How Social media is reshaping the news

Social media and the use of social media has changed and in some ways revolutionised how certain industries work. This can definitely be said for the news industry which has nearly been turned on its head since the advent of social media. The sales of broadsheet newspapers has dropped dramatically in the past few years with more and more people turning to apps on there smartphones and tablets to read or watch the news of the day. One of the main online driving forces for news telling has to be Facebook. Most news companies have a Facebook page where they can upload articles which can be read by their whole audience simultaneously. Facebook is also a great place for a news company to expand it's readership figures, in the US over 64% of adults are on Facebook which is a huge number and the opportunities present for enticing new readers is in plentiful of supply.

Twitter is also an extremely useful resource for news-cooperation's . Twitter has for some become there main source of news and more and more people are turning to it as a resource. There are a few good reasons for this. On Twitter you can follow both the newspaper and the journalists and receive updates on the news from both sources, This was almost unheard of in the not so distant past and has given people much better access to news and news stories then ever before.

  And its not just access to the news that social media has given people but it's also the ability to comment on the news. Now we have always been able to share our thoughts on a news item but it was a rather longer process then how we do so today. If you read something in a newspaper that stirred a reaction in you say twenty years ago, you would send a letter to the editor and if you were lucky it may get published for all to see. These days social media users can read a piece on Facebook or Twitter and they can immediately share a comment on it and publish it for the world to see. Now this is both a good thing and a bad thing as things can be said or in this case typed in the heat of the moment and immediately published for the world to see. Of course the author of the comment may later regret there words but at that stage its already too late, even if you delete potentially thousands of people have already seen it. So caution is needed when commenting online.
   

Social media is also reshaping how people discover news. A lot of people, young people in particular, simply dont buy newspapers any more, and in a age where knowing the news is quite possibly more important then ever it's good to know that there are a vast array of news publications now available online and that news is shared online so widely by so many different mediums its quite hard not to be kept in the loop when it comes to news.

So thats just a few way's of how social media is reshaping the news, Thanks for reading!

References:

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/09/24/how-social-media-is-reshaping-news/

  http://www.economist.com/ideasarena/news/by-invitation/questions/will-rise-social-media-fundamentally-reshape-news-industry-o

Ryanair: How they turned there image around using social media.

Ryanair is one of the most recognisable brands in Europe. They have made there name on low fares, no frills and the ability to fly you anywhere in Europe quicker and more efficiently then any other airline in Europe and because of that there profits and there business grows year by year. Despite there success Ryanair had a reputation for being difficult to deal with and sometimes downright rude to there customers. When social media really became prevalent in the mid two thousands the company saw it as a real opportunity to enhance there image by creating fun colourful and often ridiculous social media pages. The companies two main social media platforms, Facebook and Twitter surely do push the quirkiness and colourfulness of the company in a big way.

So what does Ryanair use there often eccentric social media platforms for? Well like most airlines they use it as a means to communicate with there customers and they seam to be quite open across Facebook and Twitter and answer most questions and queries that are thrown there way. They also use social media to advertise seat sales and other promotions in relation to the airline. On Twitter they also run a competition using the hashtag #Ryanairfotofriday  which picks the best picture of a Ryanair aircraft taken by a member of the public and the winners photo is then used as the pages cover photo for the following week 

Running competitions and simply answering customers queries online has really helped the airline enhance its image and has boosted peoples enthusiasm for the brand. Ryanair has put a lot of money into maintaining a professional but fun social media presence. Posting and uploading content to social media is now a full time job at Ryanair and the airline hire people specifically for that purpose.

By having people manning the social media sites full time means that customers always have fast way of contacting the airline and that openness has really gone a long way of turning Ryanair's image around and making them a lot more user friendly. 

   References:

https://www.facebook.com/ryanair/?fref=ts

https://twitter.com/Ryanair

http://zartis.com/tech-focus-ryanairs-digital-strategy-2015/

Wikileaks: Pr through social media

Wikileaks is a non profit organisation that publishes secret government secrets from anonymous sources. The organisation was set up by Australian Julian Assange in 2006 and since then has been routinely publishing government secrets from many different countries most notably the United States Of America. This has led to many calling for Assanges's arrest and since 2012 he has lived in the embassy of Ecuador in London to avoid extradition to the USA. Wikileaks, like many other organisations chooses social media as its direct communicator to the public. Wikileaks , however is no ordinary organisation. Wikileaks mainly uses Facebook and Twitter as it's main methods of communication. Both pages are used for the release of sensitive information and also acts as a PR template for the organisation

  The Facebook page has over 3.6 million likes while its Twitter page has over 4 million followers

Both pages serve a similar purpose and it's posts reach a huge amount of people. Wikileaks dose not directly communicate with its public however, they publish information and for the most part let the viewer decipher the message thats been released. 

Julian Assange, founder of wikileaks has not been seen alive since the start of October with many followers fearing he may be dead or that he may have come to harm. Wikileaks designed what is known as a dead man's switch into Twitter and Facebook and they warned if Assange comes to harm at any time they would activate it. The dead man's switch is essentially a threat to upload a large amount of very sensitive information to the internet in the event of Assange's death and followers of Wikileaks have noted a large increase in activity in the past few months with many fearing the dead man switch may have been activated.

