Jour.4460 Blog #10- Can social media be bad PR for the movie business?

With every new movie that comes out, you can always get a quick review just by logging onto social media sites like Facebook and Twitter.  Within minutes of watching the movie, people will post their opinions and either tell people to go see it or if it’s not worth their time.  So when it comes down to it…is social media bad PR for movies? If there’s only negative comments being posted by people, it’s more than likely going to send the wrong message to everyone, causing people to not go watch the movie. 

People are connected nearly every minute of the day to their social network of friends and when you have the majority of them downing a movie, why go and waste your time and money? Take Facebook's News Feed, everyone is dishing out what happens throughout the movie then concluding that it was horrible. Well, you basically got the entire movie from your Facebook friends for free and apparently you were the smart one in waiting right? It's bad news for newly released movies because now only a handful of people can determine how good the movie is. What movies are missing now are the good ole days when you would go with a group of your pals to watch the movie you kept seeing great trailers for on TV. The suspense of finally getting into that theater and either being totally disappointed or blown away at your new favorite movie is what it should be about. Why let your online world take that away from you?

The Hunger Games is a good example of how bad PR can affect movies after it was hit by racism this past week.  After watching the movie, fans tweeted highly offensive slurs after they discovered a black teen actress was cast as the character Rue. According to the dailymail, one user wrote on Twitter: 'Why does rue have to be black, not gonna lie kinda ruined the movie'. This was just one of many racial tweets that movie fans tweeted. Even though people read the books and the in the book it clearly stated that Rue was of “dark skin”, it was shocking at how disappointed people got just because of the color of Rue’s skin.

 When people started seeing all these tweets about the character in the movie being black, they no longer wanted to see the movie.  One person tweeted “Eww Rue is black?? I’m not watching.” First of all, why does it matter what color the skin of the character is? I thought racism was gone, but obviously not. It’s just surprising because I would expect this from the older generation but not from the young generation. I’m not saying people shouldn’t express their opinions, but when it becomes a racial issue, people should be more careful about what they say. Besides, why should a factor like that determine a movie's success? 

Sources:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2122714/The-Hunger-Games-hit-racism-row-movie-fans-tweet-vile-slurs-casting-black-teen-actress-heroine-Rue.html

http://jezebel.com/5896408/racist-hunger-games-fans-dont-care-how-much-money-the-movie-made

http://www.toprankblog.com/2009/11/social-media-pr/

 

 

 

Jour.4470- Blog #3:Ethics in PR

When dealing with public relations, ethics is definitely something to be aware of, especially when it comes down to deciding between right and wrong. Public Relations is known by most as a way “for companies, organizations or people to enhance their reputations” (Wisegeek.com).  With PR professionals constantly communicating with the media, to present the clients in the most favorable way possible, they must know what is considered to be ethical and what’s morally wrong. There have been numerous times when a company has ruined its reputation due to a situation and never had good PR to gain its reputation back. Once a company loses the trust and respect with the public, it’s always hard to regain it back.  With every situation that companies face, there’s either good PR or bad PR.

Bad PR tends to have two factors that go along with it. When the company makes a mistake that becomes newsworthy, it is usually the poor action that the organization takes and the poor 

communication surrounding the action of the company that causes them to have a bad PR crisis. 

One example of bad PR would be the Amazon PR fail back in 2009. It all started when Craig Seymour, author of “All I Could Bare: My Life in the Strip Clubs of Gay Washington, D.C.,” lost its sales ranking in February. After being questioned about this, Amazon claimed that it was adult content being intentionally filtered out.  As more Gay romance authors were losing sales ranking, people started to notice. On April 11, 2009, hundreds of GLBT books had all lost sales rank. Amazon continued to give the same response claiming, “certain content was deemed adult and thus filtered out of searches and lists.”  With the power of social media, it didn’t take long for this to end up on Twitter. Twitterverse was quick to pick up on all the talk about Amazon.  After two full days of angry responses from people, mainly on Twitter, Amazon finally commented saying, “an embarrassing and ham-fisted cataloging error had caused thousands of books on its site to lose their sales rankings and become harder to find in searches” (Rich).  This example would fall into the ethical theory of Utilitarianism. It shows that the rightness or wrongness of any action can be judged entirely in terms of its consequences. 

