Time to Learn

On Tuesday in my Public Relations Management class we had a Media Studies Master’s student come and speak to the class on “new media”. I was thrilled with the lecture, as I’d requested to our teacher that we have some sort of in depth discussion on new media. Philip Ryan Johnson came in and spoke to us and he did a really great job. He provided us with a lot of great materials and resources to help introduce ourselves more to what is available online and how we can incorporate that into what we do as public relations professionals.

Philip went over internet resources such as blogs, podcasts, RSS feeds, YouTube, Facebook, MySpace, social news, Wikipedia, and e-Books. As a young person in the PR world, older generations expect us to be well versed in all of these resources. We are the “internet generation” and although people my age may be experts in how to stalk on Facebook and find funny videos on YouTube, I feel that we aren’t as knowledgeable in how to use these things in the PR world. I think that Philip helped us to begin to look at things differently and tune us into realizing how Facebook can be more than just a place to post pictures, send bumper stickers, and stalk people we went to high school with or sit next to in class.

One cool thing: Philip said that all PR students should be blogging. On his own site, he even BLOGGED about how PR students should be blogging. I only started this a week ago, but it is comforting to know I’m thinking the right way.