that focuses on
Copyright © 2017. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved.

important concepts and practices. For example, some of what we now study as social
networking within social media can be examined through Katz and Lazarsfeld’s filter
hypothesis of personal influence (Katz & Lazarsfeld, 1955, as cited in Schmitt-Beck, 2003).
People form social groups, sometimes seek out influencers and gauge social trends: “…
personal communication mediates the influence of mass communication … reinforcing or
blocking the impact of media information, depending on the evaluative implications of that
information and on the political composition of voters’ discussant networks” (p. 233). Influence
extends well beyond politics and elections. As Katz (1957) observed about the nature of
studying leaders and influencers: “It began to seem desirable to take account of chains of

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 influence longer than those involved in the dyad; and hence to view the adviser-advisee dyad
as one component of a more elaborately structured social group” (p. 5).
Decades later, Katz (1994) observed that, although we may be able to observe influence, “to
activate this knowledge is not as easy … [and] tends to be more expensive and more
complicated than simply reaching everybody” (p. x). Social media, however, ushered in an era
of visualizing human communication, tracking it within large amounts of data—big data—and
sometimes placing activation within reach. It is clear that the amount and quality of social
media research continues to grow, aligning with the growth in “use of social media for sharing
various forms of user-generated content” (Khang, Ki and Ye, 2012, p. 279).
The nature of influence, as well as the contemporary examination of social networks and
social media, raises legal and ethical issues. For example, a restaurant or small business review
on Yelp, whether or not it is accurate, might cause economic harm if let to stand without
response. Despite the challenges of breadth, social media are becoming a force—perhaps the
most important communication source—in the 21st century. Despite awareness of potential
influence, individual users, including those working for media and corporations, continue to
make huge mistakes on social media platforms, such as Twitter. Particularly when it comes to
breaking news events and real-time social engagement, split-second decisions made by
professionals frequently miss the mark. In order to better understand the challenges of social
networking and social media communication, it is important to develop concepts built upon
social research.

Social Media Concepts and Theories

Participants in social media are networked individuals engaging in interpersonal, yet
mediated, communication. Through CMC, users create online identities, interact and engage
with others, participate in online communities and may activate groups to respond.
Communication behavior may involve politics, power and culture—even when it originates as
consumer behavior.
The communication within social media sites, such as Twitter, may trigger crowdsourcing,
Copyright © 2017. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved.

in which audiences piece together bits of information into a larger narrative for storytelling.
The crowdsourcing question-and-answer program called Jelly, created by Twitter co-founder
Biz Stone, was a 2014 mobile media response to user desire to leverage information and rich
media images available within personal social network sites. After this failed to have enough
interest, in late 2016 Stone announced in an email that Jelly was “totally reinvented” as “a
search engine and a social network with a purpose,” through “anonymous” questions. Time
will tell if this start-up “pivot” will catch on.
Effective distribution of stories, images and video requires understanding of specific online
platforms and context. In marketing, for example, messages must connect with audiences:

Lipschultz, J. H. (2017). Social media communication : Concepts, practices, data, law and ethics. Taylor & Francis Group.
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 “With the instant access to social media made possible by mobile devices, there’s no such thing
as undivided attention anymore” (Vaynerchuk, 2013, p. 4). In this sense, social media content
involves human storytelling with a foundation within informational and persuasive
communication. SNSs offer different tools to facilitate storytelling: Facebook “walls,” Twitter
“feeds,” Instagram and Snapchat “Stories,” Pinterest “pins” and LinkedIn “posts” or
endorsements. The Microsoft company also acquired SlideShare to integrate presentation
sharing across social media sites. Each new SNS diffuses into the marketplace, but only some
are widely adopted by a mass audience. Social media involve the coming together of
participants in large SNSs and the sharing of information and media content.

Box 1.2
Thought Leader James Spann

The most important role that social media play in my business is audience engagement
during life-threatening weather events. Ten years ago, I could not buy a valid storm
report from many rural parts of my state; now with one simple tweet, or request via
Facebook, Snapchat, or Instagram, I not only have good reports, but pictures as well.
Most of these people have not gone through spotter training, but by sending a photo to
us, they allow professional meteorologists to evaluate the storm, making the warning
process more effective.
In addition, we are able to push critical severe weather information to many who
would not consider using television, especially younger people (18–24 year olds). Social
media served as a lifeline during our generational tornado outbreak on April 27, 2011. I
think it is interesting that on many days I reach more people via social media than on
television. Times are changing.
Copyright © 2017. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved.

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 Figure 1.4 @Spann.
Courtesy James Spann.
Copyright © 2017. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved.

Time management is a big issue for us. We are working social media very hard around
the clock, seven days a week, with the same number of people we had five years ago.
People expect us to be there via social media to answer their questions and provide
weather information on demand. Our job has morphed into a 24/7 kind of thing, which
can lead to fatigue and strains on family relationships. You have to maintain a rigid
priority table when it comes to managing time.
Another challenge is sorting through bogus weather reports; there are always some
people who want to damage the warning process with false information. We have to

