Theory

Wrapping-up PR and Disruption: Bringing theory and practice closer together?

07/20/2013 by simoncollister Leave a Comment

Just getting around to reflecting on the great conference, PR and Disruption: Embracing and Surviving Change we held last week at LCC.

Nic Newman’s keynote presentation: Media Disruption in the Digital Age from LCC_PR

Overall we had some great feedback (Storify here), but below are a couple of my key take-aways from the day:

Putting academics and practitioners into the same room is a great way to start bridging the divide between theory and practice (mainly abut the way in which we talk about the same things in different terms but also, more importantly, about the changing ways in which some of the key themes of the industry are understood)
Practical skills training, such as film-making, infographics, app development, are in demand among practitioners (handy for us as a university with graphic design, publishing and TV/film departments!)
Given the popualarity of the ‘face-off’ debate stream and discussions on Twitter there seems to be a real appetite among the industry (practitioners and academics alike) to discussion what’s happening in the industry and how to best deal with it. But where are these debates being held? Who’s facilitating them? Who’s listening? And what are they doing about it? We have our own ideas which we will be working on…

Oyvind Ihlen’s keynote presentation: PR and Disruptive Society from LCC_PR

But, don’t just take my word for it. We have a couple of great post-event reflections from participants, including key note speaker, Oyvind Ihlen’s hand-grenade casually chucked into the room: “PR shouldn’t be measured”; Paul Seaman’s argument that PR should be leading economic change and renewal; Arun Sudhaman’s great insight on how changes in the media business should be changing the way brands communicate and Heather Yaxley’s post offering a great summary of the day’s main themes.

Dom Burch’s keynote presentation from LCC_PR

Hopefully it’s clear that there was a lot to take in from the day – and we’ll hopefully be getting more reflections and reviewsin the days to come. In the meantime, we’ll be continuing to plan how we can bring the industry and theory closer together. Leave a comment or drop me an email if you have any ideas – I’d love to hear them!

Programmers and Switchers: Shaping power in networks

09/01/2009 by simoncollister Leave a Comment

As mentioned in a previous post, I'm presenting a paper on online monitoring and UK political parties at a forthcoming event.

This post is sort of a work-in-progress/thinking out loud series of notes leading up to that paper. It draws on recent work by Manuel Castell's and seeks to clarify how power functions in networks. Alternatively, you could substitute the term 'influence' for 'power' – but fundamentally we're taking about power however it's dressed up.

If you're interested in politics or digital communications and networks then read on.

Based on earlier work by Geoff Mulgan, Castells argues that
the state has the capacity to exercise power “through the articulation of three
sources of power: violence, money and trust.”

Mulgan states:

“Of the three sources of power the most
important for sovereignty is the power over the thoughts that give rise to
trust. Violence can only be used negatively, money can only be used in two
dimensions, giving and taking away. But knowledge and thoughts can transform
things, move mountains and make ephemeral power appear permanent.”

Castells argues that the third power, trust, is critical to
the network society. He believes that while Mulgan’s perspective on state power
is broadly accurate it is traditional (i.e. industrial). In the networked
society the ability of individual actors to control communication and knowledge,
which leads to trust, is being changed.

According to Castells, the most crucial forms of power in
the networked society follow the logic of “network-making power” – that is, the
most important power within networks is the ability to establish and control
the particular network.

The ability to do this is based on two basic mechanisms:

“(1)
the ability to constitute network(s), and to program/reprogram the network(s)
in terms of goals assigned to the network

(2) the ability to connect and
ensure cooperation of different networks by sharing common goals and combining
resources, while fending off competition from other networks by setting up
strategic cooperation”

Castells calls actors in the first mechanism ‘programmers’
and those in the second mechanism, ‘switchers’.

If we apply this to the example of political blogging
networks in the UK then the logic runs as follows:

Those that ‘program’ the network typically establish who
links to whom and what people blog about. The UK’s primary political blogging
network has arguably emerged from the early, influential bloggers, e.g. Guido
Fawkes, Iain Dale, Political Betting, etc. These bloggers have constituted the
network and thus are the programmers.

If you are a political party then this network is likely to
operate outside of your control. Coercion (i.e. legal or technical take-down) won’t
work as power is distributed among the network.

There are two options then that political parties could
explore to change the network-making power:

1)
Establish their own network of political
bloggers in an attempt to reprogram the political blogging network. This has
been attempted by some political parties, e.g. LabourHome; Lib Dem Voice, but these
have seemingly not accrued enough influence/power in the network to re-program
it as of yet.

