How New Communications Media Are Being Used in Public Relations: A Longitudinal Analysis

have had a huge impact on the practice of public relations since the first weblogs, or blogs, appeared more than a dozen years ago. Since then these new communications media have developed into a number of different forms including text, images, audio and video through the development of forums, message boards, photo sharing, podcasts RSS (really simple syndication), search engine marketing, video sharing, Wikis, social networks, professional networks and micro-blogging sites. Although social and other new communications media are changing the way people and organizations communicate there might not be any two people who define for any person to: publish digital creative content; provide and obtain real-time feedback via online discussions, commentary and evaluations; and incorporate changes o between traditional media such as newspapers, magazines, radio-television and social have the ability to reach small or large audiences, production costs usually are large for what has become a small number of traditional media outlets while social media technologies basically give anyone with access to a computer the ability to reach a potentially global audience at little or no cost.