Commandment 2

Abstract

Let’s be honest. Successful communication is difficult to achieve, especially when mass media are involved. Today media are almost always involved in the communication process. When the Canadian philosopher Marshall McLuhan described the world as a global village due to media causing its implosion there was no Internet, and the Internet changed everything. McLuhan’s basic idea was that societies change when they start using new technologies, including media technology.

Let’s be honest. Successful communication is difficult to achieve, especially when mass media are involved. Today media are almost always involved in the communication process. When the Canadian philosopher Marshall McLuhan described the world as a global village¹ due to media causing its implosion there was no Internet, and the Internet changed everything. McLuhan’s basic idea was that societies change when they start using new technologies, including media technology.

The development of that media technology has changed the way organisations communicate considerably in the last decade. Organisations can no longer only rely on the traditional mass media to get their message across and reach their stakeholders. Today they have to actively communicate with publics online and through social media as well. As a result of the changing media landscape some corporations are becoming media producers themselves searching for an audience. Besides advertising, publicity and press relations a whole range of new media practices have emerged; from social media and web care teams to forming alliances with media companies and creating owned media (the new term for corporate publishing) to communicate directly to publics. It has added new touchpoints with audiences, new ways of interaction and speeded up considerably the communication process as well as adding new, active publics.

The ability to cope with the dramatically changing media landscape has consistently been found to be one of the most important strategic issues for the field according to the professionals surveyed in over the ten years of the European Communication Monitor. Coping with digital evolution and the social web was always high on the list of strategic issues for the profession.² Other top challenges identified in the study series are the increasing speed and volume of the information flow and the demand for more transparency and active audiences. Buzzwords in the field today are digitalisation, being always connected and blurring boundaries between advertising and editorial media content. If we take a step back we can summarise all these developments and issues with the term mediatisation.³ The mediatisation of society influences organisations and the way they communicate. Should an organisation with an excellent communication function today be a mediatised organisation? We will argue: yes. That’s why the second commandment for excellent communication is: be mediatised. In general that means that excellent communication professionals are aware of the omnipresence of media inside and outside the organisation and the possible effects that has on relationships and reputation. Mediated communication is different from interpersonal communication, has specific characteristics and specific consequences. Let’s first take a closer look at the concept of mediatisation.

The Omnipresence of Media

Mediatisation first and foremost means the omnipresence of media in our current hypermodern society. We do not live with, but in media, is the central message of the book Media Life written by communication scholar Mark Deuze from the Netherlands.⁴ He describes how people today are surrounded by media and are almost constantly in the presence of media. This omnipresence of media is the first dimension of mediatisation. But there is more to it. Media that are at hand anytime, anywhere also have cultural consequences. Institutions in society, like corporations and other types of organisations, will adapt to this omnipresence of media. They will be influenced by the way media work and by what is important to media. They will start behaving accordingly. News values and news factors are traditionally only important for journalists, yet today are becoming a wider cultural phenomenon.⁵ Furthermore these news values and factors are – along with others – connected to entertainment because of the commercialisation of the media world. This contagion of journalism and entertainment has produced a widespread media logic that is recognisable everywhere in the hypermodern society.⁶ For example in the way individuals present themselves on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and other social media. Many people today from all walks of life know unerringly how to make a good media product and do it. This broad cultural development in the direction of media logic is the second dimension of mediatisation.

Organisations are not only influenced by this mediatisation in their relationships with the traditional media and journalists, but also in their relationships with other people, such as employees, consumers and advocacy groups. Mediatised communication is everywhere, inside and outside the organisation. And communication professionals will be asked how all these media should be used best.

Commandments in Practice: Mediatised

Corporate Digital Solutions for Modern Media Consumption Habits

With the launch of the Porsche Newsroom, the German sportscar manufacturer has moved its public relations activities into the digital age, enabling it to provide transparent information via modern channels. The Internet platform combines social media content with a rich array of editorial material. It thus serves as a corporate blog, an online magazine and a social media hub in one. This approach has many advantages. While the traditional press release continues to play an important role when working with journalists, new channels and target groups are increasingly coming to the fore. The importance of bloggers and social media users for companies is continuously increasing. Moreover, media professionals are working online more and more. Now they have a central port of call on the Internet, which not only offers them exclusive content but also makes a wide range of additional information, such as press releases, photos and videos, available for download. Fast, up-to-date and comprehensive. The Porsche Newsroom transitions public relations into the new, digital age of corporate communication.⁷ This case study explains how companies can adapt to the changes caused by the digital media shift and meet the needs of modern journalism at the same time.

