This article marks the beginning of a new series of podcasts giving you the option to listen rather than read from the glare of your monitor. Depending on the format of the podcasts the majority of recordings will also be avaliable in standard text form. Podcasts can either be streamed or downloaded from this website. Before not too long podcasts will also be avaliable through the iTunes store.
Before I begin I want to thank you for downloading and listening to this first podcast. Not too sure how the audio will sound as I have no official recording gear as such. Most microphones seem to give me some sort of artificial lisp. Unless, of course, I do have a lisp… Anyway, I hope everything sounds bearable. I have tried the art of podcasting in the past and unfortunately I never really felt it to catch on. This time though, I will make an effort. I know from my own experience that constantly reading all the time can become quite tedious and so I hope listening provides a breath of fresh air into my tiny corner of the interweb.
I’m not too sure about the frequency of podcasts which will bless this site currently or how this new form of media will aid in my PR related articles. I’m sure time will tell though. Before I discourse any further into this microphone I must first detail my sort of terms and conditions… I do not pretend to know everything. Starting this blog was a leap of faith as I am still a student and so I gradually learn more as I walk down the path towards achieving my degree. If learning works as planned then I should be able to listen and read these articles in a years’ time and feel embarrassed that I could hold such a pile of drivel as an opinion in the first place. Learning has the vice to which no man can ever say “I am sure”. So perhaps I could be better described as an agnostic evangelist of the PR realm. Who knows? I certainly don’t. How could I have the audacity, the chutzpah to loquaciously say that I am right? Of course I don’t. Anything on this blog and in these podcasts is the sole product of my own reasoning and knowledge. Jeremy Vine recently revealed how the listeners provide much of the content for his radio programmes. I implore you to do the same, write down your opinion by commenting on any of my articles or write a rebuke on your own website/blog. Anything which aids learning would be greatly appreciated. So without further ado it is time to add my opinion into the academic mix.
A little autobiography
But before continuing I thought I would do a little summary of myself. Oh, how dreary! Can’t you talk about anything else? Well, yes but I wouldn’t want any of you under the impression that I actually know what I’m talking about when it comes to public relations and the media. I am a first year PR student. I have actually finished my first year now and so technically I could be regarded as a second year student who hasn’t yet done the readings! Not that all students to the necessary readings each week anyway. I chose to study PR at the University of Gloucestershire. A University which I believed and still believe to be one of the best universities for teaching pr in the country. Perhaps a bold claim but I think “what the best uni is” is mostly to do with personal preference. I looked around at least eight different universities before making my final choice and the friendly, small class sizes of Gloucestershire won my interest very early on.
Whilst studying for my A levels and going through the horrible labyrinth which is the apply process for uni I had to make some very big decisions about my future. Every student, has to make these decisions. Should I go to university? Learn a trade? Or just trot out into the world of work. Anybody who chooses the latter option in the current economic meltdown of the world would be very unwise. Originally I had been looking at a variety of computer science courses. Computers and other forms of technology have always been a passion of mine and so it seemed sensible to follow this passion. At the same time though a large part of me would think far into the future and wonder what my perfect job would be. I have no objections with stand alone programming or server side scripting. Most of my younger teenage years were spent starting new software or internet projects. I just didn’t want to spend my later years sitting behind a desk as a programmer. I don’t want to eat fast food all day long, grow a large belly and lose almost all hope of finding a girlfriend, let alone a wife! Okay, I did just build a rather stereotypical view but I hope you understand what I mean. I wanted a job in the future which would be a mix of inside and outside. Something to compliment my own character which waves between seclusion and attention.
After having attended a university fair one day (for those who haven’t been to a university fare they are amazing places. Lots of free gifts, colourful people and cheesy advertising) I built up a collection of at least 12 different university prospectuses for undergraduate students. Public Relations was known about very early on but never in my mind seriously considered. The title ‘Public Relations’ just didn’t seem that tasty or chocolately, rather bland in many ways. This was the first reason which put me off taking pr as a course before I even had read the content. It was when I attended a computer science talk at Lincoln university that by chance I was edged closer to public relations.
We had an hour before lunch and by chance a journalism talk fitted well with our timings, I decided to attend the presentation and listen with an open mind. The lecturer was a brilliant witty man who wore tatty jeans, un-ironed white shirt and had who’s facial skin seemed to suggest a life harder than I have ever had to bare. The talk was very interesting and reinforced the passion to write inside me. A passion which has been so ingrained through my life that sometimes I forget it is even there. When we came to questions and answers a boy at the back asked the question:
“Why should I study journalism?”
Quite a cheeky question really but actually perfectly valid. Instead of the lecturer replying back in some sort of sarcastic tone who was very sincere and said:
“Most people live their life in a box. They drive to work in a box, they work behind a desk in a box, they drive home to their box and spend their evenings watching the box. The course I am offering you is outside of this box.”
I realised after this that, for me, computer science was too concerned with that box. I might still spend my life around the box but I certainly wasn’t going to waste time repairing the box of my computer. I had considered journalism as a degree but public relations seemed better. Of course, some journalists move to public relations in later life. Perhaps in my later life I will move to journalism. Who knows? What I do know is that I need to get out of that box. That is why I chose Public Relations.
Generation why?
