Travel destinations across the world must compete in the global tourism industry in order to maintain their attractiveness. Destination authorities and national Governments must work together to promote a positive image of their location in a way that will be attractive to tourists. This is called destination marketing.
For this end, the digital media is a key tool.
To start with, people love to share their experiences of new destinations online, either via Facebook or Instagram, or even by travel vlogging on YouTube. Where a 500-word travel review could be dull and boring, a fully HD video of that lesser known city in South America can be enough for someone to make the trip.
Furthermore, travellers are increasingly turning to social networks for support when planning their next adventure.
But it is not just the travellers themselves who are benefitting from destination marketing. Lesser known destinations are feeling the benefit too. As an individual gets older, they are more likely to look for a travel destination which can help them to improve their knowledge or understanding of issues outside their usual environment (Bongkoo, 2001).
Destination marketing therefore has the potential to improve the life of local communities, promote sustainable development, and preserving local resources (Manete, 2009).
Globally, tourism gives the largest economic boost to Spain, where over 11 per cent of its GDP comes from the industry. At the other end of the scale, in Paraguay, for example, only 1.73 per cent of GDP comes from tourism (The Telegraph, 2018)
The Government of Paraguay has noted that more must be done to bring tourists to their country, however little has been done to do so and no official tourist board currently exists.
Uniting Travel, a strategic action group, estimates that 100 million new jobs could be created in the travel and tourism sector by 2028, with more than half of these in the Asia Pacific region (ICAO, 2018). Public relations practitioners can play a vital role in making this happen.
In the same way in which they can help tackle the digital divide, PR practitioners may represent a bridge towards change. If they can change the public’s opinion of a destination, especially those places where tourists less frequently visit, they will in turn support local economies around the world. This will ultimately lead to millions of people in developing economies being better off than they are currently.
References
Bongkoo, L. (2001). ‘Considerations in developing marketing plan for cultural tourism utilizing a community’s cultural resources.’
Manente, M. (2009). ‘Destination management and economic background: defining and monitoring local tourist destination.’ Enzo Paci Papers on Measuring the Economic Significance of Tourism, Vol.6, pages 363 to 384.
The internet continues to mean different things to different people, dependent on age, education, income, gender, health and social class. While 59 per cent of the global population, around 4.57 billion people, have access to the internet, this access is becoming increasingly more important for acquiring vital information and services. Because of this, a digital divide is clearly forming between those who have the capability of using the internet, and those who do not.
This is causing opportunity, service and knowledge inequalities. Those who do not have access to the internet are being excluded from certain areas of our modern-day society.
Consider how often you visit the internet in any given week. You might use it to look for that next job opportunity – the one you can only apply for online. You might use it to apply for a loan, or to apply for Government welfare. You might just use it simply to keep in contact with your closest friends and family. Now imagine you are suddenly unable to access all these vital services. You suddenly become the disconnected and the excluded.
In fact, if you do not have internet access, you are likely to earn between 3 and 10 per cent less than someone who does, according to the Centre for Economics and Business Research (ONS, 2020).
The internet gives public relations practitioners an open door to worldwide communication. The question is, however, can any practitioner really carry out their role if they can not access 40 per cent of the global population?
Of course, this figure varies throughout the world.
According to the ONS, less that 6 per cent of those in the UK do not have internet access. This figure is one of the lowest globally. In parts of Africa, for example, this figure reportedly rises drastically to over 80 per cent in nations such as Kenya, Ghana and Liberia.
As newer technologies are developed, the digital divide will become greater. Those who are left behind will become harder to reach as clients continue to target those who have the technology to access their services. This is no fault of their own, but it is an issue which needs to be addressed.
Public relations practitioners themselves have the potential to help solve this inequality, by bringing wealth to areas of the world which need it most. A nations image brings in tourists and business, and with that brings money to spend.