Changes in Communication Regarding Content and Direct Communication

A brand is nothing without content: to enthuse people for your brand, you must use stories. About half of today’s corporations focus on content rather than on advertising messages. In the future, quality will outweigh quantity – and this quality has to meet journalistic criteria.

The discrepancy between high theoretical demand and insufficient practical relevance has increased in times of the digital media shift. Digitisation accelerates the convergence of different channels and thus promotes the merging of communication sub-disciplines. While classic media theory dictated a strict separation of the development of advertising content, public relations messages and media strategy, the rise of digital channels like social media requires a much stronger integration. Corporations no longer rely on classic gatekeepers such as journalists – they are capable of communicating directly with end customers. To generate interest and acceptance among users, the distributed content has to support the corporate strategic targets and, at the same time, meet news value criteria from public relations.

The world is changing at a much faster pace than it used to. Business models that are considered highly modern today might lose their relevance tomorrow. Everybody is affected by these kinds of changes. They can either follow the trend or remain unchanged. The question is whether those who remain unchanged continue to achieve economic success.

Communications at Porsche

Dr. Ing. h.c. F. Porsche AG has been part of the Volkswagen Group since 2009. In the fiscal year 2015 Porsche delivered 225,121 vehicles, and its turnover was 21.5 billion Euro. By the end of August 2016, the number of employees had reached a new record, with 26.732 people working at the company. Around 100 communication professionals work for Porsche in the departments of Product and Technical Communications, Politics and External Relations, Event and International Communications, Porsche Museum, Corporate Communications and Corporate Publishing. They all provide input to a central editorial team. Here, messages and topics are created, formatted with a multimedia approach, and spread through the various channels available – externally through the Porsche Newsroom (newsroom.porsche.com), social media sites and the customer magazine Christophorus, and internally through various media branded with the Carrera name.

The Porsche Newsroom as a Primary Contact Point Online

Porsche has been challenged by external changes resulting from the digital media shift – primarily the rise of digital channels like social media. These changes confronted the business with the need to do some rethinking and adapting. The considerations led to the formation of four propositions for future communication:

• Online presence is becoming an increasingly important factor for companies since many journalists carry out research online before contacting media spokespeople.

• As mentioned previously, the well-known gatekeeping approach of traditional media is evolving into new areas.

• Furthermore, teenagers between the ages of 12 and 19 whose media usage is 94 per cent from the Internet are becoming a relevant target group for companies.

• And, last but not least, both bloggers and print journalists alike are facing constant time pressure. This means that companies have to respond to inquiries more quickly than before. After all, most of the journalists’ work is carried out online, making mobile functionality, responsiveness and fast loading times an absolute necessity.

Porsche’s answer to these propositions has been to define a digital agenda:

up-to-date resources are to be provided for traditional media and Porsche also wants to create its own online media. What’s more, new multipliers have to be taken seriously.

Porsche promotes a transformation 2.0 to adapt to modern media consumption habits – and the answer is the Porsche Newsroom (the Newsroom) as its own digitised communication channel. By targeting new multipliers like bloggers and social media influencers (SMIs), Porsche refines classic media with up-to-date instruments.

Porsche has established the online newsroom as the corporation’s key communication instrument and made it its primary contact point for information search online. The open-source strategy supports accessibility for new media target groups and supplies influencers with company-specific content.⁸ The link-up with social media platforms provides users of the Newsroom with a multichannel supplementary offer. Thus, the Newsroom functions as a platform for cross-media interaction and as an interface to provide content and information. The Porsche Newsroom benefits from Twitter due to its rapidity and immediacy. A platform to combine all channels was missing until now. The Porsche Newsroom changes that and minimises research efforts by means of efficient search engine optimisation (SEO) of the content. With its Newsroom and social media platforms, Porsche has facilitated direct and specific contact with (new) target groups as well as stakeholders.⁹

Content can be distributed among users without being influenced by gatekeepers. The benefits are topicality and outreach. However, the corporate influence on public opinion is reduced. Nevertheless, bidirectional communication and the possibilities for reputation management and branding outweigh the arising challenges. Return channels on social media platforms offer diverse feedback opportunities and allow directly accessible monitoring. The respective Newsroom articles form thematic hubs, which are complemented with additional content and value-adding services such as videos, live streaming, galleries, downloads and links.

