In politics timing is everything

Absolutely love a good political scandal….

This one has the lot.  A Presidential hopeful, his terminally ill wife, the film producer mistress and the illegitimate child.

A bit of history behind the John Edwards story (which surprisingly I am struggling to find too much media coverage on): Until very recently Edwards, a star Democrat and one-time presidential hopeful, was the American political golden child. Good looking, philanthropic, picket-fence family…he was everything the Stepfords love. Although he didn’t make the presidential ticket he was a heavy contender for Vice President.

Now, I’m thinking Paris “paint the White House pink” Hilton has a better chance.

In the current political climate the Vice President is so important. Do we really think either McCain or Obama will last the distance. If the 105 year old Sentor McCain wins he will probably have one, maybe two years in office before he gives out. If Obama wins some narrow minded vigilante group will knock him out JFK style to prove a Ku Klux point.

Anyway, I digress back to Edwards. Aside from being the golden child (yes he is 55 but he is a very good looking 55) of American politics his wife Elizabeth is suffering from terminal cancer. For months there has been tepid speculation that Edwards had an affair with Rielle Hunter, a largely inexperienced producer who he paid $114,000 in July 2006 to produce several campaign videos for him (these videos were suddenly removed shortly after production).  The fact that Edwards hired someone relatively inexperienced to produce his campaign videos set off initial alarm bells in my cynical mind. 

The speculation picked up momentum when Edwards was photographed  running from reporters at the hotel where Hunter was staying with her daughter Frances. Frances was born on February 27 this year. No fathers name was listed on the birth certificate. Edwards has aggressively denied he is the father of the child (just as he originally denied having an affair with Hunter) and has also welcomed any DNA testing to prove this. Hunter on the other hand has not commented on the father of the child and, conveniently (there I go being cynical again), refused to allow any DNA testing to confirm paternity.

The speculation climaxed on Friday night when Edwards came out on American ABC television and admitted that he had an affair with Hunter.

What possible motive could he have had for announcing this on Friday 08/08/08?

Surely someone in the Edwards corner should have informed him that on this day everyone will be too preoccupied with he fireworks and flag waving of the Olympic Opening Ceremony in Beijing to pay attention to what the cheating politician has to say???

Oh wait…maybe that’s the point.

I know it happens all the time (some may even call it a cleaver PR tactic) but in my mind it looks downright manipulative. Burying a story under a much bigger world event is not transparent. It is sneaky. 

Although I don’t know what the coverage is like in America, in Australia it has been minimal (what would I do with out the Huffington Post!). A quick survey of virtually everyone I came in contact with yesterday and not one person knew about the affair (full disclosure that just under half those I spoke to actually knew who John Edwards was – with many mistaking him for the psychic). A quick scan of the three major Melbourne newspapers…nothing.

I now make it a habit to look very closely at international (and local) politics in times of notoriety. Whats that there on page 6? Oh Kevin Rudd introducing the world to his illegitimate son during the popes recent visit?

Why I’m opening up the Space and not censoring the Face

Finally Finally Finally someone gets it!

Garys’ video reminded me of a conversation I had a couple of months ago with a perspective employer in Beijing. The conversation (which was flowing along quite nicely) came to a halt when the gentleman I was speaking to commented “I saw your profile on Facebook…you look like quite the party girl”. The rest of the conversation consisted of me giving vague ummm and ahhhh answers while I raked my brain trying to imagine what incriminating photos/comments/posts he could have seen on my profile.

Within roughly 30 seconds of putting the phone down, both my Facebook and MySpace pages had been privatised.

Luckily for me my pages are relatively tame. Although at the time the display pic didn’t scream professional it certainly wasn’t anything I would be upset if my mum saw. Even more luckily for me, this guy was cool. As a senior PR practitioner he was interested in social media and appreciated my amateur adoption of it. Their company has a Facebook group which I am now proud to be a part of.

While I agree with most of what Gary is saying in his clip, one point I take contention with is his argument that you cannot have multiple personalities. I would argue that we all have multiple personalities, or perhaps more accurately one mulifaceited personality. Different social situations act as forums to express different elements of our personalities. I am a different person around my friends to what I am when I visit my grandparents or when I am at work. I use different language, discuss different topics and wear different clothes.

I think what social media is doing is making it possible for these different personalities to cross over. What Gary is saying is that for the first time our friends/family/colleagues are able to get a fully rounded picture of our lives – not just one piece of our personality puzzle. We can now be judged (to a higher degree) as entire entities. The separation or distinction that divides our personalities is getting narrower. If an employer visits my MySpace profile they can see the type of person I am around my friends. At first the thought of an employer seeing this side of me was unsettling. However, the more I think about it the more comfortable I am with it.

If Jane happens to be tagged in a bikini on the beach that doesn’t mean that she views that as appropriate work attire. Any employer who comes to such a conclusion is not someone I would want to work for. If I was photographed at a club with my friends. So What! I am a grown woman and presumably it’s the weekend. If it’s 9-5 on Monday through Friday then yes…I see where an employer may take issue!

