Whilst reading The Metro today on my lunch break one of the news articles caught my attention "Porn Lurking On Teenage Blogs" http://www.metro.co.uk/news/article.html?in_article_id=46157&in_page_id=34.
The article is about the adult content of teenagers blogs' and their use of MySpace and You Tube. What intrigued me was that the journalist appeared to be surprised by the fact that teenagers use the net for unsavoury purposes. Is it just me or has this been common knowledge for many years.
I mentioned the article to those i was having lunch with and they too were surprised at the journalists dismay and scepticism of these types of sites.
Last year Kevin Overbury wrote in the Behind The Spin blog about the term "new media" entering into the industry's consciousness and how practitioners were slowly learning enough about the concept to offer clients " a genuinely comprehensive service" and considering that this was wrote almost a year ago I think it is safe to say that the term is now firmly etched on the minds of the majority of practitioners.
This is all well and good but have the PR and Web 2.0 / 3.0 Innovators and Early Adopters, (as described in the Diffusion of Innovation theory by Everett Rogers 1962) realised that society in general hasn't quite grasped the concept and even those at the heart of communication, i.e journalists, are still surprised about what goes on in the blogosphere and cyber space in general? Is public relations in danger of being too knowledgeable on the subject and therefore potentially out of touch with certain market segments? As for wanting to continually learn and invent more new social media should we maybe wait till those we want to communicate with catch up a bit?
These links should be of interest.
Rogers, EM (1995) Diffusion of Innovations, Fourth Edition, The Free Press, New York
1 comment:
I have to admit my complete dismay at the naivete of said journalist. Of course teenagers look at porn on the net! Why are people shocked? The issue seems to lie with access, which is considered too lax in the blogosphere by many. Hence the recent arguments surrounding the introduction of a blogger's 'code of conduct'.
However, the very nature of the Net is its characteristic as an unregulated area for freedom of speech and expression. Cut these out and it just becomes another media outlet.
Of course, in real life, people can't just walk about saying what they want about who they want, making threats and such likes. So maybe a code of conduct is a good idea. But, of course, where do we draw the line? When does freedom of speech become freedom to talk only about certain things in certain ways?
On the issue of porn, it's a fact of life and the fact that people are still shocked by its proliferation is atonishing. Parents can control internet access of their kids to an extent but such controls obviously can't block everything (I know, I have a 14 year old brother, who doesn't even bother to hide it anymore). The only solution is to stop letting kids use the net in their rooms, keep the computers in a communal family room and monitor what they view. Can't see too many kids going for that though, eh?
But I don't think PR is too far ahead. If anything, liberal attitudes are a way forward. When it comes to things like sex education and pornography, maybe if our society was more open, such things wouldn't be considered as taboo and kids would feel able to talk to adults about their concerns. Go to any country in mainland Europe and sex shops line the streets, and nobody's embarrassed about it. In Britain, all you'll see is some seedy little dive at the bottom of a urine-socked staircase in the dodgiest part of town.
Anyway, as we've discussed many times in class, the industry that was first off the mark with utilisation of the web was the porn industry (and the criminals, as Derek points out). So the web and porn are destined to always be inter-twined. Porn is the Net and the Net is porn. The blogging teenagers know it. Everyone needs to catch up and deal with it.
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