Marilou Kalogerakou
Retrieved from https://pixabay.com/images/search/youtube/
Social media has its beginnings in
fun little “new age” platforms that people would use to keep in touch with long
distance friends, lovers, and family, share pictures and showcase their amazing
lives, and maybe post a song or an article once in a while. Social media
platforms transformed from being a generally harmless and direct mode of
communication and sharing into the most powerful and influential force of this
universe. Nowadays people-via social media or (social media-via people) have
the power to diminish governments, bring fame and money to talented and -mostly untalented- people,
but most importantly, is a means for every person on this planet to speak their
mind, share their thoughts and have unlimited access to millions and millions
of information sources, entertainment channels and, last but not least, videos.
Ladies and Gentleman, your attention please!
In this blog I am not going to
focus on the general power of social media in modern society, but am rather going
to zoom in on one aspect and -in my humble opinion- the most prominent and
influential one. Ladies and gentleman, with no further delay, I would like to
present to you, YouTube.com.
My inspiration for this blog’s
topic came from a very interesting article in which they investigated the level
of forgiveness an audience has upon a person or situation and the perceived
sincerity or insincerity of the video, based on their commenting activity under
YouTube videos. Today’s public
figures, politicians,
celebrities, and Pope Francis himself are
using social media regularly to communicate with their audience - so called
‘‘followers’’, so called ‘’subscribers’’ and so on. However, the revolutionary
thing about social media is that for the first time in history the “audience”
has the ability to give feedback and interact with everything that is happening
and being published on the Internet. Therefore, social media platforms enabled a
very interesting emergence between the mass and interpersonal communication.
Because of the influential role of social media today in times of crisis, PR
specialists are strategically using these platforms to assess the comments and
posting activity on the event and handle the crisis in the best way according
to the feedback they have from their audience (VanSlyke Turk, 2006).
Furthermore, social media give a platform to companies or public figures to
explain themselves, apologise and engage in a conversation with them (Wright
& Hinson, 2017). The famous singer Chris Brown for example uploaded a video,
which received 1.5 million views and more than 4000 comments, in order to
apologise for
his abusive behaviour towards the famous singer Rihanna.
But first , some clarifications.
There are two main theories that
will be mentioned now that are going to be useful in the near future since I
found very interesting how contradictory they were to the actual findings. First,
Bernoit came up with a theory that enables organisations and individuals to
deal with crisis situations and image repair. His theory is segmented into five
categories: denial, corrective action, reducing the offensiveness of the act,
evasion of responsibility, and mortification. PR practitioners have been using his theory in
the area of crisis management for quite some time. However since the emergence
of social media the effectiveness of his theory has become a little blurry. The
second theory would be from Schmitt et al. (2004) which supports the idea that an
interpersonal apology should enclose five verbal ingredients in order to be
successful: admit fault, admit damage, express remorse, ask for forgiveness,
and offer compensation. If an apology consists of these components, it is going
to look more sincere and worthy of forgiveness. The study focused on the apology
videos of public figures on YouTube and due to the findings there were no
significant results in line with Schmitt’s components of a successful
interpersonal apology. In addition, the study showed the majority of Benoit’s
crisis management strategies were unrelated to the perceptions of sincerity/insincerity
and forgiveness.
Retrieved from https://pixabay.com/images/search/youtube/
“ I always follow my instinct “… And guess what?
Some of the most interesting points
of the article would be that of the “confirmation bias” (Johnston, L. 1996). So
basically YouTube users are driven by their pre-existing beliefs about a person
or a situation and they interpret what they see – in our case apology videos -
based on those pre-conceived notions. In the case of Jimmy Kimmel’s apology video
for a racist joke he previously made, the comments section clearly indicates
the predispositions of the audience with regard to him (e.g. “ Jimmy, funny and
a proper response. Trump supporter, but Love you and your show. Stand ups are
far the best. Doesn't matter which side you are on. You have to have a little
thick skin at times. Jimmy you have showed class!!”).
My final point would be that since
commenters are urged to engage with negative posts rather than positive ones
(Thelwall et al., 2012), it would be easier to negatively influence other users
who have a more passive commenting attitude. And my main concern would be:
social media platforms returned the power to the people and gave them a platform
to finally speak their minds, but I cannot help but wonder: are the blind
leading the blind?
About
the Author:
Jean
Kelso Sandlin is an associate Dean and a professor of Interdisciplinary Studies
& Community Outreach. She likes to refer to herself as a self-titled
"backdoor academic” and she earned a doctorate and joined the academy
after a 20-year career in public relations, journalism and advertising.
REFERENCES
Benoit, W. L. (1995). Accounts, excuses, and apologies: A
theory of image restoration strategies. Marcombo.
Johnston, L. (1996). Resisting change: information‐seeking
and stereotype change. European Journal of social psychology, 26(5), 799-825.
Sandlin, J. K., & Gracyalny, M. L. (2018). Seeking
sincerity, finding forgiveness: YouTube apologies as image repair. Public
Relations Review, 44(3), 393-406.
Thelwall, M., Sud, P., & Vis, F. (2012). Commenting on
YouTube videos: From Guatemalan rock to El Big Bang. Journal of the American
Society for Information Science
and Technology, 63(3), 616–629.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/asi.21679.
VanSlyke Turk, J., Jin, Y., Stewart, S., Kim, J., &
Hipple, J. R. (2012). Examining the interplay of an organization's prior
reputation, CEO's visibility, and immediate
response to a crisis. Public Relations Review, 38(4),
574–583. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.pubrev.2012.06.012.
Wright, D., & Hinson, M. (2017). Tracking how social and
other digital media are being used in public relations practice: A twelve-year
study. Public Relations Journal,
11(1) Retrieved from http://prjournal.instituteforpr.org/wp-content/uploads/PRJ-2017-Wright-Hinson-2-1.pdf.
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