The Newsroom facilitates the merging of new media content and classic corporate publishing in order to offer sustainable information for journalists and influencers. The key to successful corporate publishing both internally and externally is good content. Good content provides answers to questions and offers solutions. What’s more, good content is also fun. It is intended to entertain and inspire without being deadly serious or even shallow. Moreover, it implies an aspect of service and engages to a high degree. All in all, good content is a great variety of things. However, this variety is meticulously planned and anything but random. The Porsche Newsroom provides insight into this level of variety, with complex technical topics, recent product reports and articles about events – all presented in a contemporary way.

To make this possible, all the departments in public relations, marketing and the Porsche in-house Newsroom work closer together both spatially and thematically. Synergy effects allow in-depth editorial analysis, which makes the Newsroom content a collection of hard facts and news and also provides secondary information from different fields of activities. Additional data, behind-the-scenes material and first-hand information are collected from the departments. This ensures that the density of news and information is considerably boosted by the expertise of employees actively creating Newsroom content.

A Multichannel Platform: Present in the Concept of Every Article

On 15–16 July 2014, Porsche returned to the legendary 24 Hours of Le Mans – the world’s most famous long-distance race. The event caused a media sensation worldwide, so it was the ideal moment to launch a new communication channel. Starting on 10 June, Porsche offered pre-race coverage in the Newsroom with exclusive content on Le Mans. The reporting was aimed at motorsport journalists, bloggers and the online community. After the race, the content was expanded to several topics and business activities. The target group was thus broadened to include all representatives of the press. In the introduction phase, Porsche consciously focused on new channels like Twitter and Vine. E-cards on certain articles and short videos posted daily were supposed to raise interest. The content was widely disseminated on social media, and online multipliers were included from the beginning.

Over two years the company published approximately seven articles per week on the front page in different main categories such as Company, Products, Technology, Motorsports, History and Christophorus. The latter includes stories from the eponymous Porsche customer magazine. The coverage on Le Mans 2016 shows how the Newsroom has developed. In the weeks ahead of Le Mans, the Newsroom offered news and pictures about the race strategy, tests, qualifying rounds and the Porsche Racing Team. Furthermore, the latest press releases were publicised online, where they were accessible without registration. The articles and background coverage offered detailed information and a multitude of insights. One day before the race, the Newsroom provided a race forecast in a broadcast press conference.

During the race, social media and live streaming made it possible for information to be disseminated late, directly and immediately as breaking news. The social media stream formed the heart of the Le Mans article. This element was a positive addition to the live coverage from Le Mans. Within seconds, users were offered streaming updates on the race – something a press release could never have achieved in such a short period. Thus, the Newsroom directly addressed a second target group, which seeks to consume information quickly and in a compact form and at a glance. The social stream is a hands-on example of how Porsche managed to adapt its news coverage to modern media consumption habits. It covered the information channels from the racing team, the motorsports department and the Newsroom itself.

Editors also uploaded current press releases to the Newsroom so that users had access to many previous racing hours. The Le Mans article was rounded off by a wide range of additional information and material such as videos, galleries, links and downloads as well as an infographic illustrating the race. The event was accompanied on social media: the rapidly growing Instagram community received first-hand picture material directly posted by a team member on site. The team provided live updates from the pit on Twitter. Therefore, the Le Mans return in combination with the Newsroom coverage has been a big success for the company.

Another example of the diversity of stories and material in the Newsroom is the coverage of the world premiere of the concept study Mission E, the first four-door all-electric vehicle in the company’s history. With almost one million page impressions on Twitter, Porsche even reached the Top 10 Hashtags on Twitter Germany – a milestone and another measure of success.

