Public Relations: the champion or slayer of democracy?

Has PR 'revived' democracy?

On PRiDA we talk a great deal about the role of social media in promoting democracy: stimulating public lobbying, raising awareness of issues and being the driving force behind much of the Arab Spring - eventually leading to some governments blocking Facebook and Twitter.

However this article by Kent (2013) (if you have UWE access) argues that PR practitioners fail to use these media to promote dialogue and democracy, and indeed their overuse of one-way comms could be stifling democracy. Kent claims that "connectivity to our "friends" on social media comes at the expense of isolation from our fellow human beings who live next door or down the hall".

Interestingly, Emily Bell on Radio 4 this week would argue the opposite.

I also argue that PR practioners even actively undermine democracy with private lobbying - using money and connections to have a quiet word in the ear of influential politicians... So obviously, social media are tools that could be used better by many mainstream practitioners, but charities and campaigning organisations may be much better at using social media for public lobbying and rebalancing the influence of the people with power and money - for instance campaigners such as Surfers Against Sewage using Facebook and this app.
So while social media may be great for the voice of the people, PR practioners could often be accused of doing the opposite, according to Kent.

The building blocks of a great campaign

Steve Grout was outraged that the famous Lego brand, that he grew up with and bought for his children, was being promoted just 'millimetres' away from the infamous page 3 images of topless women in The Sun newspaper as part of a Sun-Lego promotional partnership.

So, he created a great photo opp with a topless lego figure (pictured), used media relations, created an online petition directed at Lego, collected 12,000 signatures through social media - and Lego have just announced they are ending the partnership (apparently a 'natural' end but the timing seems interesting).

This is part of a campaign that is gathering momentum and which is likely to end in removal of this so called 'British Institution' from page 3 of the newspaper.

Steve Grout is just a dad - an ordinary citizen outraged at the continued use of topless models in the Sun, and he found a way to leverage change through public lobbying of Lego, one of the Sun's key partners.

Meanwhile Lego perhaps realised the impact of their partner's brand on their own in a relationship similar to the sponsorship relationship and Image Transfer Potential: as page 3 of The Sun goes down Lego would hardly want to bask in the dying rays.

Is this the new global democracy?

A key theme of this module is the transformative power of the internet: on reputation management, crisis management, and on public affairs. Where once private lobbyists held sway in the corridors of power in democracies around the world through financial clout and personal connections, the internet now hands power back to the people.

Avaaz are an activist group that exists almost entirely in the virtual ether of the internet, spanning international borders and lobbying at the highest levels for global change. At just 5 years old, the organisation claims to be a 'roots up' consulting its tens of thousands of members around the world about issues to campaign on. The organisation targets government policy around the world, whether targeting governments direct about issues within their own countries, or influential outsider governments and international parliaments such as the EU to pressure others.

Issues may concern government policy for their own citizens, such as Uganda's anti-gay laws, or India's ongoing failure to address abuse of women. They also impact on some of the world's largest corporations, targeting companies such as Shell by pressuring the Nigerian government to impose a legitimate $5 billion fine on the oil giant for the 2011 Bonga oil spill when 40,000 barrels of oil leaked into the Atlantic Ocean.

With  'people power' now spanning borders from smartphones, tablets and laptops around the globe through organisations such as Avaaz, governments and corporations may no longer be able to ignore upstart action groups. This is a fundamental shift in power towards the little guys requiring fundamental changes in practice and policy by governments and corporations around the globe.