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 make decisions “on the fly” concerning the validity of the reports we receive during
winter storms and severe weather. Also, for some reason, some people begin circulating
old pictures, claiming they are current and related to an ongoing weather event. This is
problematic, but we do our best to sort out the bad images and not use them on the air.
For our audience, one of the biggest issues is reliance on Facebook for severe weather
information. Facebook is simply a horrible platform for severe weather warning
dissemination because only a small percentage of followers/fans actually see the posted
warnings on their timeline. Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, and Instagram are crucial in our
communication plan, but with so many on Facebook we have to do a better job of
educating them. We prefer people get severe weather warnings via smartphone apps like
WeatherRadio by WDT, and not rely on social media as their primary source.
We are using the live video capabilities on social networks, and they are becoming
more and more important in reaching a large number of people during severe weather
events. We stream our “wall to wall” tornado coverage now on Facebook Live, and also
on Periscope, Twitter’s live platform. I expect the number of people watching live on
Facebook and Periscope alone will rival the audience we now get through conventional
television and our live stream, available on the station’s mobile app and the web.
During life threatening weather, I simply want to reach the largest number of people. I
don’t care if they watch via television, an app, Facebook, or Periscope, I just want them
watching and paying attention.
I use Facebook Live and Periscope even on routine weather days; during our nightly
10:00 newscast, I open up a live social media stream for “Song of the Night”; those
watching get to see some “behind the scenes” television, and during the final commercial
break of the show we play a song (we have weekly themes, like “Best of the 80s”, or
“Songs from the year you were born”). We talk about the song, and let those watching
give a thumbs up or down to the song. The real reason for this is to get us familiar with
the various social media live platforms, so we have great knowledge of how they work
and who they reach, and also to allow those that never watch conventional TV news to
get to know us. They will seek us out when tornadoes start touching down because of
Copyright © 2017. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved.

our “Song of the Night” family.

James Spann, CBM, is Chief Meteorologist at ABC 33/40 in Birmingham, Alabama,

where he has worked since 1996. He also hosts Weather Brains, reports on two dozen
radio stations, is heard on the Rick and Bubba Network, and is a partner in Big Brains
Media and The Weather Factory. He was educated at Mississippi State University.
www.alabamawx.com

As more media sites push live video through Facebook and other channels, however, the

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 fragmented environment means that content increasingly competes within a sea of clutter. We
know from the uses and gratifications communication perspective that media users select
content and use it with expectations in mind. Satisfaction and expectation drive future media
consumption. At the same time, users will tend to avoid content that does not provide
psychological rewards. Media run the risk of losing followers if they fail to consistently reward
readers, listeners and viewers. Over time, then, media user behavior falls into habits built upon
stimuli, responses and a set of expectations that may reflect positive, neutral or negative
views. These dimensions are particularly important in social media because it is possible to
identify user feelings through sentiment analysis, which codes media content along a
positive–negative continuum.
In a broad sense, social media have the potential to redefine the culture. Voices can be heard
through social media that have tended to be ignored by traditional media gatekeepers. During
most of the 20th century, newspaper and wire service editors, radio news directors and
television assignment editors (among others) selected a relatively small number of stories as
news, and most events fell through the gatekeeping process. Social media offer new
opportunities for sharing events and news, but SNSs may also spread content that is capable of
manipulating public opinion and behavior. In this way, traditional media and social media may
interact across ideological boundaries, impacting debate and participation (Soo-bum and
Youn-gon, 2013).
Advertisers and marketers were some of the first to discover social media as a way to
inexpensively reach large numbers of people with their messages. Social media content, like
its predecessors, may be fair or not. At first, merely having a Facebook page or Twitter feed
was enough to generate some interest. Fairly soon, however, these spaces opened brands to
public criticism and required content managers to engage in customer relations. More recently,
product and service campaigns have grown to feature strategic plans that include social media
tactics. Planning creates real-time opportunities to engage in social media during large events,
such as the Super Bowl or Academy Awards live television broadcasts. At the same time,
brand managers may jump in at any moment when there is an unexpected event. For
example, when Today show weatherman Al Roker overslept for the first time in nearly four
Copyright © 2017. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved.

decades of work, Twitter conversation followed.

Golin, an integrated agency with PR and digital content, operates one of the firm’s global
real-time engagement spaces called The Bridge, which has collaborated with longtime client
McDonald’s. The Chicago office Bridge Center is among more than a dozen global real-time
centers, and is the global headquarters. Since September of 2012, former journalists built a
team of experienced real-time engagement analysts. They provide clients with a variety of
real-time services—insights, relationship building, hyper-relevant media relations, customer
engagement and content creation.
As part of the show making fun of Roker, the tweet shown below was featured during on-

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 air anchor conversation. The earned media cost only the time to engage, in contrast to the
more expensive cost of advertising within the show, plus it was more valuable coming from
show talent. Roker also yawned in a Vine video that poked fun at missing his early broadcast.
While the event was brief, it demonstrated how social media conversation may shift and move
quickly from one topic to another.
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Figure 1.5 A major brand successfully engaged the Today show by using Twitter to reach out to them.
Source: Today, http://www.today.com/allday/rip-van-roker-al-oversleeps-misses-show-first-time-39-6C10855683.

The emergence of a complex social media landscape may seem overwhelming to students
and the general public. A social media communication perspective can help. Individuals need
to actively develop and use media literacy skills. These can be used to understand how brands
make plays within social media. At the same time, open dissemination of information requires
all of us to learn how to discern truths from falsehoods.

