Online PR: News and Views from ://CORPORACT

Online PR Blog: Social Websites Are Bad News for Children

Last week Lord Harris of Haringey (Labour) called attention to the growth in the use of social networking sites by children, and the adequacy or otherwise of safeguards to protect their privacy and interests.

There is a need to safeguard children when it comes to social sites.  It took MySpace (disgracefully) two years to delete the known names of 90,000 sex offenders listed in the public domain.   More worrying is the fact that social websites are unable to protect against the offenders trying to sexually solicit children online who haven’t been caught.  In addition, there is currently no age authentication system in place so a 40 year old can easily pose as a teenager.

Also this week during a House of Lords debate, leading Oxford University neuroscientist, Baroness Greenfield , warned that social websites harm children's brains.  She believes that repeated exposure to social networking sites, computer games, instant messaging and chat rooms could leave a generation with poor attention spans, effectively 'rewiring' the brain.

With so many children and adults using social networking websites (more than 150 million use Facebook alone to share information) the responsibility for safe social networking for children needs to lie with the provider of the service and should include validation of its users, identification and mediation.

Likewise, it has to be the responsibility of parents (many of whom complain that youngsters lack the ability to communicate or concentrate away from their screens) to “police” excessive usage.

Schools too can play a part by teaching safe internet behaviour.  There are some great online educational communities in which children can safely learn and communicate with other children.

With this in mind, let’s hope that politicians continue to debate (and legislate).

Online PR: Social Media Guidelines

Useful reference from the Chartered Institute of Public Relations.  The Institute has updated its social media guidelines to take into account updated legal issues, consumer protection from the Unfair Trading Regulations 2008 and information from the Advertising Standards Authority.

Although some areas go beyond social media, any practice used online that is deemed unfair, misleading or aggressive will fall under these rules.

The guidelines first published in 2007 are aimed at providing best practice advice to communications professionals and raise awareness of the issues and implications of social media.

Visit http://www.cipr.co.uk/socialmedia/

Citizen Journalism or Factory Farming ?

The BBC has reported that its interactive newsroom received more user generated images of snow scenes than any other news story.  A whopping 43,000 photos were delivered electronically via mobile phones and other means in the last few days.

The huge volume of user generated content coming from Mumbai on places like Twitter and other networks highlights the increasing dilution of the mainstream media. 

Gone are the days when it was a journalist, photographer or cameraman who was on the scene and first to capture the first news picture story.  Now it is every man to his own.  Armed with his own technology -  mobile, video, camera – it is the citizen who is marching out to be first deliver on-the-spot action and picture exclusives to broadcasters and news editors.

The appeal from the celebrity-culture users’ perspective is that, for the cost of a phone call or text, they can see their name and news on national TV.  Fame at last (without the fortune).

From the media’s side, newsrooms are actively encouraging citizen journalism.  A picture exclusive will still sell papers or increase viewers and if they can get the (usually free) material before their competitors there is a commercial advantage.  In spite of having to trawl through thousands of images (video clips, text and email messages), the BBC were still saying last night that they wanted more.  And, to entice the punters, some fairly dreadful, poor quality, video clips were shown (“yes, we do broadcast your material” - however dull it is).  It seems anything goes. 

The news media arena is changing all the time and impacting on traditional processes.  Citizen journalism is undoubtedly contributing to the perception of value.  With so many images circulating, and with more and more people thinking they are the professional, the value of photographs is diminishing all the time.  After all, if you don’t need to pay for your news material or send your news team to cover stories, you don’t need quality staff on the ground. 

There are talented people being shown the door throughout the media world at the moment - the kind of people who have the experience to produce top rate quality images and footage of news stories in difficult circumstances.  So where do they go?  Probably to the interactive newsrooms where it seems the people who have jobs are those who are being employed as production line factory workers who sift through the glut of mediocre user generated content on anything and everything.

Is the promotion and processing of user generated content on this scale ethical or is it like supporting the development of a factory farm – lure them in, pile them high, sell them at any price and don’t worry about the consequences?