Marcia DiStaso, Ph.D., Penn State University, IPR Trustee

As the director of the Social Media Research Center, Marcia DiStaso reflects on the development of social media research in honor of IPR's 60th Anniversary. 

In 2006, Facebook had fewer than one million users, and few organizations realized the potential impact of social media. Today, social media has grown astronomically. 98 percent of Fortune 500 companies have an active presence on social media, according to a survey by the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth.

As our society relies more on crowdsourcing, the connections and community aspects of social media will continue to evolve. As organizations capitalize on smartphone use and technologies get smaller, faster, and cheaper, social media will be a constant force in our lives and in the future. Read more.

In honor of public relations legend Harold Burson's 95th birthday, IPR is releasing exclusive footage of the icon presenting, "The Dilemma of Unrealistic Expectations," from its December 2015 PR Leadership Forum.

Mr. Burson discusses how organizations need CEOs of a higher caliber because of the rise of technology. He also talks about his past experiences and how they helped shape his career as co-founder of the largest public relations agency in the world. Read more. 
Doug Pinkham, Public Affairs Council, IPR Trustee

This January, the New York State Joint Commission on Public Ethics (JCOPE) voted to require PR consultants to register as lobbyists if they help a client craft and pitch a story to garner editorial support for a policy issue. The proposal was then amended to state it wouldn't apply to consultant meetings with reporters, but what about meetings with columnists or editors?

Mass confusion about a poorly written rule can have a chilling effect on free speech.
Donna Lieberman, the executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union said, "requiring someone to report every conversation with an editorial writer is intimidating to both journalists and advocates." Enlarging the definition of lobbying to cover media outreach does nothing to improve the ethics of politicians but does hinder our First Amendment right to free speech. Read more.  
Tina McCorkindale, Ph.D., Institute for Public Relations

The article was featured in the latest issue of PRNews.

It's difficult to avoid seeing politicians taking jabs at opponents. Nearly all of the American electorate (93%) said a candidate's tone or level of civility will be an important factor in how they cast their votes in 2016, according to a new survey from Weber Shandwick, Powell Tate and KRC Research.

"PR and corporate communications professionals need to think about what captures citizens' attention, the context in which they are engaging and measure how that translates into behavior over the long term," said Weber Shandwick's chief reputation strategist and IPR Trustee Leslie Gaines-Ross. Voters feel sensitive issues are being overshadowed by the negativity, therefore PR leaders need to help redirect the conversations back to what is important. Read more.
Institute for Public Relations | 352-392-0280 | [email protected] www.instituteforpr.org