PR INTERNET CRISES
The articles all concentrate on PR issues surrounding the Internet. While some of the PR issues directly link to the PR firms representing various corporations, others are issues that the corporations bring upon themselves. For example, the articles dealing with Wal-Mart’s contrived blogs from Edelman are specifically defaulted directly to Edelman while the issues surrounding Internet safety and minors with websites such as xanga.com and myspace.com. Overall, the articles all address major developments in the PR field that did not exist ten years ago because of the advent of the Internet. The articles dealing with Wal-Mart, Internet Meat Puppets, and Sony all address media problems surrounding deceptive dissemination of information and opinions over the Internet. Specifically, they violate the transparency aspect of Public Relations. With the advent of flogging and meat puppets, corporations that utilize such tactics lose credibility in the public’s vantage point and create skepticism regarding other blogs. Public Relations practitioners face major issues when this type of practice is unearthed because they destroy any notion of credibility that the blogs had in the first place. The articles touching on myspace.com, xanga.com, Snackwells, and AOL all pose a different media threat to Public Relations practitioners. This threat is by way of the corporations themselves. By releasing private information or gathering information from minors, the public questions the corporation’s intentions. Dealing with minors is
specifically threatening to PR practitioners because they must answer to a public that looks to protect their children. The introduction of personal pages on myspace.com and xanga.com leave room for minors to express themselves in what they believe to be an anonymous way, however, the PR practitioner must deal with the consequences. Finally, the articles that address user-generated content for Malibu Rum and Chevy raise other credibility concerns among the public that Public Relations practitioners must address among the media. Both of these articles address different concerns about user-generated content. The Malibu article suggests that Internet contests can be highly volatile because measures of credibility do not exist. Regulations involving contests do not necessarily cross over into the Web regarding online contests. The issues Chevy faces with their user-generated content advertising stems form the actual content generated by users. In the case of Chevy, PR practitioners faced the challenge of whether or not to keep the campaign going and accept critical usergenerated content or stop the campaign and open themselves up to criticism regarding their decision to stop the campaign. Overall, PR practitioners will continue to face new obstacles in practicing their job, especially regarding technology. With fewer regulations on certain technology and the Internet, they must ensure that they have the right amount of transparency, sound
decision-making on campaign continuation, and proper privacy restrictions in order to actively combat criticism from the public.