Regarding the world premiere of the new model Porsche Panamera in June 2016, Porsche used the Newsroom as an information channel in the run-up to this major event. A live stream covering the launch was placed in the Newsroom. Afterwards, this video was made available as a recording.

The Newsroom not only provides stories and information but also reflects journalists’ views on Porsche. After selected journalists had tested the new Porsche 718 Boxster, for example, Porsche covered the feedback responses from the international press. The Newsroom had announced the article as part of a campaign on Facebook and Twitter. This way, the Porsche Newsroom not only addressed journalists but also the online community.

A Success Story: How the Porsche Newsroom Lives Up to Journalists’ Expectations

A survey on the online use of communication professionals and journalists in Germany in 2013 showed that nine out of ten spokespersons address not only journalists with their content.¹⁰ Customers, competitors, other players in the market and the general public have become relevant target groups as well. At the same time, editors and operators of corporate newsrooms often struggle to understand which content and additional material are actually interesting to journalists; what material facilitates their work; and in which way content should be displayed. This primarily includes the supply of graphics: pictures complement stories and support storytelling by playing a major role in the reader’s understanding of texts. Since many journalists work under time pressure, they themselves also rely on photographs as part of the information. According to another study, 87 per cent of journalists think it is important or very important to receive press releases that include graphical material.¹¹

Besides graphical material, videos and PDF documents increase the feedback on press releases and news. In the earlier survey, 81 per cent of the journalists and 87 per cent of public relations practitioners agree on the benefits of additional material.¹² Social media platforms also have a growing impact. Younger journalists regularly use the platforms for research purposes.¹³ Furthermore, a number of influential bloggers and online multipliers are active on Twitter.

The Porsche Newsroom lives up to these expectations: the hits increase constantly. Within one year, the number of visits rose by more than 140 per cent. The social media platforms also gained new followers.

One of the indicators of success in the early stage of the Newsroom was the huge growth of the Twitter channel and the rapid increase in range. On the day of ‘go live’, 10 June 2014, 245 users followed the @PorscheNewsroom account. Within five weeks, the channel exceeded the mark of 1,000 followers. One year after the launch, 104,000 people followed the Newsroom on Twitter. In June 2016, at the time of the 24 Hour Race of Le Mans, the Newsroom had surpassed the milestone of 264,000 followers – and today there are 400,000. Users interact, retweet and respond positively to the content.

Companies have to tell stories in order to raise interest – a variety of stories can be told about Porsche. Storytelling has emerged as a more significant form of representation and content creation. In conclusion, thanks to the Porsche Newsroom, journalists and bloggers receive information faster and can use it on different channels, thus generating efficient coverage that spans a range of media. But the general public also has access to the content. The keyword here is open source. In this way, every user can become a distributor. The advantage of adapting this journalistic model in corporate communication is therefore self-evident.

Josef Arweck

Dr. Josef Arweck is the Vice President of Communications at Porsche AG in Stuttgart-Zuffenhausen, Germany.

About Porsche

The Dr. Ing. h.c. F. Porsche AG is the most successful manufacturer of luxury sports cars. The company is based in Stuttgart-Zuffenhausen. In the fiscal year 2015 Porsche delivered 225,121 cars to customers. Revenues were 21.5 billion euros, a 25 per cent increase compared to the previous year. The operating results increased by one quarter to 3.4 billion euros. The number of employees (26,732) reached a new record level.

The Great Convergence of Media Importance and Use

Are social media more important for strategic communication today than press and media relations? Is corporate publishing more important than events or online communication? The answer is: not really. There are slight differences between the popularity of various channels and instruments. But overall the past decade has shown a great convergence of media importance and use in the field of communication management in Europe. Today all media are perceived as equally important. Offline and online press and media relations, corporate publishing or owned media, online communication, social media, mobile communication, events, interpersonal and non-verbal communication. They all constitute one big group of media used by professionals. That is a very different situation compared to ten years ago when there were still clear boundaries between the different media types. Press and media relations stood apart from social media and interpersonal and nonverbal and so did events and paid communication. Over the years the importance of online communication and social media increased but it did not fully replace the importance of press and media relations. The gatekeepers of the traditional mass media remain important. This great convergence of media use can be seen in Fig. 5 where the media use by communication professionals over the years is plotted.

