Critical examination of public relations blogging

I think we can all agree that blogs definitely possess strengths not present in other types of media.  Kent's "Critical analysis of blogging in public relations" examines some strengths and weaknesses inherent to blogging and points out some of their pitfalls and potential.

Blog Strengths: Research, environmental scanning, message framing

Research and Environmental Scanning:

• Blogs can be extremely useful for research, issue monitoring, and environmental scanning
• Especially when organizations are dealing with unfamiliar ethnic, cultural, and social groups or publics for the first time
• They're also excellent for ongoing monitoring and environmental scanning tools.

Blogs empower PR practitioners with power to know how individuals/publics are interpreting and responding to organizational events, messages, and activities before that information even reaches mainstream media and news outlets.  For us this means we can formulate better, more compelling, and more effective responses.

Message Framing:

• Blogs enable organizations to allow and encourage website visitors to participate in how online news and information is framed
• This is one of the greatest strengths of blogs and 
• Blogs foster identification
• By identifying with individuals and publics (via blog membership, sponsorship, etc.) an organization or group can foster trust and empathy
• Homogenous groups of individuals and publics are brought together by blogs

With these characteristics blogs can represent the ultimate in public segmentation for PR professionals, giving them: coherent groups of individuals/professionals who share a common interest.

Weaknesses of Blogs:  Communicative risks, exaggerated significance of blogs, blogger credibility and status

Communicative Risks of Blogging:

• Often blogs are populated by fanatics
• Professionals shouldn't place much stock in what a few dozen fanatics have to say 
• However, for each “fanatic” there are hundreds, perhaps thousands of people who feel similarly even if it isn't with the same fervor
• Organizational bloggers who are not adequately trained in public communication and dialogue can become a liability
• Additionally problematic are those who independently decide whether or not to go public on an issue without consulting organizational leaders 

Exaggerated Significance of Bloggers: 
(Statistics presented by Kent)

• 27% of 120 million Americans have read a blog (2005 Pew Internet and American Life Project)
• Less than one in 10 people who have the potential to be influenced by a blog (Kent's estimate when factoring in how many blogs are rinky-dink homegrown rags)
• Blogs probably have the potential to influence fewer than 1 in 20 U.S. citizens (Kent's estimate when factoring in how poorly written many blogs are, the fact that almost no one except those already interested in the subject actually reads to the bottom of many blog posts, and the demographics of bloggers)

Blogger Credibility and Status:

• 65% of bloggers do not consider themselves “journalists,” 
• 84% post infrequently
• 56% make any effort to check their facts
• 60% do not publish corrections
• 95% get their news content exclusively from the Internet (Lenhart, 2006).

Many blogs have begun to blur the distinction between independent organizations and the media.  Despite the media-like reach of blogs, most bloggers lack the credibility, training, and objectivity that the mainstream media possess. 

Conclusions:

Overall, I believe that the jury is still out on the usefulness and practicality of blogging for organizations.

Successful blogs are only sustainable if an organization has someone to maintain it, someone trained in effective dialogic communication, and someone who has the trust of individuals and publics. Anonymously posting to blogs is not a smart option for any organization and neither are attempts to manipulate their audience members with self-serving propaganda or thinly disguised news releases. 

The most practical application of blogs for most organizations is as a research tool.

If your next job asks you your opinion of implementing an organizational blog what will you say?