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| Issue No. 200412
| December 2004
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The PIOnet Newsletter is sponsored by Newswise and Dick Jones Communications
Feature Editor: Dick Jones Editor/Publisher: Roger Johnson
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PIOnet Newsletter is produced monthly to support media relations' vital role in integrated marketing for your institution. This role is not always adequately recognized, understood, or acknowledged. Our goal is to give you data, arguments, evidence, and ideas to enhance the understanding of and appreciation for media relations at your institution.
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View full list of jobs in higher education.
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A Threat to Higher Education's Credibility
by Dick Jones
Dick Jones Communications
The perceived objectivity of academic experts is a major reason why professors are quoted so often in news stories. This important access to the mass media is now threatened.
According to the Wall Street Journal, increasing numbers of companies, lobbyists, and public relations (PR) firms now pay professors to "promote their points of view on TV shows, in newspaper and magazine articles and in letters to the editor."
"If a professor takes money from a company and then argues in the media for a position the company favors, is he an independent expert -- or a paid shill?" asks Michael Schroeder in the December 10, 2004, Wall Street Journal.
To me, the answer is clear. He is a shill if he hides behind his college or university affiliation and does not disclose his financial arrangement with the organization whose position he advocates.
Mr. Schroeder's article describes considerable hairsplitting on this issue. Some professors insist that the visibility is a "good plug for their research or university."
A line has been crossed, however. Trust, once lost, is difficult to regain. The reason that our colleges and universities have better access to the news media than do many other institutions in our society is because higher education has earned a level of trust. Our schools are seen, by and large, as the creators and disseminators of knowledge, and as its honest brokers.
Companies, lobbyists, and some unscrupulous PR firms know this. That's why they want the backing of respected academic experts to promote their products or causes. Such support gives the perception that credible and trustworthy third parties endorse them. It's also why they want to keep the public in the dark about paying professors for their opinions.
"Indeed," writes Schroeder, "PR officials usually won't disclose the names of academics they have hired and they admit that the experts often don't disclose their consulting relationships when contacted by the media."
I've worked closely with hundreds of professors at scores of institutions over many years and have rarely found any who do what the Wall Street Journal article describes. I'm sure your experience is similar. But the Wall Street Journal does document a few disturbing cases -- enough to make the layman question all of the neutral knowledge brokers out there.
And that's too bad, because if higher education loses its reputation as an honest broker of knowledge, then it will be much harder for us to do our jobs.
We invite your discussion of this topic on PIOnet.
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Upward Influence Tactics to Use and Avoid
by Zoltan Bedy
State University of New York at Oswego
For some time now, researchers have been trying a number of ways to determine the power of the public relations (PR) practitioner. Even though PR professionals manage communication among senior management, employees, and various internal and external publics, little is known about how practitioners work to influence and persuade senior management -- how they obtain and use "clout" -- or how they secure perceptions of value.
In "An Investigation of the Sources of Influence of Corporate Public Relations Practitioners," (Public Relations Review, vol. 29, Issue 2, June 2003, pp. 159-169; doi: 10.1016/S0363-8111(03)000016-X) Julie O'Neil set out to analyze the sources of influence of corporate public relations practitioners by seeking answers to the following questions:
- What combination of measures -- structural, individual, or relational -- contributes most to the organizational influence of the corporate public relations practitioner?
- What upward influence tactics have the greatest impact on the organizational influence of the corporate public relations practitioner?
Previous research has established six types of upward influence tactics. They are:
- Rationality -- using facts and data to support a logical argument or to alter a supervisor's thinking
- Coalition -- claiming support for one's opinion by others in the organization or community
- Ingratiation -- using impression management, flattery and good will, and the promotion of a pleasant relationship when making a request, typically making the person seeking influence appear humble and the superior feel important, or both
- Exchange of benefits -- negotiating by using bargaining or favors
- Assertiveness -- using a direct and forceful approach
- Upward appeal -- gaining the support of those higher up in the organization to support requests
The study's sample was drawn from O'Dwyer's Directory of Corporate Communications and contained 1,504 names selected at random. The questionnaire was rather long ("an eight-page mini booklet in total.") and yielded 309 responses -- a 20.9% response rate.
The study found that there was a strong relationship between perceptions of value and organizational influence. Most surprising, according to O'Neil, was her finding that a PR practitioner's inclusion in the dominant coalition (the "inner circle" employees who have power to affect the structure of the organization, define its mission, and set its course through strategic choice) does not contribute to organizational influence. "This may indicate," she says, "that practitioners should be less enamored with the peripheral manifestations of power -- such as large departments and consolidated departments -- and more in sync with how they demonstrate value to the dominant coalition."
