ABSTRACT
This article reports on a nine-year longitudinal analysis studying how social and other emerging media technologies are bringing dramatic changes to how public relations is practiced. The major finding in the 2014 study involves Twitter narrowly replacing Facebook for the first time as the most frequently accessed new medium for public relations activities. LinkedIn and You Tube were the next most frequently used sites. For
the third year in a row, this research found the influence of traditional mainstream news
media continuing to weaken. Results also found considerably more support for the
suggestions that blogs, social and other emerging media are enhancing public relations
practice and that social and other emerging media continue to influence traditional
mainstream media. Findings show those who practice public relations continue to agree
strongly that social and other emerging media are changing the way public relations is
practiced. This impact continues to be much more pronounced for external than internal
audiences. In terms of how social media are impacting communication strategy, 2014
results found most (77%) recommend using different messages for various social media
platforms, but only 57% of their organizations actually do disseminate different messages
for different social media platforms.
Download Full Paper (PDF): 2014 Paper by Wright and Hinson