In Amazon’s case, the company did not take action until they saw all the angry responses on the social media sites. Therefore, they didn’t see what they had done wrong until it was too late.  It was surprising to most people how Amazon missed the opportunity to react to such a crisis and how they handled the whole situation. Amazon did learn a lesson after all of this: “ If it happens too often and you show a disregard or disrespect for the online conversation, then you’re going to be at a big disadvantage” (Grabowski).

After this happened, it made a lot of people question Amazon and wonder if they had homophobic running their website. I searched the word “homosexuality” on the Amazon website and the first book that pops up is “A Parent’s Guide to Preventing Homosexuality”. Coincidence? Who knows? 


With so many Bad PR cases, people forget about all the good PR cases that professionals deal with as well. The example that automatically comes to mind when I think of good PR is the Tylenol crisis of 1982.  McNeil Consumer Products, a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson, was left with a big crisis to deal with when seven people on Chicago's West Side died mysteriously. It was later determined “that each of the people that died had ingested an Extra-Strength Tylenol capsule laced with cyanide” (Kaplan).  It didn’t take long for the news to become known to all. It caused people around the nation to panic. Thinking quickly, “these poisonings made it necessary for Johnson & Johnson to launch a public relations program immediately, in order to save the integrity of both their product and their corporation as a whole” (Kaplan). Johnson & Johnson was recognized and praised for their actions and were a good example of a company that “effectively demonstrated how a major business ought to handle a disaster" (Knight).  The way that Tylenol handled the crisis can best be described with Kant’s ethical theory. Kant defined good will as the “uniquely human capacity to act according to one’s principles, not our of an expectation of potential consequences.” Tylenol was doing the right thing versus doing things right. They knew what was best for their consumers, putting what was best for the company aside. 
With Public Relations, deciding between right and wrong is part of the everyday process when working with clients. Public relations professionals depend heavily on certain codes of ethics held by major professional associations. It is the job of the PR professional to know when something is ethically or morally wrong and it’s their responsibility to take action and decide what’s best for the company. When something goes wrong in an organization, ethics come into play because it then comes down to deciding on how to communicate information with the media and the public without doing harm to the company or lying to the public. So whether people believe it or not, ethics do exist in the world of pubic relations. I feel without ethical theories to go by, public relations just wouldn’t be the same. 

References:

http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-public-relations.htm

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/14/technology/internet/14amazon.html

 

http://www.aerobiologicalengineering.com/wxk116/TylenolMurders/crisis.html

http://reichcomm.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451bafe69e20168e5517482970c-300wi   

 

Jour.4460- Pink Slime Crisis Avoided

We all know it takes a good PR professional to avoid a crisis or even turn a crisis gone badly into a good one. A good example would be the “pink slime” issue all the grocery stores had to deal with this week. 

So what exactly is pink slime? Pink slime is “ a low-cost ingredient made from fatty bits of meat left over from other cuts. The bits are heated to about 100 degrees Fahrenheit and spun to remove most of the fat. The lean mix then is compressed into blocks for use in ground meat. The product is exposed to ammonium hydroxide gas to kill bacteria, such as E. coli and salmonella” (Willis).

This extra ingredient has been added to the beef for years now. The thing was no one ever really knew about it so it never bothered anyone.

However, with the magic of social media, it didn’t take long for everyone to know what was going into the beef they bought at their regular grocery store. Everyone now knows about the “ammonia-treated meat additive, and they want it removed from their beef products”(Rudawsky).

The store recognized for the best response to the customer’s complaints was Kroger. Their statement said, “We have listened to your concerns that the use of lean finely textured beef—while fully approved by the USDA for safety and quality—is something you do not want in ground beef. You are our top priority and for that reason we have decided to stop purchasing ground beef that contains lean finely textured beef.”

