Making sense of New Media

I read a fascinating post by Giovanni Rodriguez on the Eastwikkers blog about new PR roles which are developing in the New Media world. Reading it gave me one of those rare moments of clarity when things that you have been doing or participating in become clear(er) in one foul swoop.

Giovanni has taken some stock PR roles and sought to assign new media equivalents…. Some of the titles are a bit ad hoc (eg gardeners, architects etc) but this doesn’t matter because when you read their description it all makes sense. I won’t re-hash Giovanni’s post but strongly urge you to read it here.

I think this moment of clarity came about because I have been trying to make sense of the different new media tools that are emerging and getting my head around how we, as PR professionals, can and should use them.

This isn’t easy for several reasons. Firstly, new tools and new uses for existing tools are discovered almost daily (almost) – a good example of this is MySpace. I have known about MySpace for a while but had yet to see how it could be utilised by the PR/communications world. Now I read courtesy of Stephen Davies that Rupert Murdoch has bought it and plans to use it as part of his News Corp empire, so you can be guaranteed that there must be some mileage for the PR profession there.

Secondly. Tracking new media tools and developments isn’t too easy either. There has to be someone or some group of people translating the pure technological developments into easy to use tools with a clear PR/comms application. I mean, blogging software must have been around for an internet age but its widespread application has probably only exploded since fool-proof platforms such as Typepad and Blogger have emerged.

Thirdly, with so many opinions flying around the blogoshpere it can be tricky deciding on who has the right idea for certain tools and applications. Of course, only applied reading, networking and blogging will help solve that one. A good example is Elizabeth Albrycht’s musings on what term we can use to replace the term ‘Tag’.

Giovanni’s post helps us (I think) start putting these collections of ideas and expertise into categories where they can start to aggregate common usage and understanding. But let me say that these categories are surely flexible and must be updated/added to as technology and application progresses.

Giovanni’s post gives some examples of practitioners who currently fit these roles. Most, I think are American – fair enough given Giovanni’s base in Silicon Valley and the fact that the US is ahead of the UK when it comes to New Media – so I thought it would be good to give some UK examples. I’ll put some specifics up shortly but surely people like Stuart Bruce, Philip Young, David Philips and Stephen Davies must be in there. (Neville Hobson has already been crowned ‘King of new Media’ by Giovanni!)

Suggestions please….. I’m off to read Philip’s Stuttgart paper…

Oh yes. I forgot to mention that Giovanni has just posted new jobs in PR Part 2