Fig. 5

The great convergence of media and channels rated important for strategic communication through the years 2007–2016Footnote

Zerfass et al. (2016b), p. 60. Longitudinal analysis 2007–2016 based on 13,709 responses from communication professionals in 43 countries. Q: How important are the following methods in addressing stakeholders, gatekeepers and audiences today? Scale 1 (not important) – 5 (very important). Percentages: frequency based on scale points 4–5. * No data collected in these years; figure shows extrapolated values.

Strategic communication today has a diversified mix of media at its disposal. It has to work with the increased amount of touchpoints with all kinds of publics. For communication professionals this is mediatisation in overdrive, or without hyperbole, hypermediatisation!

The Three Faces of Mediatisation for Communication Management

Although all media are considered equally important, in practice mediatisation has three different faces for communication professionals in organisations: the classical face of press and media relations with journalists,¹⁵ the new face that goes under the heading of social media or computer-mediated communication (CMC)¹⁶ and the future face of strategic mediatisation where opportunities are taken and alliances with media corporations are being built to search for new audiences (see Box 5).¹⁷

Box 5 Three faces of mediatisation

• The classical face

  Of press and media relations with journalists like newspapers, radio, television and online channels made by journalists.

• The new face

  Going under the heading of computer mediated or social media communication, like blogs, videoblogs, YouTube channels, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and similar outlets and platforms.

• The future face

  Strategic mediatisation where opportunities are taken and alliances with media corporations are being built to search for new audiences like content marketing, native advertising and brand journalism.

When we look at press and media relations it is clear that online communication with journalists has increased and therefore in tandem the form and speed of media relations has changed. The importance of media relations in both the offline and online world has not changed. When we consider CMC with others and not just journalists, we can see that over the years there is a constant overestimation of the new developments and a slow adaptation to social media. In other words communication professionals are enthusiastic about the new media possibilities but do not know how to implement them immediately in the context of their organisation.

There are also inevitably new questions for practice that emerge in this changing landscape. The main challenge being the new role of employees in the mediatised world. Employees today can exercise more influence through social media on the information flow and the image of organisations than even before. They are a new group of gatekeepers but they are inside the organisation. This new openness and loss of control due to the technological developments of the media is feared by some, but is unstoppable.

When we consider strategic mediatisation the importance of owned media and strategic alliances with media corporations is expected to grow in order to influence public opinion about the organisation. Many communication professionals are thinking about these new forms of strategic mediatisation as a way to go. Let’s now take a closer look at these three faces of mediatisation.

The Classical Face: Press and Media Relations, Still the Top Dog

We know that press and media relations have always been at the heart of public relations. It still is and this key position has not changed in the last decade. There has only been a shift from paper to screen. Handling the offline press has lost importance and handling the online press and TV and radio has gained importance in the last ten years. That is why it is the first face of mediatisation.

These press and media relations distinguish public relations from other communication disciplines. Its importance shows its political dimension. What does this mean? It means that organisations are aware of the public debate and where it touches the organisation and its issues. Organisations monitor the public debate, participate in it and try to influence the opinion climate and the public mood about their organisation and issues that are associated with the organisation. Even in times of social media communication professionals know and recognise the opinion-leading role of journalists. That will stay important since research also shows that having a proactive media policy has been shown to have a positive effect on the media image of corporations.¹⁸ Although the visibility of corporations is low¹⁹ and it is always about the same group of corporations,²⁰ we know that traditional media generally report positively about companies. Media frames, which are the frameworks in which certain problems are diagnosed, evaluated and prescribed,²¹ in newspapers follow corporate frames except when environmental and health issues are involved or financial malpractice.²² Non-governmental organisations have more influence on newspaper content than corporations²³ and in times of corporate crisis we know that the news media can be of crucial importance for an organisation.²⁴

But what are the effects of publicity about organisations on the public? The effects are diverse and paradoxical, as media effects always are. Media attention can be positive, negative or have no effect. News about successes of a company reinforces an already existing positive reputation. Negative news about a company may damage the reputation, but not necessarily so. It can also lead to an underdog effect; for example after a negative news story the reputation can become more positive, in other words the public blames the media or other actors for negatively describing an organisation or a sector.²⁵ For example aviation fans will not change their image of their favourite airline after negative publicity. Sometimes there is an effect on the organisation itself; the organisation changes its own behaviour after being held accountable by the international business press.²⁶

