IN THIS ISSUE: July 16, 2003 To Archive Index Beyond Blogging: PR Field Lags Behind Stress Test Blogosphere Press Releases From Hell

BEYOND BLOGGING: HERE COMES MOBLOGGING
CANDIDATES ARE ALL OVER IT BUT PR FIELD LAGS BEHIND

By B.L. Ochman

Last week, in the first issue of I-Blogging Rick Bruner bemoaned the slowness of the PR community to pick up on blogs, even for obvious functions like online press rooms, and observed that "by and large PR people still seem pretty clueless about the Internet in general."

While a few publicists are publishing industry blogs, the PR field as a whole is remarkably slow to embrace blogging's many advantages for the management of corporate online newsrooms and crisis communications. And that means there's trouble ahead. The PR industry's ability to lead public opinion is being usurped by rogue new media journalists using free Internet blogging software to effect political, social and economic change.

The economic and political influence of an emerging community of non-affiliated journalists (NAJ) and plugged in traditional reporters alike should not be underestimated. PR practitioners who don't tune in to these new phenomena are soon likely to find their traditional PR training irrelevant.

The 2004 American Presidential conventions loom as watershed events for Internet-based media, says futurist Howard Rheingold. He predicted�in his book "Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution"�that advances in technology would soon give everyone the tools they need to publish independent reports of news events as they are happening directly to the Web and other platforms. Indeed, candidates may have little need for mass rallies or other traditional campaign tactics, as so-called digital democracy takes over.

What impact and relevance can a press release, press conference, press kit, or any other tool of traditional PR have in the face of this communication revolution? Very little, according to many observers including influential San Jose Mercury News technical columnist Dan Gillmor, an active blogger. "When the audience can use these tools," Gillmor blogged, "the emergent journalism that follows will barely resemble what we do today."

Watershed events for Internet-based media
In the U.S., the online community is increasingly politically active, as MoveOn.Org's recent groundbreaking online Democratic primary proved. More than 300,000 people voted in a 48 hour period � far more than turnout in many states' actual Presidential primaries.

Three Democratic presidential candidates have already grasped the significance of the emerging NAJ community, and their early adoption may help them overthrow the less technologically trend-savvy Republicans.

Democratic candidates have embraced new media not only to communicate with their followers, but also to help followers communicate

 

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with each other. Candidates Howard Dean, John Kerry and Gen. Wesley Clark are all using a free online blog service called MeetUp, that organizes local gatherings "about anything, anywhere." Meetup helped early Dean enthusiasts to self-organize, and MoveOn's online fund-raising political e-commerce helped Dean raise $700,000 in one day.

Meetup already has 436,990 people signed up for Meetups on 1396 topics in 580 cities in 42 countries. Besides politics, Meetup members discuss topics including Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the musical group Insane Clown Posse, Work at Home Moms, Politics and Cars.

Of the three candidates, only Dean has an official blog, which refers to him a "People Powered Dean." Dean For America links not only to dozens of Democrat-supporting blogs but also to alternative journalism sites including Alternet www.alternet.org.

Internet politically significant
These alternative journalism sites are likely to have great impact on the 2004 Presidential campaigns. Bloggers have begun "live blogging" events by reporting to their blogs in real time with wireless computing devices. They beam court-reporter-like transcripts to blogs, where anyone with an Internet connection can read them.

The same will certainly happen at the 2004 American political conventions and is almost sure to upset the intended spin of convention organizers. "Moblog the conventions!" Rheingold cheerleads new media activists.

Rheingold is referring to progressively more influential Moblogging � in which mobile phone users send photos and text messages to online bloggers and to eachother.

Mobloggers take photos with their mobile phone cameras and post them to the Internet; use text messages to assemble or disassemble a crowd for purposes ranging from politics to star gazing; and have the potential to broadcast live news online from anywhere in the world.

Blogging and moblogging are enabling ordinary citizens to impact on the reporting of current events. Rheingold likens them to the petitions, letters to the editor and pamphleteering that preceded the American and French revolutions. "There are signs," Rheingold says, "that after more than a decade of political insignificance, the democratic potential of the Internet is being realized by more people every day."