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 Social Media in Journalism
Decades ago, journalism was defined by its gatekeeping process, through which editors
carefully selected news for distribution. The Associated Press (AP) and United Press
International (UPI) maintained a news wire system with local newsroom partners. The wire
provided a means to identify, edit and share news to newsrooms. Journalists then shared their
selections with audience members. By the early 1980s, journalists were beginning to
experiment with portable computers to write and send news reports from a location, such as a
courtroom. The Tandy Radio Shack 100 laptop was one of the first mobile devices.
By June of 2009, major news organizations had evolved to begin using Twitter feeds and
YouTube videos to report on an Iranian uprising that led to street protests covered by citizen
journalists using portable video-recording devices.
Journalists today are expected to use social media sites, monitoring content and
participating in discussions. For example, the Associated Press (AP), a primary news
distribution company, has issued specific social media guidelines for its employees and
journalism practitioners working in “sensitive” situations (AP, 2013, p. 5). These are based
upon news values and journalistic principles:
The Social Media Guidelines are designed to advance the AP’s brand and staffers’ personal brands on social networks.
They encourage staffers to be active participants in social networks while upholding our fundamental value that staffers
should not express personal opinions on controversial issues of the day.
(AP, 2013, p. 1)

The AP encourages all journalists to have social media accounts, but this is not universal
across journalism. While AP reporters may not post confidential information, they are urged
to use a profile photograph and required to identify themselves as AP reporters. They cannot
disclose political affiliations or “express political views” (p. 1). The AP (2013) also restricts
online opinions, as “AP employees must refrain from declaring their views on contentious
public issues in any public forum …” (p. 1). Even in the areas of sports and entertainment, the
AP (2013) guidelines declare:
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 Figure 1.6 This TRS-102, an early laptop for journalists, was on display in 2009 at the Newseum in Washington, DC.

“… trash-talking about anyone (including a team, company or celebrity) reflects

badly on staffers and the AP” (p. 2).
“… you have a special obligation to be even-handed in your tweets” (p. 2).
“Posts and tweets aimed at gathering opinions for a story must make clear that we
are looking for voices on all sides of an issue” (p. 2).
“A retweet with no comment of your own can easily be seen as a sign of approval
of what you’re relaying” (p. 3).

In general, AP (2013) applies its traditional rules of journalism with regard to accuracy and
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corrections to social media spaces. While journalists are encouraged to promote their stories,
they also are warned to be careful online. The guidelines are sound advice in a current news
environment compromised by fake news, political propaganda and other noise.
Journalism, as a profession, is being challenged by the open access and publication nature of
the Internet. The WikiLeaks site, for example, challenged the traditional journalistic methods
of sourcing and official verification: “Its use of new technologies and the way it puts
information into the public domain forces us to reconsider what journalism is and its moral
purpose in contemporary global politics” (Beckett, with Ball, 2012, pp. 2–3). Everyone seems
to agree that social media has changed journalism. “Regardless of how people get news from

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 the web, this medium has become a dominant channel of communication and has passed
newspapers as a primary source of public affairs news and information” (McCombs, Holbert,
Kiousis and Wanta, 2011, p. 16). The Arab Spring, the Occupy movement and more recent
election manipulation through social media posts suggest that trust is a variable given physical
and technological barriers (Haciyakupoglu and Zhang, 2015). Younger social media users, even
those with high education, distrust traditional sources of political power: “The concept of
system trust” is that “people are likely to trust a digital platform, such as a website, if they can
denote structural elements that increase perceived credibility, reduce perceived risks, and
make usage easy” (p. 452).
In Turkey, for example, following an apparent terrorist attack on a nightclub, the nation’s
deputy prime minister announced from Istanbul that the government would monitor 347
“provocative” social media accounts that “sow seeds of enmity among the public” (AP, 2017,
paras. 3–4). Turkish law enforcement planned on taking legal action against 92 people, and
authorities were “working closely with social media providers such as Facebook and Twitter
to shut down suspect accounts” (para. 5). Numan Kurtulmus concluded: “We are not going to
sit by and watch as three to five social media trolls spread discord among the people” (para. 6).
Turkey, though, went further by prosecuting a journalist and other government critics
following an earlier failed coup. In general, as there is more political instability in a nation, we
tend to see increased levels of media and social media restrictions. Nevertheless, in much of
the world the pace of technological change remains brisk.
Growth in digital content usage pushed journalism education to broaden in recent years and
emphasize visual storytelling (Green, Lodato, Schwalbe and Silcock, 2012): “News, for many
people, now unfolds as a stream of information from various sources—both professional and
nonprofessional” (p. 5). Storytelling will continue to evolve because of technological change.
For example, augmented reality (AR) mobile tools offer the evolution of storytelling, as it is
“transformed into a more interactive, first- person participatory form utilizing the location-
based, geographically anchored nature of AR” (Pavlik and Bridges, 2013, p. 41). Pokémon Go
caused a brief media flurry, as social media rushed to find geo-locations. At the same time, 3-
dimensional (3D) storytelling by The Guardian and others ushered in new media storytelling
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possibilities to allow viewers to experience a place.

Mobile media tool availability appears to predict news consumption among younger users
(Chan-Olmsted, Rim and Zerba, 2013). Perceived relative content advantages, utility and ease
of use all were predictors of news consumption, suggesting that the younger news user may
be driven, in part, by availability of mobile apps. Mobile news users may be some of the first
to document news events.
Breaking news reports frequently begin with eyewitness accounts, which may be followed
up on as journalists seek facts. Journalism tends to be defined by its key elements: the search
for truth, “loyalty” to citizens, verification of information, practitioner independence and

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 “monitor of power” (Craft and Davis, 2013, p. 41). The #BlackLivesMatter protests in many
cities across the U.S. represented new political voices through “black Twitter” and other
examples (Adams, 2015, para. 3). Social unrest presents difficult challenges for news
organizations seeking business success, which also requires attracting and retaining large
audiences through engaging and entertaining content.
Journalists often are urged to develop a personal brand by publishing a blog, which tends to
be short and frequent posts of information and analysis. Best practices for blogging, according
to Briggs (2010, p. 55), include:

Regularly publish high-quality posts.

Write effective headlines.
Participate in the community.