Since 2016, Mexico City, for example, has been working on a brand campaign to improve its image. The award-winning campaign has led to an 11 per cent increase in tourism and hotel occupancy reaching 70 per cent in 2017. Most importantly, visitors are spending on average 25 per cent more than they were prior to the campaign, and over 1 million jobs have been created in the hospitality industry since 2017 (PR News Wire, 2018).
With additional money to spend, there has been an additional 10 million Mexicans online since 2017, and this is expected to grow by a further 10 million by 2023 (Statista, 2020).
This is a perfect example of how additional wealth can bring less inequality.
With the technological advances and the knowledge that this brings, PR practitioners should be looking to close the digital divide; not only to benefit themselves in the longer term, but to bring the world closer together.
The spiral of silence theorises that an individual will not discuss their opinion on a policy issue among friends and family, when they believe that this belief may leave them socially isolated. If their opinion is in line with the majority of the public sphere, a person is likely to speak out, however if they believe they are in the minority, they will stay silent.
The idea of social media is that anybody, anywhere, regardless of their colour, status and creed, can publish their opinions on an equal footing to everybody else. Social media creators had hoped that their platforms would allow free discussions to take place, and those with minority views might feel free to discuss and debate their opinions.
However, multiple studies have found that quite the opposite has happened, and people are less likely to share their opinions online than they are in real life.
In 2014, the Pew Research Center in the USA found undertook a survey on the spiral of silence and social media, purposely focusing on the divisive issue of Edward Snowden’s 2013 surveillance leaks.
The survey found several key findings:
People are less willing to discuss controversial topics on social media than in person. The study found that 86 per cent pf people were happy to have a discussion in person about Edward Snowden, but only 42 per cent of them would post about it on Twitter or Facebook.
Less than 0.5 per cent of those asked who would not discuss the story in person, would be comfortable posting about it on a social media platform.
Facebook users were more willing to post about Edward Snowden if they had a belief that their ‘friends’ would agree with them.
Chen (2018) found that not posting because of the fear of being hounded by friends and family was not the only way to refrain from expressing opinion on social media. The study suggests that if the public are afraid of being isolated, they are more likely to self-censor their views by removing posts once they realise the difference in opinion with friends. However, it also found that the amount of anonymity offered by a social network also had an impact on someone’s willingness to post about a controversial subject.
Chen discovered that “The stronger the political disagreement and publicness are, the greater the indirect effect on inhibiting disagreeing opinion expression and enhancing withdrawal behaviours becomes.”
In terms of public relations, this spiral of silence means it can become difficult to gage the true opinion of the public sphere.
We only need to look at the election of Donald Trump and the vote to leave the European Union to find examples of opinions which were presented as being the minority, but instead were revealed to be popular to find examples of this in modern times.
In order to live in a free and democratic society, it is important that the public feels free to discuss their opinions, as long as they are not offensive or violent towards another person. While the spiral of silence exists, public relations practitioners will find it difficult to gauge the true opinion of the public, particularly when it comes to issues of a controversial nature, and their job of maintaining a relationship between an organisation and the public becomes all that little bit harder.
References
Chen, H (2018). Spiral of silence on social media and the moderating role of disagreement and publicness in the network: Analyzing expressive and withdrawal behaviors. New media in society, 1:20.
In my blog post entitled ‘Digital PR and Politics’ I discussed the way in which the internet and social media has ultimately changed how General Elections are won. However, how messaging is produced and distributed is not the only factor of political campaigning which has been changed through the enhancement of digital media.
As digital media can produce and circulate material so quickly, it has the additional benefit of reducing the advantage of political parties with larger financial budgets. This largely assists smaller parties and independent candidates attempting to fight their way into Westminster, gaining them instant media exposure.