Moblogging is growing exponentially. People with multimedia J-Phones in Japan, and those with the new Hiptop mobile devices in the United States are practicing a kind of newsmaking that mirrors professional news-gathering work, wrote Justin Hall of The Feature blog. "As these materials move online," he writes, "the potential emerges for anyone to be a freelancer, supported by like-minded researchers working through the Web."

Korean Election Offers 2004 American Preview
These new journalists insist that old media rules do not apply to them. NAJ reporters scoop traditional media organizations and eachother with abandon. Rumor is reported and spread virally, without regard to traditional gatekeeping rules and without being beholden (so far) to advertisers' dollars. Bloggers serve as their own checks and balances, calling eachother's factual errors and exaggerations.

While the ill-fated Napster provided peer-to-peer exchange of music files, moblogging is providing peer-to-peer news. Smart mobs helped swing the recent elections in South Korea, which has become the world leader in cyberspace campaigning.

"With the world's highest penetration of high-speed and mobile Internet services, South Korea is at the cutting edge of technology that is transforming the political system, making it more open and democratic. It could be a preview of the shape of Western democracy," said Canada's Globe & Mail.

"It's a revolutionary change, and the catalyst of this change is the Internet," said Huh Houunna, director of Internet campaigning for Mr. Roh, 56, a once-obscure human-rights lawyer who emerged as the unexpected winner of the country's recent presidential election.

When Roh Moo-hyun's organizers wanted supporters to vote on election day, they sent text messages to the cell phones of almost 800,000 people, urging them to go to the polls.

Millions of voters absorbed Roh's message from Internet sites that featured video clips of the candidate and audio broadcasts by disc jockeys and rock stars. Half a million visitors logged on to his main Web site every day to donate money or obtain campaign updates. More than 7,000 voters a day sent him e-mails with policy ideas. Blogs buzzed with debate on the election.

Not limited to politics, moblogging is also a prominent pastime of teenagers, who began the revolution by using the free text messaging services on their cell phones. British teenage girls track the movements of Prince William via text messages. An instant crowd of 100 girls can assemble in minutes when one teen spots the Prince having a beer and uses her cell phone to text message friends.

During the worldwide demonstrations against the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the BBC Web site showed stills from cameraphone shots sent to them directly by participants in demonstrations from Stockholm to Rome.

Mobloggers uniting
Throughout the week of July 8, The First International Moblogging Conference was held in Tokyo, attended by approximately 200 mobloggers

 

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and futurists. Blogger Justin Hall, called the conference "a lively communal immersion in the future."

Gillmor elaborates: "When enough bloggers say 'this is important' a message will go to small wireless devices where the owner wants to know what some segment of the blogspace sees as important."

It will be harder and harder for network news and other establishment journalistic outlets to influence the public when everyone can choose from hundreds of news sources, says Dan Winer, inventor of Radio Userland blogging software. "Professional journalists provide us with a dumbed-down one-size-fits-all set of choices. The world is far more diverse. By distributing the news-gathering tools, at a very low price, technology will do here what it always does so well, route around concentrations of power that are slow to adopt the changes."

Power is indeed available to the people and bloggers, mobloggers and smart mobs are here to stay. Those in the PR field can no longer afford to ignore the new media revolution.

For PR firms that represent corporations, political parties and traditional media outlets, it will be difficult to impossible to have an impact on public opinion without a firm grasp of the mechanics and impact of the Internet's new journalism.

You can almost hear the mouse roaring.

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THE BLOGSPHERE

Mark Glaser's Guide to the Blogosphere
Published in the Online Journalism Review

This past year has seen the world of Weblogs, aka the blogosphere, grow in power and stature, if not to the general public, then to the other media.

Mark Glaser of Online Journalism Review created a graphical depiction of what he believes to be the most influential blogs, pushing the direction of media coverage and perhaps even public policy.

The bigger the mouth, the more influential the Weblog, says Glaser. The position of the mouth shows its political orientation (left or right) and whether it's doing more blogging (top) or more journalism (bottom). "More blogging" means a focus on linking, summarizing and quips. "More journalism" means more original commentary, reporting, and perhaps a journalism background. Note: Drudge and Romenesko do not consider their publications blogs.

KEY:

	= opinionated individual Weblog
	= group or community Weblog
	= media business Weblog

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