The New Face: Co-Production of News

The traditional mass media and its effects are at the root of mediatisation. Today journalists are accompanied by bloggers, videobloggers and other digital thought leaders, for example, on Twitter, but the underlying communication process is the same. Research shows that the process of news production about business is a co-production between corporations and the media.²⁷ The key word is interdependence. The production of news about organisations is a multi-levelled interdependent process.²⁸ What do we mean by that? Mutual relationships are present on the individual level of communication professionals and journalists, on the departmental level of communication departments and editorial offices of the media and on the level of society where the flow of information about organisations depends on the professions of public relations and journalism. These networks at different levels result in firm cooperation that is more or less successful.

The co-production of news is influenced by several factors (see Box 6). First by the relationship between public relations professionals and journalists, second by the organisational and societal culture, third by the business sector and fourth by the visibility of communication professionals in the media that can both be negative or positive.²⁹ Public relations professionals and journalists in Europe acknowledge their mutually dependent relationship and have buried the hatchet.³⁰ But what about the future?

Box 6 Co-production of news: four influencing factors

• Relationship between PR professionals and journalists

• Organisational and societal cultures

• Business sector or societal system

• Visibility of PR professionals in the media that can both be negative or positive

The Future Face: The Media as a Partner: Strategic Mediatisation

Next to the function of press and media relations geared towards so-called earned publicity, there has always been a parallel function of corporate publishing. This function is concerned with media that are owned by the organisation and over which the organisation has control. Traditionally corporate publishing is familiar in the form of internal employee and external customer magazines and then other paid information like image ads and co-productions with media. Although the importance of these owned media has not changed in the last decade, under the influence of the changing media landscape and the information and communication technology revolution, this branch of professional communication has diversified and taken on new forms. This third face of mediatisation is referred to as strategic mediatisation and will, according to European communication professionals, gain considerable importance in the future.³¹ But what does this strategic mediatisation entail? What is new?

Strategic or reflective mediatisation refers to changes in the media landscape on two levels. First the blurring of lines between advertising and editorial content of the media and secondly the media housing of corporations. This media housing involves the production of media content by organisations themselves instead of by traditional media companies.³² Corporations, non-profits and governmental organisation have all started creating their own media houses that produce media content and explore media platforms, for example, on YouTube. In this way they can communicate directly to defined audiences and have total control of the content of the information and the way it is presented. Boundaries between journalism, public relations, branding and advertising are breaking down. The key point of strategic mediatisation consists of this process of developing new modes of cooperation with the mass media and also operating as a media producer.

Media Housing of Organisations

The new ways of cooperating with the mass media are labelled in the following new terms: native advertising, content marketing and brand journalism.³³ Native advertising refers to the placement of paid content about an organisation or its products in an editorial media environment. This is another way of working with the media through media content sponsoring and product placement. This new form of advertising is especially suited for online media but is also used in the press and on radio and TV.³⁴ Content marketing is the ‘21^st century corporate publishing’.³⁵ It is creating and distributing all kinds of content about the organisation in all kinds of self-owned media. The goal is attracting publics, customers and other stakeholders to this content and connecting with them. Brand journalism uses journalistic skills to write and report about the corporate or product brands of the organisation. It can be observed in special features and special sections in the media, properly identified and labelled as originating from an organisation.³⁶ Brand journalism suits the media logic very well in combining information and entertainment. Brand journalism operates in the sunlight, bright and open so everyone can see who the sender of the messages is.³⁷

These three new forms of media content can be produced in a strategic alliance with a media organisation or by the organisation itself and published in owned media and on online media platforms. More than half of the European communication professionals think that this new use of owned media to shape public opinion about the organisation and its activities will gain importance in the next few years.³⁸ Strategic partnerships with mass media are the most likely form it will take with the co-production of content and the offering of joint publications and services to the public. A new practice of media housing that supplements and modifies classical media relations is born.