In looking at which upward influence tactics have the greatest impact, O'Neil's study suggests that "practitioners who frequently use the tactic of coalition to persuade the dominant coalition have increased amounts of organizational influence." Also found to contribute to organizational influences were the tactics of rationality (logic) and assertiveness (directness). The study found a negative relationship, however, between the tactic of ingratiation and organizational influence, a finding that also reinforces prior research's findings on upward influence. "Ingratiation is a tactic that focuses on making the other person feel good, important, or both," says O'Neil. "The tactic's negative relationship to organizational influence should help to dispel the stereotype that public relations practitioners are in the 'people' business, helping others to have a good time." Public relations practitioners interested in increasing their organizational influence should strongly consider decreasing their use of ingratiating tactics, O'Neil says.
The results of this study indicate that the PR practitioner should look for ways to maintain and increase perceptions of value from the dominant coalition by establishing a direct reporting relationship with either the president or CEO of the organization. This study also shows that taking on a managerial role correlates to a greater amount of organizational influence because "enactment of a managerial role is positively associated with such benefits as higher salaries, greater status, increased job satisfaction and is a powerful indicator of excellence in public relations and communication management."
Among the upward influence tactics studied by O'Neil, upward appeal and exchange of benefits played no role in increasing the amount of organizational influence held by pubic relations practitioners, while rationality, assertiveness, and coalition had a positive role. The tactic practitioners should avoid is ingratiation when looking to secure perceptions of value. To paraphrase one respondent from a previous study on upward influence tactics, "You don't want to be known as the department of parties and good times."
We invite your discussion of this topic on PIOnet.
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Problem of Spam Is Multifaceted
by Roger Johnson
Newswise
Junk email, or "spam," is a big and frustrating problem both for receivers of email and for senders. As a communicator, if you use email to distribute messages to large numbers of journalists, or to other lists, your email may not be getting through to its intended recipient. It might be filtered into spam by an automaton. How do you circumvent this?
Part of the problem with spam is that a standard definition doesn't exist for it that would make it easy to identify. Some people use the word "spam" to describe any email they didn't solicit, want, or like. This could include an email from a cousin who represents a cult and sends out regular inspirational reading. Being commercial also doesn't automatically make an email spam. Likewise, including certain words doesn't make an email spam.
Defining Spam |
| Google has a collection of definitions at: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&oi=defmore&q=define:Spam |
| The definition, in addition to "unsolicited automated email" includes an
element of wicked design. The spammers creatively circumvent spam filters by
using deceit. Their subterfuge includes false email address information,
Spam email addresses ("From", "Reply-To", "Return-Path" and "Errors-To") are
false. They also use deceit in the content, such as offering unsubscribe
options that, in fact, are designed to verify good addresses. |
To avoid having your email ignominiously labeled as spam, the most important rule is to send to readers who have elected to receive your email. Newswise, for example, sends only to journalists who have subscribed to our information. They may subscribe to the Daily Wire (M-F), or the twice weekly SciWire, MedWire, or LifeWire, or the weekly BizWire. They receive the content in the format and on the schedule they have chosen. Subscription is not sufficient, however, to avoid being labeled as spam.
This issue of subscription- or permission-based emailing calls into question the propriety of purchasing a database of journalists' email addresses. Buying the email addresses does not imply permission to send messages to these reporters. Moreover, how good are the email addresses that can be purchased on databases? Even if an email address does not bounce the email, the message still may not be received. It might be diverted into a spam folder, or redirected to an email address that was created by the recipient to receive such email and that is never reviewed.
Spam Filters |
| Your email is most likely being filtered automatically for spam. One of the popular versions of such a filter is an open-source program called Spam Assassin (See http://spamassassin.apache.org/). Spam filters work by a variety of mechanisms, including an analysis of individual words in email messages. News releases dealing with medical research topics are endangered because they contain words that appear often in unrequested email advertisements. |
Even if you are sending email only to subscribers, you still have to deal with spam filters. Sending email to your constituents, even to those who have consciously opted to receive your email, is still a problem, but good design can help your message reach subscribers.
Designing email effectively to bypass spam is not simply determined by the content of the message or the subject header. In the following article we will discuss some of the issues we recently addressed to redesign our Newswise wires.
http://www.newswise.com/public/reports/200411/index.php#feature
We invite your discussion of this topic on PIOnet.
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