مقاله سال ۲۰۱۶

If there has been one new technology that has enamored the public relations field of late, it has been social media. From scholarly research to self-declared gurus, there are many prevailing theories of the best way to harness this new technology. Grunig and Hunt’s four models of public relations (1984), called for a shift in the profession towards their two-way symmetrical model. Social media, ranging from Twitter to Facebook to blogs and beyond, have enabled these symmetrical conversations to take place on an unprecedented scale.

The embrace of social media has not been without its issues. From the offensive, such as Kenneth Cole’s tweet that made light of the conflict in Syria (O’Toole, 2013), to the poorly timed, such as the NRA’s “Good morning, shooters” tweet in the aftermath of the theatre shooting in Aurora, Colorado (Fitzpatrick, 2012), organizations on Twitter still have a long journey in front of them of learning how to use social media effectively.

One matter currently in hot debate is the applicability oftraditional media effects models, such as framing, agenda setting, and priming (Scheufele & Tewksbury, 2007), in the world of social media. Some evidence exists to suggestthat priming theory may still be a powerfultool in the web era (Mandel & Johnson, 2002), but more work is still needed. It is difficultto determine how social media context (contextual primes) affects the response of publics to corporate postings on social media. Many public relations departments are on various social media outlets having these symmetrical conversations, but are many times paying little attention to the context in which they are taking part in these conversations.