At ProfNet, we feel a keen responsibility to inform our members what new forms of collaboration will emerge in the new micro media, but of course we can't know until, with our members' help, we collaboratively invent them. This explains the approach we're taking in "Wiki World: Collaborative PR on the Neural Web." In the very process of developing this treatise, we'll explore the powers of the new media and try out new forms that unite us.   more »

In my last post, I suggested that the authors who assembled in this space last week align their (our) respective thoughts and energies in the writing of a book. I've thought a good deal more about this, and would like to slightly revise the proposal and, specifically, the title.   more »

As we build a new model of communication for our new age, it’s useful to consider how we came by the old model.   more »

Our discussion of new (and old) communication models continues this week. Dan Forbush will lead the discussion tomorrow. If you would like to volunteer to take a day, send an email to our Blog Week coordinator, Gwendolynn Gawlick , at gg@prdiva.com.

I want to thank everyone who contributed to this discussion via their well-thought-out posts and comments.  I think we have made a great start through identifying some of the thorny issues we need to work through on our quest for a new communications model.

There is much work to be done (I didn't even get to my politics of tools post this week).  I will be posting on this subject back on my own blog moving forward, as well as forming some working groups around a variety of the questions that are popping up out of this and other discussions that relate the future of communications.  I hope you will continue to provide your input and critique.  Please feel free to contact me if you want to volunteer to help!

Greenspan and Shanker describe the biological underpinnings of group formation. If from a PR perspective we want to understand human behavior and motivation in groups, there are no two more knowledgeable experts to consult.   more »

It was quite an eye opener to read this comment by Steve O'Keefe to Elizabeth Albrycht's post on Monday that ...   more »

It’s obvious that a complete theory of communications must ultimately deal with the manner in which neurons, synapses and symbols are organized by our brains, but this is not a frequent topic of discussion at PRSA or CASE meetings. Some day, they will be –- in the new era of quantum scanners and trigeminal-based neural devices.   more »

The issue of cost has arisen a few times in these posts/comments, so I thought I'd share a few thoughts. A communications model that puts people at its center is inherently time-intensive, therefore expensive. It is impossible to use technology to replace a genuine conversation; technology is merely an enabling tool.   more »

When I first started to explore how the Internet and new communicationstechnologies had impacted our own profession, I was really doing so with the idea of catching up with the industry. I had been too busy with clients to spend much time researching technology for my own business needs. But the economic downturn in Silicon Valley, gave me both the time and the opportunity to invest in my own knowledge base. As I began to understand the true scope of the technological changes that came out of the dotcom boom (and bust), I was amazed. I felt like the legendary Rip Van Winkle who after going to sleep one night, awoke 20 years later to find that his world had changed.    more »

Elizabeth's discussion of communication models sent me back to the PR textbook I used in graduate school. Grunig and Hunt identified four PR Communication Models in Managing Public Relations [James E. Grunig and Todd Hunt, Harcourt, Bace Jovanovich (1984), p. 21].

The two earliest forms of PR communication, according to the authors, were one-way publicity (such as a publicist promoting a movie), followed by the less overtly commercial communication of one-way public information (such as may be practiced by a government public affairs officer).

Grunig and Hunt held that public relations functions at a higher level when it practices two-way communication. They saw corporate PR largely functioning at the level of two-way asymmetric communication, and some regulated utilities achieving the ideal of two-way symmetric communication.

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Public relations was once almost synonymous with media relations. With new tools and new media in the digital, online world, what's happening to media relations ?   more »

In the introduction to his book, Smart Mobs, Howard Rheingold wrote: "The 'killer apps' of tomorrow's mobile infocom industry won't be hardware devices or software programs, but social practices." [p.xii, Smart Mobs, 2002] I open our discussion today with this statement, because I believe that "social practices" is what has historically been given short shrift in the world of technology -- and technology-based communications. We professional communicators adopt the latest-greatest tech tools (often rather slowly!) but we don't generally give much deep thought to what these tools mean to those we apply them against, nor do we have any sense of what the consequences (unintended, especially) are of using these tools over time. I will be getting into a discussion about the politics of tools later, but for today, I want to look at social practices within the frame of "cooperation."   more »

Over the past few years, many changes have confronted communications professionals due to the Internet, the web, mobility, etc. (basically all of the new networked communications tools). Because of these new tools, a fundamental shift in the entire model of communications (including marketing, PR, advertising, etc.) is now possible. This demands a movement from the old command/control, uni-directional, war-metaphor driven practices of the past to a cooperative, multi-directional model. This week we will start to build a framework for this new model, drawing on a variety of interdisciplinary thinking in media studies, philosophy, and sociology, for example, as well as on current best-selling books touching on the issue. Our goal is to start a discussion that will continue throughout 2005 as we seek to build this new model.   more »