While I have discussed the Conservative Party’s use of social media in the 2015 General Election, it was Nigel Farage and UKIP that dominated Google searches, according to Dr Fillippo Trevisan and Dr Paul Reilly. Social analytics firm BirdSong also discovered that during the election period, the Party’s engagement rate was 87 per cent, compared to the Conservative Party’s Conservative nine per cent – although it is worth pointing out that this does not differentiate between positive and negative engagement.
Political campaigning has traditionally focused on working the news cycle. Prior to the substantial use of social media, the day’s political message would be briefed to the press in the morning with the hope that it would fill the news agenda throughout the day. Digital media allows for that cycle to be interrupted in response to live announcements and political activity.
Political parties can now, almost instantly, push out an opposing view to any given political situation in an attempt to steal the headlines. If you visit the Twitter account of any given UK political party, you will find streams of recent news articles being shared with that party’s line on the issue.
Alongside this, Members of Parliament, and even Government Ministers, can take to social media to make instant policy announcements in time for the evening news, even before they are formally announced by the Government. Michael Gove, for example, recently took to Twitter to announce that he had “formally confirmed the UK will not extend the transition period & the moment for extension has now passed.” In some cases, a press release will not be issued and the story will be built around the 280-characters issued from the respective Twitter account.
I just chaired a constructive EU Joint Committee meeting with @MarosSefcovic
I formally confirmed the UK will not extend the transition period & the moment for extension has now passed. On 1 January 2021 we will take back control and regain our political & economic independence pic.twitter.com/nZjNpez8LI
While it can only be a good thing that digital media allows the public to instantly access this information, studies in the US have found that some 46 per cent of adults feel “worn out” by the number of political posts they see on social media. In fact, the Pew Research Center found that across every demographic group, there is more exhaustion than excitement over seeing political content on social media.
Although public relations practitioners, organisations and political parties, both large and small, are finding it ever easier to promote their viewpoints across social media, they must be cautious. The public want to know what is going on in the world and deserve the opportunity to scrutinise the decisions which effect their lives. However, with the rise of anti-establishment sentiment, caution must be taken, in order to keep the reputation of all, to not tire the public.
“None of us can know everything; each of us knows something; and we can put the pieces together if we pool our resources and combine our skills.”
In a world dominated by post-truth politics, these words by Henry Jenkins in his book, Convergence Culture, are now more important than ever.
Collective intelligence allows the public to get closer to democracy, by merging together knowledge from different sources and interacting with the information available, in order to question and challenge authority. The emergence of the internet and online communities has given rise to unlimited opportunities for the public to become engaged with this information.
After dedicated news sites, social media is now the second most important place people discover news online. Politics has always been heavily influenced by the media, and in a world before the internet was invented, politicians and their policies could easily go unscrutinised. Now, however, even before a policy has been announced, it is often leaked by the media on to a social network, where members of the public can state their approval or disdain. Campaign groups and public relations practitioners can create communications almost instantly in response, and the Government can ultimately be lobbied before any official policy announcement has been made.
There are, however, criticisms of this kind of collective intelligence.
First and foremost, do politicians really care about what the public says on social media. After all, can those on social media, although now over 65 per cent of the population in the UK, really reflect the feeling of the wider public? A 2015 Ofcom report found that while 43 per cent of those who get their news updates online do so through social media, a huge 61 per cent of these are between the ages of 16-24 (Hanska, 2017), the age group who overwhelmingly vote for left wing parties.
Secondly, the rise of online collective intelligence has created echo chambers where post-truth claims can be reposted without rebuttal and opposing ideas can be dismissed as being biased without any checking of the facts. Anyone can now access the internet and post their opinions online as ‘truths,’ which are then often shared far and wide by those of a same opinion. Rather than sharing a post based on the accuracy of its content, users in social media bubbles share content based on emotions and feelings. This means that public relations practitioners on the future face a tough challenge to get their messages noticed among all other shared content.
That being said, the potential for social media to be used as a tool to listen and to learn from one another cannot be underestimated. As was seen in Egypt in 2011, social media allows people to come together to effectively question and challenge Government.
