Public opinion and social media

1. ”PUBLIC OPINION
AND SOCIAL MEDIA”
28 November 2012
Sari-Maarit Peltola
University Teacher, Lic.Phil.

2. Public
Public is a group of people who recognize to have a similar problem and
organize themselves to address it. (Dewey 1927)
Publics are groups of individuals. The public is the totality of such
groupings. (Heath 2005)
Mass vs. public (see e.g. Suhonen 2009)
Public is a distinct group of people and/or organizations that have an
actual or a potential interest and/or impact on organization. (Kotler
1975)
Public generally refers to a situational collection of individuals who
emerge and organize in response to a problem. (Vasquez & Taylor
2001)
The situational theory of publics: nonpublics, latent publics, aware
publics and active publics (Grunig 1983)
Publics can be classified by function, their level of involvement with the
organization, or their interrelations. (Kotler 1975)

3. Public opinion
Yleinen mielipide tarkoittaa kansalaisten mielipiteen enemmistöä tai jakautumista
(Suhonen 2009)
Those features of the world outside which have to do with the behavior of other
human beings, in so far as that behavior crosses ours, is dependent upon us, or
is interesting to us, we call roughly public affairs. The pictures inside the heads of
these human beings, the pictures of themselves, of others, of their needs,
purposes, and relationship, are their public opinions. Those pictures which are
acted upon by groups of people, or by individuals acting in the name of groups,
are Public Opinion with capital letters. (Lippmann 1922)
Yleisen mielipiteen vakaus: kiinteä, nestemäinen, kaasumainen (Tönnies 1922)
Public sphere is where something approacing public opinion can be formed.
(Habermas 2004)
Bandwagon effect
Julkisuus (public) tarkoittaa tilannetta, jossa joukko ihmisiä viestii jostain
teemasta, joka tavalla tai toisella koskee häntä. Kun vähintään yksi henkilö viestii
asiasta muiden kanssa, syntyy uusi julkisuus. Julkisuuskentät (public spheres)
ovat tiloja, joissa julkisuudet syntyvät. (Iivonen & Åberg 2009)

4. Social media
Social media services include social networking, content
producing, the distribution of services and websites that are
collectively constructed by users (‘‘wikis’’ such as Wikipedia),
video and photo sharing services (such as YouTube and
Flickr), virtual worlds (Second Life), and diary-type websites
(‘‘blogs’’). (Aula 2010)
Social media is a group of Internet-based applications that
build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web
2.0, and that allow the creation and exchange of User
Generated Content. (Kaplan & Haenlein 2010)
Social media is characterized by interactivity – participants
freely send, receive, and process content for use by other.
(Aula 2010)

5. Revolution of Social media
Common information about social media
– http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TXD-
Uqx6_Wk&feature=share&list=UULC9cX5
GntaQmTSF6hTqrzA
Social media in Finland:
– http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=twzVCOo
tCoM

6. Classification of Social Media
Classification of social media by social
presence/media richness and self-
presentation/self-disclosure (Kaplan &
Haenlein 2010):

7. Categories of Social Media
Content publishing & broadcasting: users produce written text or video material to
blogs, wikis, microblogs, broadcasting (service providers and examples: Blogger,
Twitter, Podcasts)
Discussion forums: discussion forums, chats (service providers and examples:
Thoughts.com, Suomi24)
Content sharing & social bookmarking: social bookmarking, sharing of podcasts,
photos or videos (service providers and examples: del.ici.ous, YouTube, Flickr)
Social networking sites: communities for social networking and community
building (service providers and examples: MySpace, IRC-Gallery, Facebook,
LinkedIn)
Joint production: users create shared content and edit other’s contributions
(service providers and examples: Wikipedia, OhmyNews)
Virtual worlds: engagement in immersive worlds (service providers and
examples: Second Life, Habbo)
Attachment services: individual service to aid an existing service (service
providers andexamples: Google maps, Facebook connect)
Aggregation services: combining several elements of social media and more
traditional communication (service providers and examples: Friendfeed, Google
Wave)
(Luoma-aho 2010)

10. Why people participate in
Social media?
Keep in touch
Self-expression
Self-realization
Learning
Experience of similairity
Business
Increase creativity
(Matikainen 2008; Deragon 2007)

12. Public participation
Public participation is the involvement of the public in
the process of decision-making. (Stewart & Claker
1987)
Ladder of citizen participation (Arnstein 1969):

13. Stages of public participation
(Jackson 2001)

14. (Eurobarometer 2012)

15. Five point for companies
about using social media
Choose carefully
Pick the application, or make your own
Ensure activity alignment
Media plan integration
Access for all
(Kaplan & Haenlein 2010)

16. Five points about being social in
social media
Be active
Be interesting
Be huble
Be unprofessional
Be honest
(Kaplan & Haenlein 2010)

17. Public opinion in social media
Public opinion is no longer dependent on the press
and their points of view, but various players can
contribute to how an opinion is formed.
Public opinion can be formed in minuties.
Companies must find the (right) online communities
and enable them.
Social media takes a step further away from control,
toward shared arenas where many produce in
collaboration. The power dimension is still there.
(Luoma-aho 2010)