I found a quote by the wonderful Mitch Joel recently that sums up exactly how I have always approached my professional undertakings…”I treated every position I had as if I owned the company and it’s success (or failure) rested on my shoulders”. Maybe this sentiment isn’t apparent on my Facebook or MySpace page (however, there is certainly nothing to contradict it). Different online communities serve different purposes. If you want to see how I will conduct myself on a Saturday night out with my friends check out MySpace. If you want to see how I will behave in the office go to LinkedIn. If you want to see a complete picture of who I am – have a look at both.

There is no more security in obscurity. Facebook is mainstream. MySpace is mainstream. You are mainstream. Employers and perspective employers are going to look at your profile. Hopefully when they do see you in a less professional context they interpret it as having the work/life balance.

I like Gary’s point about good triumphing over evil. If you have posts up and down your page talking about how horrible your workplace is, how you should really get off Facebook and do some work, or how much you dislike your boss or colleagues then yes a perspective employer will probably (justifiably so) read into this as you being lazy, unproductive, and socially disruptive. They will hire someone else.

Seeing another side of a perspective employees personality is (in most cases) not a bad thing. Employment ads preach about the quest for diversity, ‘people persons’, and energetic people. People say they are these things…now an employer can check it out for themselves. Humans are social creatures, we like to express ourselves – obviously keep some things private- however I can’t imagine an employer who wants to hire an army of 100% all work/no play clones. I’m sorry, but if I am a recruiter and I go on to a potential candidates MySpace page and see nothing but a slide show of them slaving away in the office i am going to come to the conclusion that this person is a one-dimentional robot. If I go to their LinkedIn page and see some photos of them in a professional setting – then fine. DIFFERENT ONLINE COMMUNITIES SERVE DIFFERENT PURPOSES AND CATER TO DIFFERENT ELEMENTS OF OUR PERSONALITIES.

Employers have to understand that these social networking devices need to be viewed in context. Facebook and MySpace – I see as more social networks. I use Facebook strictly for friends. MySpace i’m slightly more liberal with. I’ll accept a ‘friend’ request if you are my friend, you are a family member that I like, you play music that I like, your profile is interesting, or you write me a nice note telling me why we should be connected. LinkedIn and Golden Key (honour society network) are different. They are professional. I wouldn’t dream of putting photos that were anything less then professional up on one of these networks.

People who are good are going to win…I’ll go one further and say people who are balanced –  in the personal and professional -  are going to win.

Today I opened my myspace page and made it public…so in an act of balanced shameless self-promotion:

Check out -  LinkedIn AND MySpace

The Asianised Australian

For my Transient Spaces final project I am required to make an online documentry using a number of different media platforms (photos, video, links, podcasts etc.). Considering I struggle to upload a photo on facebook i’m less than thrilled at the prospect of creating an entire multi-media website. 

We are using Dreamweaver to create our sites. Dreamweaver is an idiot-proof website creation program. I’m assured Dreamweaver is impossible to break, fail at, or get wrong. I imagine that’s kind of like how reality television would never take off or Hawk’s 87 election promise that by 1990 no Australian child will be living in poverty.

Anyway, i’m getting ahead of myself. Our theme for the documentary is Community. After much internal debate i’ve decided to target mine at Chinese (specifically Beijing) university students traveling to Australia (specifically Melbourne ).

I spent 6 months last year teaching marketing and business studies at Beijing-USA College of English. BJ-USA is in collaboration with La Trobe and James Cook universities. Students gain credit towards a diploma in business at one of these Australian universities. They pay a ridiculous amount of money and and will hopefully be in Australia late 2009. While I experienced a massive culture shock going from beautiful Melbourne to ‘cultural’ Beijing, I have a hunch that what I went through is nothing on what my students (the rounghly 10% who make it over the administration, financial, and academic hurdles) will be hit with. A combination of  strong communist beliefs, strict/sheltered upbrinings, language barriers, and a lack of accurate informaitonal resources means that most of these students are severely ignorant of the world outside of China.

This is scary.

My documentry will be targeted at students such as the ones I taught in Beijing, and will serve as a resourse to ease the cultral paralysis they will be struck with upon arrival.

I spoke to Dean (tutor) about this in the tutorial on Friday. He was super-helpful and gave me some questions/issues to think about before I get into actual content production and creation. Similar to the abstract post this is a work in progress and will most likely be updated/changed/deleted out of frustration 100 times over the next 12 weeks.

ID Audience: Chinese (specifically Beijing) students (18 to 28 years) comming to Australia (specifically Melbourne) for the first time.  

1 Sentence Summary:

Titles for pages:

• Learn (information about universities, cultural transition programs, language assistance programs)
•  Eat (Chinese food, traditional Australian Food, cheap student food)
•  Live (rent prices, accomodation, agents, lifestyle, costings currency equivilants of groceries, drinks etc.)
•  Explore (cool stuff to do, shopping, attractions)
•  Socialise (cool places to go, bars, clubs, student life, Australian music)
•  Experience (what to expect – interviews with other asianised australians)
•  Travel (dealing with the devil (aka connex), maps of Melbourne)
•   Links
• Advice (what not to do for example: it is rude to spit indoors/smoke indoors/use the city as your own personal trashcan (all perfectly acceptable in BJ), etiquette)

Interviews: I will Interview students from the international departments of Melbourne universities to speak about their experience in Chinese will have a voice over option to listen in English (will email international deparment of RMIT for help making a connection with students to interview). IELT’s is located in building 36 (levels 1, 5, & 6). Also visit cambridge on La Trobe Street.