As more and more of the public take to social media, PR practitioners will need to become more intelligent and develop better strategies to reach echo chambers and to deal with the rising power of different communities.
References
Hänska, Max & Bauchowitz, Stefan. (2017). Tweeting for Brexit: how social media influenced the referendum.
“As more broadcast and print media outlets develop an online presence, activities like pitching stories to reporters, developing and distributing press releases, and measurement and evaluation of media coverage, have been updated, optimized, or reinvented.” (Hutchins & Tindall, 2016)
Over the past decade, digital media has changed and continues to change rapidly. The way information is produced, distributed, accessed and interacted with has shifted, but with this has come a great opportunity for public relations to blossom and embrace the modern way of living.
The rise of social media means everyone has an equal opportunity to promote and share media content, regardless of status and wealth, and campaigns and causes can be promoted at the touch of a button with engaging content. Social media and, more widely, the internet has led to campaign engagement being recorded in real time, and practitioners know instantly how effective content and ads are at reaching the public. This two-way engagement allows the direction of a campaign to be changed quickly and, if needs be, crisis management to be enacted efficiently. The world has become a 24-hour society, where anyone with an internet connection can access information at any time of day and successful public relations campaigns can use this to their advantage, publishing material at various times to reach different target groups.
However, while a modernised digital media brings many positive opportunities, it can also speed up the process when things are not going well. The 24-hour society can quickly become a curse when bad news travels through social media platforms, and one poorly thought out Tweet or Facebook post can suddenly create a PR crisis. The speed at which bad news flows through the internet makes it difficult to contain and recover from. As well as this, customers can publicly discuss bad experiences for the rest of the world to see.
It is difficult not to argue that digital media has changed public relations, “for public relations the unavoidable conclusion is that nothing will ever be the same again” (Phillips and Young, 2009). As described by Cutlip, Center and Broom (2006), “public relations is the management function that establishes and maintains mutually beneficial relationships between an organization and the publics on whom its success or failure depends.” While the tools used to maintain these relationships have changed, the core concepts of public relations has remained the same, albeit with new opportunities and challenges to take into account.
References
Cutlip, S., Center, A., & Broom, G. (2006). Effective Public Relations, 9th Edition. San Diego State University: USA.
Hutchins, A., & Tindall, N. (2016). Public Relations and Participatory Culture. Routledge: London.
Phillips, D., & Young, P. (2009). Online Public Relations: A Practical Guide to Developing an Online Strategy in the World of Social Media (PR In Practice). Kogan Page Ltd: London.
After half a decade on the downturn, the first quarter of 2020 saw a sudden surge of 166 million daily Twitter users as people across the world tried to keep up with the latest Covid-19 updates. This is the largest year-over-year user-growth ever announced by the social media giant – an increase of 32 million compared to the same period in 2019.
Social Media can, and has, given a voice to millions of normal individuals. It puts their opinions on an equal footing to heads of state and media personalities regardless of their colour, status and creed. It provides a free stage to publish thoughts and ideas regardless of wealth and power. However, as Twitter approaches its 15th birthday in 2021, the site has been criticised for returning to the centralisation and elite control of every other form of media.
The site has caused a stir among all sides of the political spectrum, with both the right and the left condemning the site for censorship, repressing free speech and spreading “fake news.” At its height more than half a billion tweets were sent a day, but this has declined at a rapid pace to a comparatively minor 300 million a day.
Despite its flaws, however, Twitter still has an important role to play in the modern world we live in. As well as providing an equal platform, regardless of who you are, it has become an important public relations tool for organisations, charities and political movements across the globe, most prominently empowering the #MeToo campaign in 2017 following the Harvey Weinstein sexual abuse allegations.
Twitter is making a revival, and it is important that it does. The world is changing, however, and it is vital that our social media networks listen to their users, embrace these changes and learn from them, or risk being made extinct.
