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This question is a cliché for anybody introduced to Public Relations and ethics. On a couple of occasions I have been asked but I have never had a defiant response. Let me explain why…

A couple of weeks ago for my birthday a friend of mine bought me the film, ‘Thank You for Smoking’. Originally a novel by Christopher Buckley which follows a lobbyist, called Nick Naylor, who works for the Academy of Tobacco Studies. If you haven’t watched the film then I definitely recommend it. As for me, I’m going to try and find the time to read the book.

Potentially this could be a very simple question to answer. It is the cognitive processes through which offers the difficulty. We have to understand that there will always be a demand for tobacco, people need to make their own choices but that smoking seriously damages your health. Perhaps the only people who can justify working for tobacco companies are smokers. Yet, I smoke (admittedly not nearly as much) but still find my conscience battling against my habit.

Do tobacco companies offer a positive service for society or are they fuelling a product which the majority would chose to abandon?

Currently I am undecided and this question is for you. Would you work for a tobacco company?

Will provide part 2 of this muse within the next few days.

On my Public Relations course whenever a campaign has been planned there is always one word which is used in abundance. The conception of a plan that will spread ‘awareness’. Perhaps defaulted by principle as awareness avoids connotations of unethical propositions. How wrong it would be to implement a campaign that would compel individuals into actually purchasing a product. Would that really be unethical?

Just because a scale of influence has been used to persuade an individual to purchase doesn’t make it wrong. They haven’t been told to purchase a particular product or support a cause; they have still made a choice. No matter the level of influence involved they made a subjective choice.

For the past couple of days most of my attention has been diverted to completing an essay for my Ethics module at University. The essay concerned determinism, freewill and the ethical outcome. Although there is no denying a similarity, if only academic in nature, that Public Relations should be concerned about. Determinism focuses on why we make the choices we do, how our choices are determined by prior causes.

David Hume, one of my favourite philosophers, divulged into how the whole scheme of nature works through necessity. Cause and effect is how every object is brought into the world, this simple principle explains the functionality of our bodies but also the decisions we make. I won’t spend this muse pondering upon the existence of determinism, compatabilism or indeterminism.

Instead I want you to take for granted, for this small fraction of time, these three principles:

1. We do indeed live in a world that can only be explained through the mechanics of determinism.

2. Freewill is necessary for liberty to exist.

3. But freewill is littered with impediments that personally limit our choices but does not keep our hands tied.

Quite a big proposal but if we are to take these three principles to heart then influence is not a question of ethics.(…)

Apparently there are 15,740 social media experts on Twitter of who take the forms of gurus, consultants, stars, experts and ninjas. I am not entirely surprised and as Mashable observed this self-accredited title is just hot air. Surely the only way somebody can be truly convinced of your worth is through the voice of another?

Notice how on my Twitter profile I have avoided cliché terminology. There is nothing worse than those who big themselves up on Twitter without any experience or content to prove their worth. Just because you Re-Tweet social media posts doesn’t make you an expert; it makes you a regurgitator.

I am not an expert but instead a ‘web 2.0 enthusiast’. Even though I am only a student I have been surfing the internet since the age of five and have built similar social media websites which have received  so much hype today. I am an enthusiast, passionate about the subject and can see potential as well as flaws.

So forgive me as I walk the controversial path into what could be considered short sighted and simply wrong. Social media is experiencing a frenzy of attention at the moment. Rather than personal attributes people are being viewed by how many followers they have on Twitter and the amount of websites they have heard of. I am getting fed up with this hype.

In one breath I can name over a dozen different websites which will help share content from your website. Methods to spread a company’s word into the different sections of the heterogeneous audience in which social networking has created. I did a presentation to a client at the beginning of this month and they were more interested in a social media strategy surrounding Facebook than considering ‘old fashioned pr’.

It is in my opinion that the world has gone crazy. Of course there is value to using social media but let’s all calm down about this. Just because a PR firm has offered social media in their pitch doesn’t(…)

Last week I was fortunate enough to have been invited by one of my friends to meet Mark Coote, Conservative Candidate for Cheltenham, at a pub in Cheltenham. As I suspected by reading much of his material he was a delightful person to be with. Quite personable and I can see how he would be a successful candidate.

With the seesaw of British politics in motion once again we can expect for David Cameron to be Prime Minister next general election. In which case having Mark Coote elected for Cheltenham would be of great advantage to Cheltenham. With David Cameron only being a phone call away how could Mark Coote be a bad thing?

The evening was spent discussing personal views, campaigning ideas and attempting to achieve a firm grip of Conservative politics. Lots of free beers were involved and by the end of the evening I was ready to sign up to the Conservatives. I know it sounds cheesy, almost manipulative with free beers being offered but I believed in Mark Coote.

I don’t mean to sound that I now no longer believe in Mark. He is a fantastic candidate but the question of helping with their campaign is really a personal one. Much of my experience within the PR sector has been related to social media for individuals and companies that want to ultimately sell.

Politics is different. Very different. Listening to why a political party is better compared to another uses a lot of language commonly associated with religious evangelism. What I witnessed at that table last Friday was political evangelism. In the same way I would resist the values preached by a Christian, Muslim, Jew or even Pagan… I felt the need to resist the Conservatives.

It does sound peculiar. Of course I have an interest in politics but my reasons for not joining the Conservatives could be regarded as theological in nature. For the same reason I have remained an Atheist almost.

As an Atheist it is possible to clearly observe(…)

So I was having a conversation with a guy at the bar last night. If I’m honest I had quite a lot to drink at this point but then British history is built upon alcohol and other questionable substances.

The guy I spoke to, called Alec, is taking an illustration degree and decided to focus on political comics for his assignment. Unfortunately the only two political structures he was familiar with was Fascism and Nihilism. Even though I don’t know much politics he asked me a few questions and he even requested for my email address encase he had more during the week.

We got into conversation about how influences effect the decisions we make. The technical term of the stance he took would be hard determinism. However, he went a step further. He started talking about how even the existential occurrences of nature could affect our very essence. With this I had to disagree and refer to how it is definitely the empirical nature of events which shape us. Existential happenings are beyond our reach which we can only explain through theories and evidence. The existence of evidence then makes our views of existential events plausible, it is the empirical which can only be labelled as the truth. Anything beyond this has to be taken as a value of faith, including any scientific theories which are purely logical in thought and currently lack physical evidence.

Anyway, this discussion relates very well with how Public Relations operates. In PR’s simplest form the communication of a particular message is the focus. However this message has to be taken from a value of faith. There are very few messages where PR can attain the benefit of empirical evidence to prove a certain point. The only industry which comes to my mind where PR could provide evidence is in regards to health and safety. The harmful effects of tobacco can be communicated referring back to scientific discoveries. This is unlike the messages from an organisation wishing(…)