News in the Fast Lane

When I was writing my article Blogging Thrives in Malaysia for IABC’s journal, Communication World, I was struck by how quickly news of events travels in the new era of online communications.

I started researching and writing the article in July this year and as I finished it and was about to send it to the journal editor, Malaysian blogger Nathaniel Tan was taken into custody and I had to quickly update the article with that latest news.

Just after I sent it off to the editor, I got an urgent email from one of my interviewees, Asohan Aryaduray, the New Media Editor at The Star newspaper in Malaysia saying that there had been “some serious and troubling changes in the political landscape” and giving me an update on further crackdown and potential changes in the laws affecting blogging.

I had to recall the article and revise it yet again with these latest updates.

On Saturday, I was building on the research I had so far on blogging in Malaysia for the book I am working on about New Trends in International Public Relations and came across reports online of riots in Kuala Lumpur during a political rally for electoral reform, within hours of it happening. A link was posted on the Facebook group “Save the Malaysian Judiciary” to a YouTube video of an Al Jazeera TV report showing police spraying demonstrators with chemicals during the march.

When I first found it on Saturday afternoon, it had been viewed 240 times. When I checked back 3 hours later, it had been viewed over 8,000 times.

Some further digging led me to more videos around the event, including a video from a little while back that was one of the rallying calls for the protest.

More and more, the way we receive news and information is going to be a mix of traditional news media and citizen communication - people passing on news around the world through emails, social networks and social media tools. Right now, it’s still new and worth commenting on but soon, it will be the norm. We’ll still most likely turn to the journalist-produced content for news that has been fact-checked and produced according to professional standards and guidelines (though journalists can still get things wrong!) but alongside will be a stream of information passed on by non-professionals. The trick will be identifying the non-professional sources you can trust and those that may be scaremongering, gossiping or pushing their own agendas.

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This post and others in the category New Trends in International Public Relations is part of my research project for the book of the same name that I am co-authoring with business communications expert, Silvia Cambie. I am focusing on the social media aspects while she is working on the wider public relations issues.

To find out more about my research for this book, see my book wiki.

To see who has contributed to my research for the book, take a look at my Contributors List.

If you can help with my research for the book, please contact me via the book wiki contact link or email me via this blog.