What's it all about?

So here goes with another academic blog...

 I’m hoping you have read through my blog archive and worked out what I am all about. But for those who haven’t, I’ll introduce myself again. I’m Sophie Hanson- a third year (yes, that’s third and final year) Marketing and PR student at The University of Lincoln. In six weeks time I will have completed my penultimate semester, and six months after that, I’ll be dreaming of the Harvard Reference System, and wondering how I never failed to miss a Wednesday night out on the town.  But until then, my focus is simple;

In a society that has been shown to enjoy gossip fed by rumour and speculation, I’m going to look at honesty and fairness, and how they relate to the successful practice of public relations.

Call it a generalisation, or call it human nature. Either way, we are all intrigued by what we read in Hello magazine or The Sun. We all wanted to be the first to see Kate Middleton’s wedding dress. We all wanted to be sat in the audience as Piers Morgan picked apart Katie Price’s broken marriage. And we all stop and stare as the headline ‘Victoria and David Beckham taking time apart’ is plastered across the top shelf of a magazine stand. It may be because I have grown up in a household where OK! magazine was as regular a purchase as bread and milk, but I’ll be the first to admit I get the  excitable urge to find out something new, something someone doesnt want us to know. It's like, how Hamish Pringle says: “That unavoidable buzz!" (Pringle, 2004, pg 4).

It doesn’t stop at celebrity; In October 2008, a rumour that Apple CEO Steve Jobs had suffered a serious heart attack caused $9billion in market value loss (PR News, 2011). Similarly, during the Northern Rock crises, tens of thousands of people rushed to withdraw their hard-earned savings from Northern Rock, after rumours spread of the bank collapsing. This resulted in Northern Rock being in a worse position than originally anticipated. Shocking, right? It seems the implications of our rumours are only ever obvious to party in question. And now, to add insult to injury, the rise of social media has meant the cogs of the rumour mill are turning more than ever. Twitter now houses a page dedicated to ‘Celebrity Gossip’, and with 34,225 followers, it’s easy to understand how the truth can often be buried beneath layers of misinterpretation and sensationalism. 

Is it our interest to know if Kerry Katona is back on drugs? Are we to blame for Northern Rock losing millions? Do we actually even question whether what we hear or read about is truth or rumour?

Well, let the battle commence- Gossip and rumour vs. Honesty and Fairness within the successful practise of PR.  You’re in for a treat!

References:
Pringle, H (2004). Celebrity Sells. West Sussex: John Wiley & Sons. p4.

PR News. (2011). Dealing With Rumors: The Best Defense Is a Smart Offense. PR News. 67 (38)

The Telegraph. (2007). The Northern Rock Crises Explained. Available: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1563266/The-Northern-Rock-crisis-explained.html. Last accessed 14th Nov 2011.