Kroger did a great job in granting the wishes of their consumers. They know what is best for their company and know what is at stake if they don’t listen to the voice of their consumers. They didn’t try to lie and cover up what they already knew was exposed. When dealing with a PR crisis, it’s always best to just tell the truth once it has surfaced. People are more likely to respect you as a company where as to if you were to lie to them, they would lose all trust. It’s always a good idea to be informed and keep the public informed of what exactly is going on. If not, people tend to create their own ideas and start rumors, which just ends up making the crisis worse.

So if the issue didn’t come to everyone’s attention recently, would it still be such a big deal? Would people even have cared or noticed?

Sources:

http://www.app.com/article/20120323/NJBIZ/303230060/-Pink-slime-fears-send-NJ-supermarkets-scurrying

http://www.prdaily.com/Main/Articles/11190.aspx

http://www.stoppinkslime.org/

Jour.4460- Blog #9: Social Media- A real addiction?

With so many social media sites up and coming, it’s the new thing to talk about but can it really be as addicting as some say it is? According to prdaily.com, “A 2011 study found that 54 percent of social networkers felt a form of addiction to sites such as Facebook and Twitter, while a report from last month found that the urge to tweet might be as strong as the desire to smoke or drink alcohol” (Sebastian).

For some people, I have seen how important social media is to them. They are constantly updating statuses, photos and tweets. Is it healthy when social media starts to take over your life? People who are addicted to the social media sites like Facebook and Twitter use these sites to occupy their time. It becomes their only way of communicating with the world and in some cases, it becomes their only way to get real news in their opinion. Social media sties become a need for people, it’s just something they have to have in their life. I know I’ve caught myself many times before just checking my Facebook or Twitter when I’m bored. I don’t even realize I’m doing it sometimes. 

 

Those who use social media say “they find it easier to justify glancing at a Facebook page than having a drink at 2 p.m. …The stigma, as well as the dangers, surrounding alcohol and tobacco don't exist with social media, so users are able to rationalize their actions as harmless”(Sander).  With this being true, I find it kind of sad at the same time. I feel like with time, users will become really obsessed with their social media sites. Constantly checking their phones to see how many friends or followers they have becomes a daily habit and even a strong urge for some people.

Sometimes, it’s almost as if people use social media in order to feel like they are actually socializing when in reality, it’s not that way at all. For example, people who are constantly posting things and expressing their ideas online are some of the most boring people when you actually meet them face-to-face. So could social media be a form of hiding who they really are...or even trying to pretend to be someone they’re not?

On the other hand, some say social media is just a form of communicating and not an addiction. They feel if people consider it an addiction, they’re really just in need of attention and lonely. Which could also be true in the sense that it’s the only form of attention that one gets. They may feel better appreciated through social media sites.

So is social media really an addiction? Some will argue and say it is an addiction while others will just say it’s a way of keeping busy or just pass time. However, when it starts to interfere with your daily life and you start to shut people out from the real world, then it becomes a problem.

Sources:

http://prdaily.com/Main/Articles/11118.aspx

http://www.newsy.com/videos/study-says-social-media-more-addicting-than-sex-smoking/

http://tdhurst.com/social-media-addiction

http://www.psychologytoday.com/files/u288/2010-05-22-150x-SM-pill-bottles.jpg

http://www.pamorama.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/gadgetology_Retrevo_SM_Addiction_Sl.jpg

Jour.4460- Blog #8: Will Pinterest’s terms of use cause a decrease in users?

             Pinterest has grown in popularity in the past year. For some it has become an addicting pastime, at least for me it has. Many businesses have also been incorporating Pinterest to promote their products.  The majority of the users on Pinterest are women and “with over 11 million unique monthly visitors (and counting), Pinterest became the fastest standalone website to eclipse the 10 million per month mark ever” (PR Daily). That’s pretty impressive, so why are so many users having second thoughts all of a sudden before pinning to Pinterest?  

Well according to a recent article on prdaily.com, “the site's terms of use stipulate that people who pin photos to the site agree that they are the owners of the photos or have permission from the owners to post them.” I know from my experience, I rarely read the terms of use that are any site I use, simply because I don’t think there’s a lot of risk from the sites I use.  I’m sure there is plenty of other people who feel the same way or are just to lazy to take the time to read.  

