Is Social Media the New Face of Public Relations?

Veronica Hall
vh250319@ohio.edu

Public Relations is used to help influence the consumers that you can trust the organization that they represent. In the past, if you had a bad experience with a company, you would call a customer service number and express your concerns. Now things have changed.

How has social media changed PR? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tYXa9d0vj3I

Over the past 10 years, social media has taken over the internet. Social media has been our way to connect with one another from all over the world. Social networking as evolved from friendships to also relationships between companies and consumers. Social media has opened the door to greater engagement and faster problem solving for companies. 

At the tip of our fingers, we can express our thoughts and concerns to the public. We can express if our product came broken or discuss our experience somewhere. Public Relations companies also have the same ability. They can get information out to the public quickly. We use to have to wait to hear PR statements from the newspaper or the radio or on the nightly news. Social Media has given companies the ability to put out resources and information faster than ever before. 

Public Relations has a duty of presenting factual information to its audience. The statements made must be truthful and factual information. Unfortunately, I do not think that some of the codes are being followed properly.

Public Relations is meant to save face. When a company messes up or is called out for doing something wrong, their PR team is there for the rescue. An example of this is Chick-fil-a. Chick-fil-a has been called out multiple times for their anti-LGBTQ donations. Every time new allegations come forward about the company, the PR team releases a statement saying something along the lines of "we promise to never do this again." Why is a PR team releasing statements like this if they do not intend to fulfill their statements?

This why Social Media is the new face of Public Relations. The public is being put back into public relations. The public has been using their voices to advocate and shed light on big corporate companies that do not follow through on their word. I also think it is difficult for public relations companies to be believable. These companies are hired to represent other companies. I feel like it's hard to believe that they are sincere because it turns out to be relationships between two companies rather than relationships between a company and its consumers. I think there is a lot of work that needs to be done within PR companies. Maybe they need to make themselves more known to the public.