Relevant links:

How will it be used?: As an informational resource, possibly a social resource if I can get some sort of posting program (similar to a facebook wall), chat program, or even linking program that connects new students with Australian students (who may want to learn the language?) Probably out of my league on this one!

Purpose: Serve as a resourse to ease cultural paralysis of Chinese students comming to Australia for the first time.

Equipment: I’m told I will need a solid state recorder and a mini disk (??? no idea what these do). I can borrow them from RMIT but they are unavailable unitl after Apil 18 as creative media students are using them. Also my digital camera.

If possible I would like to have duel language options for the site so viewers have to option to read in Chinese or English.

I want to focus on Melbourne universities but if possible will try and get incontact with someone from James Cook in Brisbane as this is where a number of the students I taught will attend. If the site is appropriate I may send a link to BJ-USA to show to students.

I will also need to find out some administrative informaiton about Visa’s (ie. what type of visa’s will students likely be on – can they get employment – can they get govt/uni/healthcare benefits). I can get information on RMIT entry requirements @ B 5.36.

Media Relations in China – Issues of Censorship and Government Control

I spent the best part of yesterday stressing, no actually thinking (after reading ‘The Power of Now’ I no longer stress) about what I would do my honours thesis on. I know (reference previous post) im interested in PR, social media, all media, politics and Asia but I am S.T.ruggling to frame a questions/problem that is do’able in a year and that I am fully resourced to adequately answer.  

Last year when I was working (teaching business and marketing studies) in China, I became involved in a dialogue with a Beijing/Singapore based PR company. One of the topics we discussed was the language/culture barrier between Beijing and the West. I asked this particular company, which is part of a global network and represents global clients, about their procedures around selection of graduates and interns. One of the requirments they listed was a need for fluency in Mandarin. I can personally atest to the fact that Mandarin is an increadibly, stupidly difficult second language to learn – trust me…don’t try it at home unless you have ALOT of time and are VERY committed.  

The reason for this was the need to communicate efficiently with an almost entirely Chinese speaking media. Yes, this has merit, alot of merit but I couldn’t help but wonder just how much international industry potential this (and im sure many other) public relations companies are missing out on.

In theory, graduates and interns should be well verserd with the latest industry knowledge and trends. They are fresh out of a learning environment and have not been jaded by bad experience or specialisation. This type of broad-spectrum view of the industry is unique.

All the more concerning is that as China further cements its position as the emerging dominant superpower (and lets face it not even Kyoto will stop the developmental boom) and globalisation continues along its merry technological way –  more and more across all diciplins are entering the Asia-market. Where does this leave PR as a profession? or indeed any profession?

I want to come back to the media. What follows is me trying to keep my dirty western democratic bias at bay and be as politically correct as I possibly can about how I view the current media climate in China and how this effets public relations/media relations.

China’s media is not liberal. It is Government regulated, censored, and licenced. Although I must confess that the English language papers that I did read (China Daily being the most prominent) were of a lot better quality then I expected…Admitadly I expected the worst. However, content wise the newspapers were still a far cry from any Fairfax or News Corp publication (RELATIVELY minor political persuasions aside).

so, China’s media still appears to be  tightly regulated and historical international events such as the Beijing 2008 Olympics and China’s enterence into the WTO present an interesting challenge for the government. The magnitude of such events has thrust China into the global spotlight exposing it to wide international scrutiny.

In light of these positive events it is conceivable that the Chinese government may try and generate as much international media coverge as possible. Whilst it is still relatively simple for the government to regulate internal print and electronic media outlets through licencing, censorship, monitoring and sanctions. It may prove increasingly difficult to control content on the international stage. Take for example the Australian media coverage of the Dalai Lama visit and the political fanfare that surrounded the occasion.

New media such as the Internet is making the transfer of informaiton across countries easier then ever before. An obvious consequence of this is a less regulated and more participatory media environment. Whilst the media relations market is more lax than it was 20 years ago it is important to remember tht media outlets are still required to cover government events which take precedence over most other content. Internally, certain issues may also need to be handled with care to avoid reprisal.

So how does this impact PR and more specifically media relations?

In such a climate it would be wise for practitioners to carefully plan the release dates of content to ensure that it does not coinside with the countries governmental or important national events. Practitioners should also forge strong relationships with journalists and key governmental staff in order to gauge the current and short-term-future media climate. This allows practitioners strategically plant their clients content in a manner that will give it the best chance of publication. It may also be wise for practitioners to list any governmental policies or national advancement initives that their client is involved in or in support of.

Watch this space….this is an issue im very interested in and am definatly going to investigate more….