Blogging, however, blurs the lines between news and opinion. While reputable journalists
maintain popular blogs, so too do paid bloggers working for corporate clients. At the heart of
the emerging conflict between traditional news values practices and online media are the rules
of engagement:
The medium is a way to generate discussion around a particular topic or issue. Great blogs build online communities and
encourage user interaction by asking questions and encouraging feedback from readers. Bloggers can share their opinion,
but the best blogs also invite readers to share their opinions or comments as well. This open dialog is one of the hallmarks
of digital journalism along with interactivity and collaboration.
(Luckie, 2011, p. 51)

Internet news is “more horizontal” because its orientation places journalists within large and
diverse social networks (Tewksbury and Rittenberg, 2012, p. 5). While traditional journalism
informed citizens in order to aid in democratic decision-making through voting, citizen
journalism has transformed the audience for news, as scholar Jay Rosen (@jayrosen_nyu)
observes, through important online discussion. The interaction and conversation monitoring
itself may be a driver for social change, even as voter apathy has grown. So-called
“participatory journalism” features “open gates” that help explain “fundamental change
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currently underway” that “transcends national boundaries” (Singer et al., 2011, p. 5).
In such a journalism environment, traditional norms of objectivity through balanced
opinions and the search for facts has been questioned and studied. Maras (2013) observes that
objective journalism is a complex professional ideal in which journalists seek to report
“reality,” obtain “facts” and avoid “personal opinion” by “[s]eparating facts from opinion,”
exercising emotional detachment and promoting “fairness and balance” (pp. 7–8). Obviously,
these news values directly smash into the openness of the Internet.
While journalism was once defined by elite news organizations competing within a fairly
narrow range of media, Internet users no longer are restricted by choices offered within the

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 context of media economics and regulation:
With developments in media technology it is becoming even less clear in which sense it is meaningful to speak of media
pluralism, if the media landscape is characterized more by abundance and limitless choice than by scarcity or lack of
options.
(Karppinen, in Hesmondhalgh and Toynbee, 2008, p. 40)

Journalism, then, is likely to be redefined by emerging SNSs and their business practices.
Albarran (2013), for example, observes that social media are defined by a “lack of significant
barriers to entry,” since almost anyone is free to create social media accounts and user profiles
(p. 6). As such, media economists think of social media as a “disruptive communications
industry” (p. 14).
Researchers are beginning to study what differentiates the social media landscape. Content
dissemination, for example, has been related to news reception, friend behavior and
partisanship (Weeks and Holbert, 2013): “… both reception and friending are highly predictive
of dissemination of news within social media” (p. 226).
At its core, social media frequently involve distribution of unfiltered news and even rumors.
Former National Public Radio’s (NPR) senior strategist Andy Carvin (@acarvin) describes in
his book Distant Witness how he has cultivated sources on the ground in Egypt, Syria and
other Middle East countries to attempt to verify information circulating on Twitter. Because of
the nature of revolutions since the “Arab Spring” uprisings beginning in 2009, anonymous
sources frequently share videos to YouTube of what appear to be atrocities. Supporters share
links on Twitter, but it may be difficult to determine authenticity through crowdsourcing. Still,
the technique offers promise for journalists seeking news from dangerous locations. Storyful, a
Dublin-based company, works with Yahoo News, Reuters, ABC News and other brands to
verify social media content by monitoring for social media “spikes” in traffic and conducting
“360 (degree) forensic verification of video” (para. 11) as an extension of newsrooms:
And so it explores whether the images are real-time or old. Have they been manipulated? Where did the video come
from? What’s the history of the account? Was the weather at the time consistent with what the image shows? Is the
mosque in the right place? What are the experts saying?
It also gets in touch with the people who shot the video. In Syria, it relies on indirect contacts. But elsewhere, Storyful
staffers will talk directly with the people who supplied the material.
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(Rieder, 2013, paras. 12–14)

The nature of communication on Twitter is that online communication also generates social
networks, which can be observed in real time but also visualized using data analysis tools. For
example, a 2011 hockey game played with Ohio State University at the University of
Nebraska at Omaha generated a lot of Twitter discussion by home team fans and media. One
of the earliest social network analyses found that most users formed a passive audience, but
the center of the network revealed news media, athletic department PR and community
boosters—not dissimilar from offline and traditional media interaction.

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 In a sporting event, it is rare for Twitter users to be faced with trying to confirm facts.
However, crowdsourcing usually emerges in the early moments of breaking news stories.
Before journalists can do their traditional work of verifying facts, Twitter and other social
media sites can be a forum for conflicting eyewitness accounts, as well as attempts by some to
spread false and even malicious information.
Social media Twitter users have been called micro-bloggers because tweets are limited to
140 characters of space, including links to images, video or other websites. Media storytelling,
however, can be expanded through the use of blogs and tools, such as Storify, which organizes
multiple tweets into a running narrative.
While some have treated the Internet and social media as a sort of Wild West without rules
and norms, this approach is not recommended. Similar to their mainstream and traditional
media predecessors, social media journalists are constrained by rapidly developing law and
regulation (Stewart, 2013). This also applies to those social media users who do not identify
themselves as journalists, and those considering themselves PR professionals.