So on with the real substance of this podcast and it begins with a series of questions. Why, Oh why, Oh why? What a waste of time. You could have tidied your bedroom, done the washing up, finished your homework, oh anything! Anything would have been far more productive than just sitting on the internet all the time.
I’m a proud member of generation ‘Oh why?!’ Generally generation y are those who were born late 1980s – early 1990s. In the respect which I will be looking at generation y though will be with regards to the internet. Although I am technically a different generation to those who had children in the late 1990s we all have one thing in common. To us technology and the internet is a mother language. People born before computers were commonly found in the home learnt technology as a second language. This can be easily seen in my grandparents, a 3rd generation down, who are far more competent with mending a bike than I am but struggle to send an email. Of course, we all have different abilities of learning, both my parents can use computers well. There is a lack of passion or buzz missing though. A certain bond missing. Such as how my age find using the Apple iTunes store a simple task, Microsoft Office suite speaks for itself and navigating through an Operating System is learnt through messing about. The vast majority of older people need the instruction.
This is far from an ageist remark and I have no intention to cause offence. It is just true. The generation which grew up with the internet, my generation, are generally far more competent with technology. No other generation had the wide opportunity to learn whilst a toddler how to use computers or programme as a teenager. Bill Gates had to visit a local business to develop the art of programming. I just had to walk down some stairs in a small house, next to Nonsuch Park in Cheam.
It was a good 6 months after having started programming that I started first enquiring into owning my own website. I had no idea what I wanted the website to be based around. At the time I was a fairly devout Christian so I had considered constructing a Christian gaming website. How dire… The only other option was to develop a website about myself. This must have been early 2002, April I believe and I’ll never forget what my friends Dad told me.
“Why would anybody want to visit a website all about you? Personal websites have no purpose. They simply do not work.”
Hehe, how wrong he was. In the following two years social networking accelerated, blogs started to appear over the internet. Blogs have been around since the late 90s but Google may have been the catalyst when they purchased Blogger in 2003. It is difficult to say where they all spawned from, part of me believes blogs are the evolutionary offspring of bulletin boards and forums. Not exactly a love child but more an evolutionary cousin, much like chimpanzees are to humans.
But anyway, before I delve any further into this podcast I must give my thanks to Phil Hicks, who works at Montpellier Marketing Communications in Cheltenham, for providing the seed of thought for rest of this recording.
Social media rumour
Even as a member of generation Y, everyone, across all generations, wonders what the future of the internet will be. In the late 1980s many believed that the highstreet would be dead by the time we had the millennium. This prediction has truthfully been proven false. Shops have closed down, for a variety of reasons, but the high street still lives on and I’m sure will flourish once again. The point is this, whilst it is not possible to see into the future it is possible to predict where the patterns of the internet may lead.
It is not impossible by any degree to guess where communication on the internet will result. You may have seen a couple of weeks ago that I wrote an article on my blog about Google Wave. What I believe will possibly be the successor of Facebook as the social network has the ability to merge with other social networking mediums, this includes Twitter. Although, of course, Twitter isn’t really a social networking tool, which might owe to its success. On any other social networking website you can agree a friendship with an individual but then have constant mutual interaction with them. Twitter gives users the choice to interact, you don’t have to follow somebody just because they have followed you. Some believe it is courteous to follow back, I agree with this to a certain extent I but never follow everyone back. Some accounts really are a bit questionable…
The real question which we have to ask about social media is what difference it is making to the world. From a wider point of view we have globalisation, the concept of a ‘global village’ coined by Marshall McLuhan. From a media point of view we have a new form of communication offered by the social networking boom. Earlier today I visited one of my old colleges, Holy Cross, and was mainly inundated by questions asking what Public Relations is. The best way I found to describe it was partly through the theory of new media which is best compared against advertising. Whilst advertising could be described as parasitical, PR is far more focused, at least well done PR.
An article I wrote last month in response to a man called Loic Le Meur tackled this question of advertising and public relations. It is not uncommon to get the two confused as they are both essentially promotion and awareness tools. Like all tools though, they age and they change. It is best to view advertising as a vast sheet covering the necessary parts of your audience whilst PR accurately focuses on the necessary individuals in an way which could be best described as perhaps economical. PR does not waste promotion and awareness on the wrong people and with regards to digital PR usually judges success from an audiences response.
I am actually fortunate enough to be working for several companies in my summer break which is all about using ePR (Electronic Public Relations). From this I have learnt just how important it is to promote a product effectively and how Public Relations provides the necessary tools. A part of me believes PR is a free thought alternative to promote. The best campaigns have originality such as the Torches of Freedom campaign overlooked by Edward Bernays.
From this perspective online Public Relations does have a limit. ePR has the unfortunate problem of being bound in by the social construct it has to work within. However, this might be a topic best suited for another podcast episode sometime.
Until next time…
So here marketh the end of the podcast. I hope it didn’t sound too much like a lesson! Despite the serious tones I am just a student and this blog is my playground. Feel free to follow my updates on twitter at http://twitter.com/michaelwhite1. The account Michael White seems to be taken by the Guardian political correspondent. Although I do almost have his amount of followers! Keep watching out for new podcast episodes, the podcasts should be available on iTunes shortly.
Until next time, thank you for listening and goodbye.