To date information on Assange has been hard to come by except for the odd post about him on Wikileaks Facebook page

  Its still unconfirmed whether he is dead or alive although what we do know is that Wikileaks use of social media is truly unique and almost unheard of. They have used social media in a completely new way using it as a platform to release government secrets that would have been almost impossible to get hold of before the digital age. They have in many ways reinvented how social media can be used by organisations and proven it can be used not just for PR but to bring about change and even perhaps bring down governments. Social media is fast becoming not just a tool for PR but a vast resource for change and Wikileaks arent the first nor the last to exploit it in this way.

References:

 https://www.facebook.com/wikileaks/?fref=ts

http://www.jeffbullas.com/2011/01/14/what-do-social-media-and-wikileaks-have-in-common/

https://twitter.com/wikileaks?lang=en

Ticketmaster Ireland and it's Social Media flaws

Ticketmaster is a worldwide ticket seller operating in over 20 countries. In this blog we will look only at Ticketmaster Ireland and there apparent failure to connect with it's public recently on social media. This became particulalry apparent during the recent Coldplay ticket scandal. Coldplay announced a show in Croke Park Dublin for July 2017, The venue which has a capacity reaching over eighty thousand was expected to sell all the tickets but not as fast as they did. When the tickets went on sale many people were left dismayed when they sold out seemingly in seconds only to find that many of the tickets for the show had popped up on Ticketmaster's reselling site Seatwave.

On Seatwave tickets can be resold at double and sometimes tripple the price of the original face value. The Tickets were originally on sale on Ticketmaster for 69.50 only to appear moments later on Seatwave with prices ranging from 200 to 800 euros

Naturally people were extremely angry and the first place they vented there anger was Facebook. The page  was bombarded with negative comments slating the company for tricking the public, being dishonest and for having a lack of transparency with the public

after racking up so many complaints you would expect an organisation to respond but no response ever came from the company, not one. In the times we live in where connectivity and and communication is easier then ever there really is no good excuse for a company not to respond to queries and concerns pointed out to them on Social media. To this day Ticketmaster has failed to provide any kind of solid explanation as to why so many tickets were instantly available on its re sale site and to many thats viewed as being PR Suicide. Ticketmaster's Facebook page is its main link to it's audience on social media the page itself has over 125,000 likes and there failure to even release a statement to the public on the matter is astonishing it's seams very much like Ticketmaster is trying to gloss over the fact it essentially runs a touting operation through Seatwave. The company also has a Facebook page for Seatwave which only has a bit over 20,000 likes and it seams like there social media flaws are once again shown through this page

 
You will notice the page has not got the blue verification tick that most "Official" page's would have. As Seatwave is a entity that a lot of people resent you would think that Ticketmaster would do more to soften its image and a small step on that road would be getting the page verified, Most people dont accept an un-verified page as being official. The lack of communication and clarity across Ticketmaster's social media networks shows a distinct flaw in how it presents itself online and they have to fix these flaws if they ever hope to regain the public's trust for the future. The Seatwave account also must be verified if only to go someway into tying to repair the companies now tarnished image. Doing this along with engaging more with its public online will surely help Ticketmaster go some way in winning  back the trust of some of its audience.

References:

 https://www.facebook.com/TicketmasterIE/?fref=ts

https://www.facebook.com/seatwave/?fref=ts

http://www.ticketmaster.ie/

http://www.seatwave.ie/?cid=pa20117851&gclid=CjwKEAiAjvrBBRDxm_nRusW3q1QSJAAzRI1t3ggtak6BK-sZKgOHA439WdUOSEStRuxuTksdHfw-yRoCGiDw_wcB&gclsrc=aw.ds&dclid=CO3g6efM0NACFY6m7Qod6vsG5A

How Social media can be of benefit in crisis PR

The life of a PR practitioner can be an extremely stressful one especially during a crisis. In an age where we are striving to use technology to make our lives easier surely there is a way to make the life of a PR practitoner a bit easier even if not any less stressful. When a crisis strikes an organisation the press office will go into overdrive the first thing that people will want is clear and concise information regarding the incident or crisis and failure to deliver this information will result in frustration and resentment towards the organisation especially if the crisis is impacting on the public directly. Now in the days before the internet information would be slow leaving an organisation and it could take days for them to get the corrrect information out but these days PR practitoneres have the benefit of the internet and information can be released as soon as its gotten. 

A good recent example is Samsung who ran into trouble with one of there smartphone models, The Galaxy Note 7. The phone has a fault which causes the battery to explode which is extremely dangerous as the batteries contain acid. Samsung's press office relied heavily on social media particulalry on Twitter to release information in a quick and timely fasion

Twitter is a great tool for an organisation in crisis due to it's ease of access to the public and how quickly the message can be spread. People were demanding answers from Samsung over this fault and by using Twitter they were able to respond giving information in quick snappy updates. Before Twitter this would have been a much more difficult and drawn out process and would have taken a lot more time to spread the message you wanted.

