The second week of DCS (Week 2 -31st Jan) progressed to the history and context of digital strategies, contrasting to more recent, topical social media and online PR tactics. Collating thoughts from the lectures, seminars and readings , Web 2.0 seemed to be a denominating factor in the influence and creation of many second-generation web based communities such a social networking and wikis. This preliminary blog will decipher how Web 2.0 surpassed the initial communications mix, disrupting everything.
Source: Electronic Portfolio
Associated with Tim O’Reily, the term ‘Web 2.0’ was coined around 2004, with it the global landscape of the World Wide Web changed and it seemed everyone was converting to digital use, although this carried its implications (such as the digital divide) as any piece of innovative jargon or phenomenon would. Peter Debreceny observed a difference “between technologies that modify existing channels of communication and technology that is changing the environment for all communication, Web 2.0 being the latter type of influence.” It requires a completely new way of thinking as its breaking down barriers of control. Instead of implementing the ideal two-way symmetric model, PR professionals like to manipulate audiences whilst maintaining the control, becoming gatekeepers in their own right. Web 2.0 is contravening this entirely, empowering media-savvy publics, whether its responses to online media relations through social networking or regular RSS updates.
The tactics and strategies conjured by practitioners rely heavily on the use of media, ensuring that their methods (John V. Pavlik, Ph. D) always need to be adapted effectively to new paradigms of communication technologies. The Public Relations industry has conformed (as many others have) to communicating with publics through the reshaped landscape of new media, utilizing the social media boom, with old media becoming a thing of the past.
An article published by Guardian technology editor, Charles Arthur, points out how Technology Journalists are pioneering the way of harbouring trends in communication tools and gadgets in order to balance the everyday ‘work/life hum‘ (Guardian, 2009). This could be a step in the right direction for PR professionals in dominating social networking channels to relay more information to publics through the technological world.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/sep/21/technology-journalists-pioneers?INTCMP=SRCH.
Have you personally noticed the radical change of Web 1.0 to 2.0? Did you make the transition from Myspace to Facebook to Twitter...and now due to DCS we have all become part of the Blogosphere. Our associations with the Web 2.0 phenomenon seems to me to be ever expanding...
