mudwrestling in the corridors of power

Mattias’ blog post on the Wikipedia-tampering by the PR people of the US presidential candidates shows how quickly people resort to mudwrestling tactics in the corridors of power. Again, this really got me thinking about how careful you have to be with the new communication-technology on offer on the Internet and what threats it poses to people working in public relations, especially those who are working as gatekeepers of the corridors of power.

You may have noticed I used the word threats and not opportunities. That is simply because I feel that the threats for PR people associated with new technology by far outweigh the opportunities they offer. To me it is a bit like fighting the three- headed dragon. You chop one off and face two new instead. And what is more important, most of the time you don’t even have an idea about who you are up against.

Don’t get me wrong. Wikis, podcasting, blogs, Facebook et al, every one of these novelties offers public relations opportunities. If nothing else, the latter are excellent for the purpose of monitoring the online-debate. But blog-examples from this little class of ours alone have already highlighted some serious downsides to it all.

I’d welcome some advice from a level-headed person as how to maximize the advantages and sidestep the problems. But so would PR people the world over, I guess.