The Rise of Social Media and CMC

Since 2007 communication professionals in Europe have slowly become accustomed to the new media landscape of Facebook, Twitter and all other forms of social media. The rise of CMC is the third face of mediatisation for strategic communication. What does this mean for organisations and what is the broader context of this new and comprehensive media landscape? It is a new phase in the electronic age where personal and social environments are connected through the new communication technologies. Some call our time the start of a digital era, a new era of communication where the global village is rewired. Rewired into a world with increasingly personalised media use. This new media world has advantages over the old media world like the decentralisation of power and control but it also has a risk of tribalisation. A new media world where you are alone with your personalised medium or locked up in your ‘tribe’, your own group with no communication with the outside world.³⁹

Communication professionals surveyed by the European Communication Monitor knew right from the start that these digital developments were important, especially concerning media, but they consequently overestimated how it would be implemented in organisations and did not adapt very quickly to it. Obviously organisations and professionals could not keep pace with the changing media environment. Why? First of all, like everyone else, they had to get into it. Personal use of social media developed slowly among practitioners, but when it did it helped to increase professional use. Second, age had something to do with it. Younger professionals are more competent in the digital world than older professionals. Although overall the social media skills of communication professionals remain moderate. Third, social media was considered an opportunity but at the same time a threat. The openness it required and the loss of control of the communication process it caused were feared. What to do, for example, with employees who suddenly start speaking publicly about the organisation? Let’s take a closer look at CMC and strategic communication.

CMC Equals Face-to-Face Communication

CMC has long been considered a lesser form of communication compared to face-to-face communication. The ideal of a rich interpersonal contact in each other’s presence could not ever be matched with communication through computers we thought. CMC was considered only useful for instrumental and impersonal communication, simple task information, news and business conversations. Especially the lack of social context cues was a concern. That could easily result in so-called ‘flaming’; a process where much more hostile language is used online than would be used in an offline context.⁴⁰ Flaming is not only a problem for individuals but also for organisations, as many communication professionals will have experienced, for example, on Twitter when one tweet leads to an enormous flow of shares, new tweets and finally attention by journalists in the newspapers, on radio and on television.

Thanks to the development of media technology in the last decade, online communication today is much richer than before. The increased richness of cues in CMC, for example, through sound, images and real-time connection, makes it possible for users to effectively develop close relationships online. In terms of processing social information CMC has become almost the same as face-to-face communication.⁴¹

Today online, social media, mobile and face-to-face communication are considered almost equally important by communication professionals. Their importance, but that of interpersonal communication as well, has risen a great deal since 2007 (see Fig. 5). It seems that also organisational communication is heading into the direction of hyper-personal communication that fits the time.⁴² For communication management this has an external as well as an internal aspect.

Social Media Use in Strategic Communication

As we saw in the development of media use in the last ten years, social and online media blended in with the traditional mass media (see Fig. 5). Since 2013 there is no growth anymore in the perceived importance of social media. Analysing the wide range of new media possibilities that European organisations use we see two dimensions. A group of low-profile social media, on the one hand, and a group of high-profile social media, on the other hand. The low-profile group is the most important part of social media use by organisations (see Box 7), showing that many have not yet got used to the new reality of media-rich CMC.

Box 7 Two dimensions of social media use in strategic communication

• Low-profile social media

  Wiki’s, social bookmarks, online audio, slide sharing, mobile applications, mash-ups and location-based services

• High-profile social media

  Online videos, weblogs, online communities (social networks), microblogs (e.g. Twitter) and photo sharing

In general, communication professionals in Europe know how to deliver messages via social media and they know about social media trends and strategies.⁴³ Managing online communities and initiating web-based dialogues however is not something they feel themselves capable of. Social media are therefore mainly used as a one-way communication tool and not so much as a possibility to engage with internal and external stakeholders. Social media skills are higher in private companies and agencies compared to joint stock companies, governmental and non-profit organisations. Also consultants and communication professionals working in agencies have a stronger belief in social networks and Twitter then professionals working in departments.