Social Media in PR
Public relations (PR) organizations use social media sites to represent brands and engage
with consumers. Coombs and Holladay (2007) suggest that academics and practitioners share
frustration that PR “activities are often equated with spin, stonewalling, distortion,
manipulation, or lying” (p. 1). In response, modern definitions emphasize “public interest,” a
“management function,” “mutually beneficial relationships” and “relationships with
stakeholders” (pp. 22–23). PR discourse may focus on identity and branding. A user:
… packages himself in the language of his relationship to the dominant medium… . He can only be better if he frees
himself from others’ language. The attitude toward choice as digital and self-determined, however, leaves him vulnerable
to what is real and what is the complete definition of the self …
(p. 12)

Global PR efforts face challenges, including being able to communicate and work across
cultures. Reid and Spencer-Oatey (2012) identified a “global people competency framework”
Copyright © 2017. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved.

of knowledge and ideas, communication, relationships and personal qualities:

Communication management—work partners may have “significantly different

norms for communicating in key project contexts, such as in meetings and in
emails” (p. 19).
Shared knowledge and mutual trust—time must be spent “building a common
understanding of the meaning of the terminology used in discussions and ensuring
that they shared sufficient background/contextual knowledge” (p. 21).

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 We return to trust as a relational dimension that may be connected with social interaction
and shared values that motivate site usage (Lin and Lu, 2011). Public relations, as a field, has
been concerned with the ability of PR practitioners to influence decisions within their
organizations. Smith and Place (2013), building upon Grunig’s work, found that integrated
structure may have an impact on PR power:
Through an interconnected structure of blurring functional boundaries that relies upon the skills of each communicator,
public relations stands to gain power through the expertise of the individual practitioner and the use of social media,
which yields tangible evidence for the organization to assess the value of the public relations function.
(p. 179, emphasis added)

Smith and Place (2013) relate this to forms of power—expert, legitimate, structural and
discursive.
In this book, we use three overarching concepts—trust, influence and engagement—to
understand the power of social media. Source and message credibility may evoke audience
trust, which is a driver of influence through strategic engagement. Interactive communication
may or may not promote identity and community within social media settings.
PR involves many functions, including:

Copywriting
Media relations
Event planning
Crisis communication
Corporate communication
Reputation management
Strategic planning

Each of these may incorporate social media tactics for clients, events, messages and branding.
Copyright © 2017. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved.

Trust
Trust has been an important concept in media for decades. By the 1960s, for example,
journalism researchers began to study what was called source and message credibility. For
example, Slater and Rouner (1996) found that message quality may have an effect on the
assessment of source credibility. More recently, Eastin’s (2006) experiments manipulated
source expertise and knowledge about online health content. Perceptions may be impacted by
variation in source and message credibility.

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 While trust has long been assumed to be important for journalists in their relationship with
readers, listeners and viewers, it is only recently becoming central to public relations
practitioners. Global PR giant Edelman PR (2012) produces an annual Trust Barometer, which
highlights the need for corporate and governmental leaders to “practice radical transparency,”
establish clear goals for operating and take note of employee credibility. By doing so, each
employee may “spread messages to their networks, which helps build and support trust
company-wide” (para. 1).
It is clear that media users value trustworthy information. We want to be able to trust our
leaders and the information they share. In a democracy, the availability of accurate
information is valued as one way for voters to make decisions. In a world driven by social
media content, disclosure of new facts can rapidly change public opinion and policy. By 2009
and 2010, social media contributed to growing Arab Spring protests, public awareness and
revolution. In Egypt and Libya, longtime leaders were overthrown. In Syria, social media
contributed to a spreading civil war, as the ISIS terrorist group gained prominence. They
shared a video of beheadings on social media channels. In Iran, public demonstrations were
captured on portable video cameras and uploaded to YouTube. In countries ruled by dictators,
social media made it more difficult to control propaganda and rule by force.
While U.S. reporting by news organizations such as The New York Times and NBC News
historically has been seen as very trusted, social media are bringing a new global perspective
for consumers. For example, when U.S. Special Forces killed Osama Bin Laden, Al Jazeera had
early and accurate reporting. Some watched an Internet live stream of the broadcast and
shared it to social networks more than an hour before President Barack Obama made an
official statement.
Trust also is important for consumer brands. Traditionally, trust was seen as “the critical
component in credibility,” but new media have redefined these key concepts:
Trust, we come to find, tends to evolve from audience perceptions of the source’s expertise on the topic at hand … and is a
critical aspect of the advertising persuasion process. Yet, the power of attractive sources cannot be overlooked as an
important part of persuasion… . The Internet itself is not necessarily a reliable source of professionally developed
information… . [N]ot only the sender but also, to a great degree, the medium are considered as communication sources …
in the mobile arena, one must look to aspects of credibility other than those impacted by the presentation and actual user
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interface alone.
(Stafford, 2005, pp. 286–287)

One of the credibility challenges is the nature of online sources (Sundar and Nass, 2001). Cues
and context are particularly important in evaluating source and message credibility within a
broadening social media sphere.

Influence

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 Social media sites often are the battleground for influence to determine who we consider to
be a thought leader or idea starter (as described in the Edelman former TweetLevel
paradigm). PR campaigns may be based upon the measurement of trust and influence.
Edelman branded Berland analytics and insights as “Edelman Intelligence”—a proprietary set
of dashboard tools.
In May of 2013, President Barack Obama scored an overall 82.8 out of 100 and was
categorized as an “amplifier” because of his large number of followers. Obama’s account
(@BarackObama) had more than 39 million followers on Twitter. This made his account very
popular and potentially influential, but this is not based upon much engagement. Instead, the
fact that messages sent from the account will likely reach millions of Twitter users, and
additionally that some will retweet content, helps explain the influence estimate. Obama’s
“TweetLevel” scores were: Influence, 82.8; Popularity, 100; Engagement, 59.9; and Trust 66.7.
The TweetLevel tool no longer is public, but the concepts remain important in thinking about
social media strategy and tactics. Edelman Insights now exists to consult clients on the
measures related to trust. As a diagnostic tool, such measures provide guidance about areas for
needed improvement.