18. Warning example: Nestle
Have a break -video

19. Some other examples
United Airlines/Guitar break
Ryanair/www.ihateryanair.org
Domino’s Pizza
10:10

21. Sosiaalinen media ja
organisaation viestintäkulttuuri
(Isokangas & Kankkunen 2011)

22. Laki ja sosiaalinen yhteisö
• Työnantaja ei voi määrätä työntekijän sosiaalisen median
käytöstä
• Ohjeistus takaa kaikille selkeät pelisäännöt
• Liikesalaisuudet ovat salaisuuksia myös sosiaalisessa mediassa
• Paikannuspalvelut voivat paljastaa liikesalaisuuden
• Sisäinen viestintä on yrityksen sisäistä toimintaa myös
sosiaalisessa mediassa
• Varjo-it ilmiöt on syytä käsitellä tapauskohtaisesti
(Isokangas & Kankkunen 2011)

23. Dynaaminen julkisuuskenttä
• Dynaaminen julkisuuskenttä (DJK) on tila, jossa organisaatiota
koskevat, elinkaarensa eri vaiheessa olevat teemat liikkuvat.
• DJK:lla voidaan identifioida
• Kentälle nousevat eli käynnistettävät teemat (issues)
• Organisaatiota koskevat asiat, jotka aiheutuvat suoraan tai epäsuorasti
organisaation omasta toiminnasta.
• Teemojen karevaikutus, ripple effect (Papworth 2008)
• Käynnistettäviin teemoihin liittyvät teemat
• Aktivoituvat toimijat
• Toimijoiden viestinnälliset tai toiminnalliset aktit
• Leimahduspiste, tipping point (Gladwell 2007)
(Aula & Åberg 2012)

24. Issues Arenas
Issues arenas are identified as new arenes for
communication, and a sign that organization-
centered communication is over.
Issue arenas are dynamic stages of
interaction and discussion.
(Luoma-aho & Vos, 2010)

25. Monitoring
Monitoring refers to analytical review and
evaluation of changes (Vos & Schoemaker
2006)
Environmental monitoring: trends in public
opinion and events in the socio-political
environment to see in which direction
developments are going an what needs more
attention. (Luoma-aho, Tirkkonen, Vos & Hurri
2010)

26. Monitoring in Social Media
The social media environment requires
monitoring to be an ongoing action studying
the environment and interpreting weak
signals. (Luoma-aho, Tirkkonen, Vos & Hurri
2010)
Listen to your stakeholders, measure and
analyze conversations and react to the
feedback. Have enough resources!

27. Some basic tools
• Follow competitors by RSS feed (or list your feeds to Google Reader)
• Follow feedback and number of fans in Facebook (see e.g. Fanilista),
follow comments and number of views in YouTube, follow comments
and number of visitors of your Blog, follow number of followers and
retweets in Twitter etc.
• Make easy ways to follow impact of your campaign etc. (e.g. Dell in
Twitter, Queensland campaign)
• Use Google Search (e.g. company name, phrases connected to the
company)
• Use Google Analytics (see e.g. http://youtu.be/l9joLoZOjK4),
TweetPsych, TwitGraph, Google Alerts, Social Mention (sos.media) etc.
• Do content analysis of discussions etc.
• Outsource the hole thing (Sysomos (Nokia, Coca Cola), Trackur)

28. Case Swine Flu
Discussions in Finland
In November and December 2009:
– 2264 comments in discussion forums of
Iltalehti and KaksPlus –magazines
– Themes of interest:
• symptoms of the flu
• safety of the vaccine
• the epidemic, risk groups and its victims.
– (Luoma-aho, Tirkkonen, Vos & Hurri 2010)

29. Attitude-groups in the swine flu
discussions (N=2264)
(Luoma-aho, Tirkkonen, Vos & Hurri 2010)

30. How does social media generate
reputation risks?
Risk is increased when the gap between an
organization’s reputation and its reality grows.
Risk is increased by a change in the expectations of
consumers.
When an organization is internally unable to react to
changes in the environment, a highly ‘‘important
source of reputational risk is poor coordination of the
decisions made by different business units and
functions’’.
(Eccless, Newquist & Schatz 2007)

31. Key characteristics of
conventional and
ambient publicity
(Aula 2010)

32. Social media challenges
conventional strategy
Social media is not just a channel for distributing corporate
communications; social media is an arena for participation in
which organizations interact with the public.
Strategic reputation management should concentrate on ethics.
In social media, there has to be a clear line between how to
behave in order to live up to expectations and how to
communicate a business goal.
Social media has the effect of presenting a collective truth. Users
create and search for information, gain knowledge, and make
interpretations based on communication about an organization.
(Aula 2010)

33. Nine tenets for leaders
1. The ability to perceive and avoid risks is essential to organizations in order to
survive.
2. Instead of sophisticated, objective, and rational risk analysis, most people rely
on their subjective risk perceptions, which can be affected by such highly
emotional sources as social media.
3. Reputation is a valuable, but highly fragile corporate asset.
4. Reputation risk will garner more attention in corporate risk portfolios.
5. The challenge is to create valid reputation risk categories and to quantify the
implications of the loss of reputation.
6. Reputation risk often originates from uncontrollable external factors, but
corporation’s own controllable actions play an important role as well.
7. The importance of reputation requires there be a specific guardian (such as a
Chief Reputation Officer).
8. Corporations must engage in proactive communication in order to prevent
reputation risk and to fix damaged reputations.
9. Reputation risk evolves and culminates in publicity, but in social media publicity
is a dialog.
(Aula 2010)

34. Reputation strategies
for ambient publicity
Strategy of absence
Strategy of presence
Strategy of attendance
Strategy of omnipresence
(Aula 2010)