The vast majority of communication professionals in Europe think however that social media influences the perceptions and attitudes about the organisation of external stakeholders and of employees. The most important consequence of the new media landscape is the rise of new gatekeepers.⁴⁴ Traditionally journalists were the most important gatekeepers in the public sphere. Journalists in media organisations selected and processed certain events about the organisation and took decisions to publish or not. They decided what events were admitted through the gates of the media on the grounds of amongst other things newsworthiness.⁴⁵ Today journalists have company. New gatekeepers stood up in the last ten years and joined journalists. For organisations, consumers, bloggers and employees are the most important ones that use social media to express themselves about the organisation, its products or on wider issues. They are commonly known as SMIs (see Box 8).

Box 8 Social media influencers (SMIs)

SMIs can be defined as a ‘new type of third party endorsers who shape audience attitudes through blogs, tweets, and the use of other social media’.⁴⁶

The results of the European Communication Monitor show that the majority of organisations in Europe (58.4 per cent) understand that SMIs are important but are still struggling with how to communicate with them. A minority of the organisations know how to monitor them (40.1 per cent) or have specific strategies for communicating with these new opinion leaders (42.9 per cent). Identifying important SMIs is another question. A vast majority of communication professionals identify them by looking at the relevance of the topics or issues covered by the SMI on social media and his or her personal reputation. Other characteristics are the content SMIs share and forward and their position in the social network they represent (see Fig. 6 for an overview). Many communication professionals have not fully grasped the concept of influence and opinion leadership by the SMIs. This major characteristic of mediatisation is a challenge for the profession.

Fig. 6

Important factors for identifying social media influencersFootnote

Zerfass et al. (2016b), p. 73. n^min = 2,489 communication professionals across Europe. Q: In your opinion, how important are the following factors for identifying social media influencers which are truly relevant for an organisation? Scale 1 (not important) – 5 (very important). Percentages: frequencies based on scale points 4–5.

The Rise of the New Gatekeepers

Consumers, bloggers and employees are considered relevant and important as new digital gatekeepers about the organisation on the social web, and therefore take an important position alongside and in addition to journalists.

The active public of interested and involved consumers and interest groups now have their own media as well, just like the organisation has. Not much new there, only the speed of information flow and the dynamics of it has changed. This is especially notable in times of crisis for example.⁴⁸ The active public now has its own channels and they use them to send their messages quickly and in an unfiltered form.

The most important change however is the rise of the employee as gatekeeper for sharing information about the organisation with the outside world. Employees today can easily bypass the public relations department and blog, tweet or take part in online discussions about the organisation and its issues. This shows the blurring line between internal and external communication. Clear boundaries between the inside and the outside world no longer exist. The social media revolution has put employees in a new communicative role. Although most of them use this new role to share positive experiences about the organisation,⁴⁹ organisations are worried about this. The development of social media governance structures gained momentum in 2011 when almost 40 per cent of the European organisations had implemented guidelines for communicating about the organisation on blogs and Twitter.⁵⁰ Also tools for monitoring stakeholder communication came into place about that time in one third of the organisations. Training programmes for social media and the development of key performance indicators for measuring social media activities of organisational members lagged behind and are not often implemented yet, but were wished for.

Besides the new gatekeeping role for employees the new media landscape also led to the mediatisation of internal communication. Employees today are, just like any other public, always connected through media to each other but also with the rest of society.

Excellence Linked to Mediatised

Excellent communication today is mediatised communication. This means that there is a deep understanding of the concept of the world as a global village⁵¹ connected by media and that we live in media not with media.⁵² Our life and also our organisational life is mediatised, as citizen, employee and as a communication professional. For the profession the mediatisation has three interplaying faces: the independent, free and global press, the owned media of the organisation itself and the hyper-personalised CMC in all its forms. Recognising and acknowledging all these different kinds of media with their specific patterns and ways of working is the ground rule for any communication department which wants to be excellent (see Box 9).

Box 9 What we have learned from excellent departments concerning mediatisation

Excellent communication departments:

• collaborate more intensively with the mass media, especially in producing joint quality content and topical platforms;

• monitor news and public opinion better;

• spread information proactively;

• evaluate media coverage more;

• influence gatekeepers, media agenda and stakeholders more

• are better at sourcing internal media;

• point out the demand for communication and transparency by the mass media;

• are better qualified in the field of social media

• are pioneers in mobile communication.