Engagement
Engagement is defined as “the collective experiences that readers or viewers have with a
media brand” (Mersey, Malthouse and Calder, 2012, p. 698, quoting their earlier study).
Engagement can be understood through consumer beliefs about brands and brand
experiences. Engagement has been connected through research to satisfaction and media use,
as expectation and evaluation may influence “gratification-seeking behavior” and ultimately
includes reading (p. 699).
In social media, reading is an important behavior, but it is not the only behavior. Users
process photographs, charts and other visual communication, such as video. These stimuli are
consumed and sometimes result in reactions. For example, Facebook “likes” and “shares,”
Twitter “favorites” and “retweets,” and Pinterest board “pins” follow consumption. At the
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same time, a user decision to post new content or share content from others may result in
additional responses from others. Frequently, a social media campaign goal is to increase
engagement to grow reach and build fan loyalty—asking questions and commenting help
build social media relationships (Tappin, 2016).

Social Media in Advertising and Marketing

Early in the development of social media, marketing has become an important function. This

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 impacted the advertising business. Online advertising spending has grown across all areas—
paid search advertising, display advertising, classified advertising, rich media, referrals of sales
leads, sponsorship and email (Tuten, 2008). eMarketer (2013) estimated that retail digital media
spending would top $9 billion in 2013, and that 10.5% annual growth was expected through
2017. Indeed, the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) certified a 15.6% growth rate since
2012. Quarterly revenue grew from nothing in 1996 to $2 billion in 2000, to $6 billion in 2007
and to more than $10 billion in 2013.
A 2012 study by Adobe reported that a majority of consumers found online advertising
annoying (68%) and distracting (51%), and that marketers underestimated these responses.
Social media were not seen as places to view advertising compared to magazines and
television. More than two-thirds of consumers were using social media, and 57% had liked a
brand in social media. Consumers also were asked what they would do if they saw a friend
like a product in social media. About 29% responded they would check out the product, but
only 2% would buy it. Although the data painted a very rough picture of actual behavior,
responses regarding what consumers say they want are valuable. Product reviews, for
example, appeared credible for most—but not all—online users. Likewise, individuals varied in
response to different media approaches (Adobe, 2012):

Advertisements should tell a unique story, not just try to sell (73%).
A video is worth 1,000 words (67%).
User product reviews are the best source of truth (67%).
In-store experiences trump online experiences (67%).
Television commercials are more effective than online [spots] (67%).

The data supported a social media perspective, as follow-up studies suggested the need to
use online data to improve customer experiences. Tuten (2008) viewed social media as “an
umbrella phrase” for understanding SNSs, social news, virtual environments and opinion sites:
Social media refers to online communities that are participatory, conversational, and fluid. These communities enable
Copyright © 2017. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved.

members to produce, publish, control, critique, rank, and interact with online content. The term can encompass any
online community that promotes the individual while also emphasizing an individual’s relationship to the community,
the rights of the members to collaborate and be heard within a protective space, which welcomes the opinions and
contributions of participants.
(p. 20)

In this sense, social media have begun to move the discussion of online advertising and
marketing beyond the historically favored practice of sponsored search and keyword
advertising that has made Google so successful (Jansen, 2011). The online structure allowed
advertisers to measure click-through rates (CTR) for early banner advertising, but sponsored

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 search allowed advertisers to pay “only when a potential customer clicked on a sponsored
result,” which allowed for measurement accountability (Jansen, 2011, p. 12). Social media,
within this context, empowers potential customers to “share an ad, comment on an ad, and
give feedback on an ad” (p. 225). Social media advertising, then, may use a cost per click
(CPC) pricing structure instead of the traditional audience size estimates.
This helps explain why word of mouth (WOM) and the marketing extension of electronic
word of mouth (eWOM) have become important marketing phrases for brands wanting to
spread word through a growing group of followers and fans. So-called “brand ambassadors”
may be activated by company and product messages. Through conversation monitoring, brand
community managers can assess awareness, spark popularity and even convert followers and
fans to loyal customers. They can become part of an earned media strategy that leverages
customer passion for a product or service. Social media WOM and “customer evangelism,” as
some marketing gurus have labeled it, amounts to free advertising by authentic customers
who engage with others as trusted spokespeople. Somewhat related are those buyers and
purchasers who rate products on sites, such as Amazon.com. These ratings and subsequent
conversation may reflect brand loyalty or even competitor attacks.
Community managers are paid to monitor conversation and activity and to engage as
needed. For example, if online conversation turns unfairly negative on Twitter, then a
company representative may need to engage and participate by providing additional
information or offering assistance. Failure to engage when competitors do could be a
competitive disadvantage. Some customers may determine product choice based, at least in
part, on the quantity and quality of company online engagement. Here, advertising, marketing
and PR may converge based upon strategic goals. The cost of online engagement may be
considered by a return on investment (ROI) analysis, although some professionals suggest
that this does not make sense for social media. Analogous to ROI for a receptionist, social
media may be a cost for doing business in a professional manner. An alternative is the so-
called Cost of Ignoring (COI) social media (MacLean, 2013). With more than two-thirds of
consumers on Facebook, Twitter and other social media, the argument is that businesses must
be present in order to be listening and engaging in five areas: 1) customer service, 2)
Copyright © 2017. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved.