2)
They could attempt to establish strategic
partnerships with key networks and attempt to ‘switch’ the flow of power.
Examples of this include providing bloggers with exclusive information or news
and inviting them party conferences etc.

With some luck I’ll be presenting some more conclusive
findings relating this theory to actual practice within UK political parties later this
month.

Feedback welcome.

Tags: Manuel Castells, Networks, Power

The Longtail is thoroughly debunked by empirical research

11/09/2008 by simoncollister 3 Comments

I posted back in July reminding those of us who take current Internet theories such as The Wisdom of Crowds at face value that many of these ideas are primarily marketing tools, rather than tested, research-based approaches.

As a fascinating follow-up to this, Alan Patrick from Broadsight has posted a fascinating analysis of Internet uber-theory, The Longtail, titled: ‘The end of The Longtail?‘

Alan posts about a recent presentation given by an MCPS-PRS Alliance economist, Will Page, which argued that The Longtail is "fairly completely incorrect".

Page apparently helped Chris Anderson write The Longtail thesis, but has since carried out empirical research on a huge volume of global online music sales. The research found:

"while there was a long tail, it was extremely poverty stricken and much of it is moribund […] even Free doesn’t work – when Radiohead gave away their music for free, there were still 400,000 illegal downloads in the UK. Not only that, they have found that illegal services focus on the “hit head” even more than the average."

Hypothesising further, Alan reckons that most demand curves are Log Normal rather than Pareto Power Law Curves, an opinion strongly supported by one of the researchers.

A full and thorough debunking of The Longtail based on the research can also be found by Andrew Orlowski over at The Register.

As a footnote to this, it is maybe worth adding that the researchers work for an organization that enforces commercial copyright on behalf of composers, songwriters and music publishers.

Technorati tags: The Longtail, Internet Theories, Power Law, Log Normal

Bausola, Benkler and understanding the new digital economy

08/05/2008 by simoncollister 3 Comments

My Edel-colleague, Jason Mical, recently caught up with creative technologist (and former Head of Insight (Strategy) for Digital Communications at Imagination, David ~~Baesola~~ ~~Bausola.~~ It sounded like a great meet and I was pretty gutted I couldn’t attend.

But reading David’s biog really got me thinking again about some ideas from within the digital economy that I’ve been mulling over in recent months.

David argues (from a specifically creative industries perspective) that:

“Data and User-Centric design define the poles between technology and communication. Whereas Data Centric models lean towards ‘Manufacturing’ architectures, User-Centric will lean towards ‘Network’ aesthetics. […] Data is possession driven; collectivity occurs within communities with degrees of ‘openness’."

This sparks off some thoughts linked to what Yochai Benkler has to say about the radically new economic models – specifically nonmarket models – being shaped by the Internet.

In The Wealth of Networks, Benkler discusses rival and nonrival goods:

“When economists speak of information, they usually say that it is “nonrival.” We consider a good to be nonrival when its consumption by one person does not make it any less available for consumption by another. Once such a good is produced, no more social resources need be invested in creating more of it to satisfy the next consumer.”

Benkler’s perspective is important because it maps nicely to David’s idea of a manufacturing focussed ‘data centric’ model and a network focused ‘user centric’ one.

Rival goods are predominently manufactured commodities that rely on scarcity and – in accordance with David’s observation – possession to drive commercial value. Nonrival goods (in Benkler’s example, information) rely on sharing via open networks as a commercial model.

I suppose what I am doing here is little more than articulating my own understanding of Benkler’s hard economic theory through the prism of David’s perspectives on the emerging business and economic model of the creative industries, and trying to catalyse thoughts about the spaces where we can bring traditionallt data centric industries mroe towards networked production and equally how we can help encourage user centric industries to look to the digitally connected networks arpiund their organisation, its brand and products to improve their offering in contemporary nd future society.

Perhaps, these thoughts and ideas illuminate the (perhaps obvious?) notion that there is no one-size fits all model to help busiensses adapt to a digital market (or nonmarket) place. It definitely helps us begin to chart the routes down which we – as digital strategists – can help take our clients.

For what it’s worth, these ideas – the changes taking place in the contemporary business and organizational landscape and how we deal with them – seem to be occupying more and more time in my thoughts at the moment.

I suppose it makes sense. The logical next step from understanding how organizations communicate in a digitally empowered environment is seeking to understand how businesses need to think and what they need to do in a digital world.

Technorati tags: David Bausola; Yochai Benkler, digital strategy; creative industries; manufacturing