Internet Agency
There are two areas of Internet agency that act on our messages.
This first is easily predictable. When people see messages and they can influence them, they very often do. Sometimes it is a comment about the message and sometimes it re-phrases the message and on other occasions it changes the meaning of the message.
The second form of Internet Agency is less obvious but probably more powerful. It is the work of technologies.
The Internet acts as an agent on messages. This is true of text, sound, pictures video and even computer programmes.
Organisations provide information across cyberspace. Much of that information is changed through the comments of people, in transit by editorial influence or by machines. The Internet acts as an agent.Most Internet Agency is benign. It is not much more that the general miss reporting common in all forms of communication.
Some is less so.
While there are many instances of companies going to law (and sometimes winning), the fact is that organisations loose control of their identity and messages on-line.
Learning to work with the grain of the Internet is all important.
There are activist sites of every nature who delight is changing corporate identity and messages. They cover industries like the auto industry, Airlines, banks, fast food, manufacture, Legal and many more. Many web sites have been hacked including the Scottish Parliament. The effects of social media is a matter for a some debate but the main issue is that it has an effect. A PR practitioners will want to have contingency plans ready for such events.
Its a good idea to have a look at how technologies act on messages too. Nearly every message made available in digital form is available using Internet technologies. One of the first agent to act on them are search engines. We are familiar with some such as Google, Yahoo and MSN and Technorati. There are many more. Some look for text, some for sound, some for pictures and video. Others seek email, SMS, and computer code. Some are very specialist and some look for the trail that messages and interactions leave behind as they pass through the network.
These technologies roam the Internet looking for content and index it. That is, keep a record of it. Most then make this information available online for people to search.
In doing so they juxtapose information which presents it in a way that is helpful, unusual, unexpected or unhelpful.
Then there are those technologies that facilitate or enhance the capability of people to change messages as they permeate the Internet. An example is the ability to receive a text message, edit it and re-send it to other people and wikis are purpose designed to aid editing online.
The background music to the podcast, is by Alexye Nov called Dance Of Life on Saturn and is provided via the podsafe Music network at http://music.podshow.com/. Details are available here
1 comments:
Loose control (sic)?
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