Public Relations’ global agenda
Lionel Zetter, president of the CIPR, has just returned home with lessons for us all from South Africa where he was leading the UK delegation to the 4th World Public Relations Festival to be met by some rather mean spirited criticism from Heather Yaxley, public relations consultant and lecturer.
Heather appears to question the cost of participation and, perhaps more importantly, the lack of reporting on the event. She’d would like to have seen more blogging and is disappointed that Lionel only reported his own speech in that way. He should have blogged more, but I hope and expect we’ll get a decent report in due course through the Institute’s print publications.
Public Relations is an increasingly global enterprise – I’ve worked for a number of US clients from my Mancunian study – and so it’s important that the CIPR is represented at events like this. And that means forking out for the odd long-haul flight.
Obviously I’m empowered by the new, increasingly social, media and Heather’s concerned that she could find no evidence of social media at the conference. Yet maybe this is a point of a conference like this. Africa accounts for 14.2 per cent of the world’s population, but just three per cent of its internet users. This time around the festival took sustainability as its theme and concerned itself with environment, community, democracy and healthcare. The festival programme did include a session on new technology, but also ‘water for all’. My guess is that these were the issues the hosts wanted to see on a global agenda that is too easily hijacked by those of us already on the information superhighway.
We’d do well to remember that social media has yet to reach much of the world and use events like this to learn what it means to be a PR person in a less developed part of the world.
Comments (One comment)
Stephen,
I was not expecting to see social media covered as a topic at the Festival, rather my point was about the fact that it was not being used to report more widely the PR issues debated, including those that are of primary interest and concern in Africa.
There may well be a further report in the CIPR Profile magazine, but that is unlikely to devote much space to the actual conference topics and, unlike social media, will not enable the global PR community (including those in Africa, and non-CIPR members) to engage in discussion and development of the issues.
I believe it is reasonable as CIPR is a democratic organisation, to question the cost of sending a four-person delegation to the event and on other global travels. As members, we should not be averse to debating financial matters – and at least getting wider consensus of the value of global outreach for the Institute.
When it is members’ money that is being spent, it is even more important to ensure that the important discussions taking place at conferences (and other events where we are being represented), are widely reported and that members are able to participate and engage through developments such as social media.
Globalisation of PR is surely more than sending representatives to conferences. Given the importance of the themes and Africa itself, including its lack of digital access, the Festival unfortunately missed the opportunity to enable a wider audience to understand and participate in reflecting on such challenges.
I work with many distance learning students in countries throughout Africa, Asia, the Caribbean and so on, and know they, as much as myself, would have loved to have heard much more from participants “about what it means to be a PR person in a less developed part of the world”. I don’t think that is being mean spirited at all.
Heather Yaxley / May 23rd, 2007, 9:42 am / #
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