reputation management, 3) crowdsourcing to build loyalty, 4) collaboration and 5) recruitment

of job candidates (MacLean, 2013).
The WOM process involves everything from generating conversation through business
blogs to hiring paid bloggers (a controversial ethical issue), offering customer relations,
triggering viral media content, handling a crisis, managing individual and organizational
reputations, and monitoring conversation buzz. One of the earliest social media measurement
techniques was to track buzz for individual brands and compare it to others. Measurement
quickly became more sophisticated.
All online activities are open to measuring benchmark data, which establish beginning

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 points for measuring future growth and effects of strategic campaign tactics. Quantitative
goals may be set for future growth. Further, qualitative analyses of key conversations may
yield clues to marketing and sales successes and failures. Best practices for social media
involve development of strategies and tactics for setting specific new media goals. Later in this
book, we will explore new models for building social media plans (Quesenberry, 2016; Luttrell,
2015). These generally begin with social media audits of current activity, and then carefully
proceed to clear objectives, definitions, strategies and tactics over time and within a budget.
Social media have come to be viewed as tools that may raise awareness, help spark new
engagement, support customer relations and prod behavior change within a campaign
structure.

New Media
Drawing upon the seminal work of Lievrouw and Livingstone (2006), Cheong, Martin and
Macfadyen (2012) “position new media as information and communication technologies and
their social contexts” (p. 2). The study of changing technological devices—hardware and
software—is dynamic and driven by continuous change over time. For example, recent
development and proliferation of smartphones has driven interest in mobile devices and
media. Ling and Campbell (2011) conclude that mobile technologies “rearranged the social
scene” by enhancing “some interactions” yet straining others (p. 329).
Consider the apps downloaded and located on a smartphone screen. These represent
priorities for the users. However, we live in a multi-screen world in which user attention is
split between many screens—sometimes with more than one active in a given moment.
Beyond desktop and laptop computers, tablets (the fastest growing device) and smartphones,
television screens and place-based screens in public places may each offer engaging content.
Social media appear to follow findings of early Internet studies that conclude that user
motivations matter. Media may group people into “interpretive communities,” which “are
neither homogenous nor monolithic” (Mankekar, in Hesmondhalgh and Toynbee, 2008, p. 149).
Instead, demographic differences among social media users may produce content that mirrors
Copyright © 2017. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved.

or departs from existing offline power structures.

One key difference within social media is the rapid spreading of information, even when it
is false. When the normally credible @AP Twitter account was hacked with incorrect
information in 2013, crowdsourcing was important in users correcting through a variety of
other news sources. Eventually, AP had to suspend its account and re-start it. Within one
month, AP again had more than two million followers—they re-followed the trusted news
source after the brief incident.
The emergence of social media within PR coincides with the convergence of traditional
practices with advertising and marketing.

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Copyright © 2017. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved.

Figure 1.7 This author’s iPhone “first screen,” as viewed in early 2017.

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 Box 1.3
Thought Leader Melanie James

The way I’m approaching PR education and consultancy is becoming less linear. The
planning landscape has changed completely over the last five years. This is, in large part,
driven by the fact that social media are integral to all work that I do. That it’s “social”
means practitioners have to expect and often even encourage interaction, and this by its
nature increases both risk and opportunity.
Copyright © 2017. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved.

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 Figure 1.8 @melanie_james.
Photograph by George Hyde, courtesy Melanie James.

I’m no longer developing campaign plans that outline intended activities in detail
stretching over weeks or months, which were approved by clients before
implementation. The emergence of agile approaches to communication and PR work is
clearly better suited to today’s business and societal needs. This means developing
advanced skills and insights beyond what has traditionally been used in strategic
planning processes, such as mainly relying on hard facts and past trend data. I know I’m
using more skills that center on sensemaking and pattern recognition, often of real-time
data, such as social media analytics and audience/user engagement content.
No longer do I spend much time on writing lengthy press statements, although these
still have a place. My time is more likely spent with clients to help them shape their
story, and then working out ways across all media to tell that story. We work on scenario
planning, predicting possible responses to such efforts so that ways of leveraging
audience or user engagement to meet strategic goals can be worked through. Based on
this, I work to “preload” social media posts across platforms that align with other
initiatives in the wider campaign. The cycle of “scrumming” with clients, daily check-ins
and agreed upon “sprints,” such as designed by Betteke van Ruler (2015) works well. It
aligns with contemporary management practices.
The days of PR being able to rely on social media organic reach have ended, and the
rise of the “media placement specialist” is evident. With new platforms emerging, and
audience segments moving across to them, or further fragmenting, the budget for paid
social campaigns is being increasingly stretched.
Defining what appropriate return on investment in social media looks like for
organizations remains challenging, as this can vary widely depending on the nature of
the entity’s mission. Much of the data used to measure success needs practitioners to
have analytical skills. This is hard for a profession that traditionally has attracted people
from liberal arts rather than from mathematics or information systems backgrounds.
Those with marketing analytics skills can be seen getting ahead of traditionally trained
Copyright © 2017. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved.

workers. Organizations continue to struggle with how best to structure communication

and PR functions, with many still going through the “trial and error” stage.
The way success is viewed in public relations continues to change, with many viewing
success as not having been achieved until target publics have both changed their attitude
or behavior, and propagated the idea that others do the same through social media
networks. People are increasingly “wising up” to the way their social sharing benefits
business and are being in some cases generously rewarded for this “work.” Now called
“influencers,” those with social media followings on specific platforms can offer these

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 audiences to PR and advertising agencies, either directly or through agents. Already this
has posed headaches for regulators who are increasingly requiring that “influencers”
fully disclose any “cash for comment” to followers.
The divide between social media and other media has for the most part broken down
and now many argue there is just “media.” It is more important than ever to know why
your client is in the space, how success will be measured, and what ROI looks like.
Practitioners who demonstrate excellent pattern recognition and analytical skills, and the
ability to translate these into agile emergent strategy, will be greatly sought after. Such
skills will be essential to adapt to the ever increasing pace and fragmentation that
continues to unfold.