This is just one example of how social media can be of benefit to an organisation during a crisis. There are many more and they all show us the same example and that is that it is no longer acceptable to be slow or unreliable in the publishing of important information especially in a crisis, The tools of communication are there for all to use and when something goes wrong, especially in a scenario where public safety is effected eg. The Samsung case, organisations have the power to reach a lot of people who may be effected very quickly and its fair to say there is no longer an excuse for slow communication.

References:

https://www.newswhip.com/2016/11/respond-pr-crisis-social-media/

https://twitter.com/SamsungMobile?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor

How News has adapted to social media

Over the last ten years we have seen the rise of social media around the globe. This rise has, in some cases, revolutionised industries maybe none so much as the industry i'm about to talk about, The news industry. We consume a lot of news on a daily basis and traditionaly we would consueme it in a few different ways. Radio bulletin's, TV and print media were the main resources for people who wanted the hear the news and if we think of it that was only up to about ten years ago, But a lot of change has heppend within that ten years and I would like to take you through some of the most common methods of consuming news today (2016). 

Most of us these days have mobile phones or to be more precise smartphones. Smartphones have in my opinion replaced Newspapers and other forms of print media

Its now possible to carry around a huge amount of news and information in your pocket there are countless news apps ranging from major outlets like Sky News, RTE, RT, BBC and CNN to smaller independent outlets like The News Network, World News and Breaking News.ie. If you have any or all of these apps you are pretty much carrying arount digital newspapers and the convience of that is one of the reasons why print media has been on such a dramatic decline as of late. TV broadcasts have also been effected but not as much as print media. TV news stations have had to adapt to this new way of consuming news and in many cases they have embraced it and have encouraged users to use there Facebook, Twitter or instagram apps. One thing the TV channels have going for them is control, They can limit the content released online in a more controled way then a newspaper for example, They want people to still tune in so they limit what appears on Podcasts and online and will often use tweets to get people to tune in .

Radio news has also had to adapt 

Before TV and long before the Internet and social media the main method for people getting news was radio bulletin's. Many people would have a radio on in there house's and at certain times of the day the news would be read, while this still happnes and is still popular the way and the place's that this happens have changed. Most of us will only listen to the radio while we are in the car and we very often lsiten anywhere else. The radio companies know this and there are now radio channels that deal primarily in reporting the news and talking and analysing the news , A good example of that would be Newstalk which is an Irish news radio station.

So the digital age is most definitly upon us and just like in many other industries it's forcing news outlets to change and to come up with new ways of delivering the news in an ever changing enviroment.

References:

http://www.journalism.org/2016/05/26/news-use-across-social-media-platforms-2016/

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/09/24/how-social-media-is-reshaping-news/

How the Police use Social media

In the modern day, the succesful running of an organisation depends on many different factors. Increasingly social media is also becoming one of the major factors in how the public precieve an organisation. Thats especially true when you are running a police department. Modern police departments are beginning to rely more on more on social media for a variety of different reasons. One of the main reasons is the psychological factors tied to social media , By maintaing a presence on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest or Youtube the police department becomes humanised. It also allows a police force to connect more freely with the public and converse with the public, It can also help with general police work, Forces use social media to respond to tips and to stay up to date with whats going on in the locality in which the police force operates.

Social media and police work can work hand in hand , In a 2013 survey it was found that over 96% of police forces in the US use social media in some form and over 80% of those have said that the use of social media has assited in the solving of crimes in there locality and 73% said that it helped build relations between the poilce force and the public.Like many things social media can be a double edged sword and with a job as responcible as police work forces need to know how to use social media in a  responcible ethical matter. Many questions have been risen over what a police force can publish online and what they cant. Prince Gerorge county police in , Maryland in the US caused controversy when they planned to live tweet a sting operation , The sting operation was to target men soliciting prostitituion and concerns were raised over the privacy infringement that would be imposed upon those who are apprehended in the raid.

On the other hand the NYPD took to the streets of New York to inspire people to have there photos taken with officers of the NYPD. The photos, which were uploaded to Facebook and Twitter under the hashtag #myNYPD were taken to help strengthen the bond between the department and the people of New York which had become frayed over time due to allegations of Police brutality in the past , This goodwill mission was moderately successful however other outlets saw it as being a huge failure due to a continuation of negative press following the campaign and te continuing unrest over allegations of police brutality in the states.

Police forces dont just use Facebook and Twitter however, Mountain View PD used Pinterest as a lost and found and posted up items that were handed in, in an effort to quickly and efficiently reunite people with there lost property.

Like in many other walks of life the rise of social media is being embraced by Law Enforcement. They are using it to prevent crime and to build bridges with the communities they protect. By using social media they are making there jobs easier and more efficient and at the same time they are making themselves seem that bit more Human which from a PR point of view is very very important.

 References 

https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/233604

http://www.police-foundation.org.uk/publications/briefings/police-use-of-social-media