The strange thing about the terms of use that Pinterest has set is that it kind of contradicts the whole idea of the site. The whole idea of Pinterest is to share photos and ideas with other users of the same interest.  It would be such a hassle to ask every single owner of the photos for permission to pin their photos to their boards.  Also, I doubt that people actually take the time to click on the picture to where it directs them to the original site of the photo. I know every time I come upon a picture I like, I just repin it and continue to scroll down.

Not only are the terms of use a problem for users, but for photographers as well.  Even though the majority of them want to use Pinterest to promote their work, according to the Pinterest terms of service, “you release all rights you have in a picture once you pin it." So this is pretty much saying once the photo is up on Pinterest, the photographer is allowing the company to do whatever they like with the photo. This makes photographers unsure about sharing their photos on the site any more. 

With all of these copyright laws going into effect here, will cause users to limit their use of Pinterest? Not many people are aware of this problem and don’t even know they are violating the terms of use.  As of now, “there is very little that can be done to avoid infringing copyright if you are a Pinterest user” (Kowalski).  The only thing users can do is to pin pictures they have taken themselves. Until this matter is resolved, pinners should be careful what they pin up.

Sources:

http://www.prdaily.com/Main/Articles/11048.aspx

http://www.thefoundist.com/2012/03/08/be-careful-what-you-pin-you-could-end-up-in-jail/

http://s16.postimage.org/8o4egl251/pinterest.jpg

Jour.4460-Blog #7-The effects of social media

For some people, a day without social media is not humanly possible. I don’t think they would even be able to function if social media were to just disappear. There was an article I read recently on prdaily.com that really opened my eyes on how much social media has impacted today’s generation. The article, Study: What social media will do to our brains by 2020” discussed how “Social media is rewiring the brains of young people,” and I completely agree. 

Before social media, people communicated with each other in a whole different way. A simpler way if you ask me. If you wanted someone to come over to your house or meet you somewhere for coffee, all you had to do was pick up the phone. However, now, I feel like today’s generation doesn’t even know how to use the telephone if it’s not for texting reasons. I don’t know how many times I’ve heard someone say “I just hate talking on the phone,” or “Texting is just faster and easier for me.” That just goes to show that people are becoming more anti-social and lazier. I’ve noticed that every time someone gets to my apartment, instead of knocking on the door or calling me, they’ll just text me to let me know that they’ve arrived. Is this just what the younger generation is accustomed to?

The article also discussed information from a study done by Elon University and Pew Internet, where more than 1,000 technology stakeholders and critics say that by 2020 young people will be “less likely to undertake deep, critical analysis of issues and challenging information.” So what does this mean exactly? In my opinion, this is saying that young people don’t really have to think for themselves anymore. They have access to more information with social media sites and I feel like that’s limiting the use of their own knowledge.

Information is now at the tip of one's fingers in today's world. It is an amazing thing to have technology come so far but we shouldn't let it take over our world. A day without social media would show the younger generation how beautiful a walk outside could be without having to constantly be checking their social media sites. Meeting new people used to be so much more personal. Now everything is done online and human connection is being lost.

The younger generation is growing up in a society where they have access to everything they need to know about.  Sure some of this can be very beneficial to them in the real world by allowing them to connect with others and be able to do things that one isn’t able to do without social media.  Even though some people see the affects of social media as a positive thing,  “Some experts expressed concerns that trends are leading to a future in which most people become shallow consumers of information, endangering society” (elon study).

So how different would it be if we didn’t have social media today? Would there be a lack of communication or would there be more face-to-face interaction with people? One can only predict how social media will affect us in the near future, but we won’t really know until we actually see the effects ourselves.

Sources:

http://www.prdaily.com/Main/Articles/10983.aspx

http://www.elon.edu/e-web/predictions/expertsurveys/2012survey/default.xhtml

http://upfront.ngsgenealogy.org/2012/02/national-genealogical-society-has.html