Source: van Ruler, B. (2015). Agile Public Relations Planning: The Reflective
Communication Scrum. Public Relations Review, 41(2), 187–194.

Melanie James (@melanie_james), Ph.D., is Senior Lecturer in Communication and

Media, School of Creative Industries, University of Newcastle, Sydney Area, Australia.
Her research on new media, PR and positioning has been widely cited. James joined the
university in 2006 after working in senior management roles in PR—strategic,
government and marketing communication. She was an early adopter of social media in
PR practice and education and continues to work as strategic communication consultant.
James is the editor of the Asia Pacific Public Relations Journal.

Engaging consumers—within the context of PR, advertising or marketing—appears to be

“more about conversations, connections, and shared control and less about passive
consumption of packaged content” (Tuten, 2008, p. 3). It is a fundamental shift that will
continue to have an effect on PR and other professionals for years to come. While personal
branding has become popular, the new mobile social media may be best reflected by singer
Taylor Swift as an “UnBrand”—“a symbol or emblem to a group of people” that begins as
“blank space, allowing various groups of fans to identify with her and project their ideal self”
Copyright © 2017. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved.

(Honjo, 2016, para. 6). In a digital age with a “marketplace of attention,” this makes sense:
“Although public attention is often indispensable to the exercise of economic, political, or
social influence, it’s harder to come by” (Webster, 2014, p. 6). Social media may facilitate a
form of social bonding: “Generally, strong ties seem to promote ‘complex contagions’ that can
affect people’s beliefs and behaviors, not just what they know” (p. 40). Social media company
Facebook and its Messenger and Instagram apps are now among the most popular
smartphone uses along with Google, Apple and Amazon. These data suggest the central
importance of social media communication in how people use their time (see Table 1.1).
Communicating, social sharing, searching and shopping, then, make up a sort of mobile core

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 of user behavior that may help explain the future direction of social media.

Ahead
In the next chapter, computer-mediated communication will be used to explore the
importance of identity, interaction and community within social media spaces. As new
ideas and technologies spread, online communication may influence cultural change in
powerful ways. A large number of social media tools are now in use within journalism and
public relations. These occupations now borrow branding techniques from advertising and
marketing, as convergence continues to take hold across many media industries.

Table 1.1 Most Popular Apps

App Average Unique Users 2015–16 % Change
1. Facebook 146.0 million + 14
2. Facebook Messenger 129.7 million + 28
3. YouTube 113.7 million + 20
4. Google Maps 105.7 million + 22
5. Google Search 104.0 million +9
6. Google Play 99.8 million +8
7. Gmail 88.6 million + 18
8. Instagram 74.7 million + 36
9. Apple Music 68.4 million + 20
10. Amazon 65.5 million + 43
Source: Ng, A. (2016, December 29). Facebook, Google, Top Out Most Popular Apps in 2016. CNet.
www.cnet.com/news/facebook-google-top-out-uss-most-popular-apps-in-2016/.

Entrepreneurs creating new businesses, investing in start-ups and constantly creating new
media industries are driving some of the change. The innovation culture often ignores old
media organizations and practices in favor of fundamental change. The new media landscape
Copyright © 2017. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved.

is not without challenges. As we will learn in this book, “big data” collection and analysis raise
concerns about personal privacy. There are legal and ethical issues surrounding social media
technologies, and there are calls for global regulation. Perhaps the best we can hope for right
now is the development of best practices by journalists, PR practitioners and others. We can
learn from case studies that expose social media successes and failures. More can be learned
through use of social media metrics and analytics. For example, search engine optimization
(SEO) rules affect the words we should use in effectively spreading online content. At the
same time, popular measurement tools—Google Analytics, Hootsuite, Sprout Social and others
—offer new intelligence about communication behavior. As we will see in this book, SEO may

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 be positively or negatively impacted by social media conversation, from online engagement to
product and service sales. The quality of those sites linking to a story, conversation or site may
raise or lower the prominence of content at any given moment. This can be important for
story placement on search engines, such as Google, but it also has implications within social
media conversation over time. Likewise, Facebook Insights data help community brand
managers select and promote social media storytelling. Knowing which stories are liked,
shared and commented upon offers important explanations about why content is moving
through social networks.
Some are turning to media literacy as a way to explore best practices of journalists and PR
people. In order to effectively engage within a social network, strategies and tactics must
constantly return to concerns about online trust and influence.

Discussion Questions: Strategies and Tactics

1. The Boston Marathon explosions provided challenges for journalists, PR
practitioners, advertisers and marketers. How does each respond to a breaking
news story? What are the challenges? What legal and ethical concerns exist? How
should social media users judge source and message credibility of information
during a crisis?
2. What are the similarities and differences in roles and functions for journalists, PR
practitioners, advertisers and marketers? How do social media blur the lines
between these fields? What are the challenges for practitioners moving from
journalism to PR? What about moving from PR to journalism? What is an example
you recall of social media engagement that did not seem to be authentic?
3. How do you determine whether or not to trust a social media voice? How do social
media change the nature of influencing others compared to traditional word-of-
mouth sharing? How do you influence others within social media spaces? How
will your influence evolve as a social media professional? How was your view of
Copyright © 2017. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved.

social media influence and trust impacted during the 2016 election?

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