Here is June’s communications measurement reading list, composed of the most interesting items we’ve come across recently:
With diversity in mind
One Year Later: What The PR Industry Has Done To Dismantle Systemic Racism
PRovokeMedia
“A year ago last week, George Floyd’s murder unleashed calls for massive change, adding urgency to PR agency initiatives to become more diverse, more equitable and more inclusive — making it time to take stock of the progress that’s been made since…”
A Guide To Defying Rainbow-Washing
Media Post: The Marketing Insider
“Misrepresentation, appropriation, seasonalism, tokenism, keyword blocking, internal watchdogs and the yoke of “brand safety” are clear challenges affecting Pride 365 work. But tides change and brands that navigate that line, celebrating and participating in the fight in a meaningful way, will break through.”
WebABLE.com news aggregator
WebABLE
“…features a fully automated news aggregation site and events calendar. Its built-in crawler integrates with IBM Watson and Tenon.io. Currently, WebABLE analyzes and classifies about 3,000 unique accessibility URLs per day.”
More Diversity Won’t Mean More Dollars for Häagen-Dazs
CommPRO
Astute analysis from a student.
Big picture surveys and insights
Connecting the Dots
GWI
“Our crystal-ball view of consumer trends for 2021. We’ve crunched the latest numbers and plucked out the trends that matter. Here’s what you need to know about the year ahead.”
C-Suite Challenge 2021: Implications for Marketing & Communications Executives
The Conference Board
Results of a survey of 1,538 C-suite executives, including 909 CEOs, across the globe.
Business of Cancel Culture Study
Porter Novelli
“Why do we cancel brands—and what do we hope to gain? How long does a “cancellation” last and what does it take to get back in the good graces of social media public opinion? …we’ll also examine four brands that have been recently cancelled to understand the impact on overall social media conversation, sentiment and the “shelf life” of an online cancellation.”
Crisis
Lessons from the Call to #Boycott Companies with Ties to Israel
PR News
This is written by the vendor of the software that did the analysis, but the advice is really good.
Good writing advice
Brevity
Substack: The Rebooting
A to-the-point post in praise of writing brevity. Including this intriguing quote: “Removing the unnecessary to get to the essence improves products and shows respect for the audience. “Engagement” is too often confused with time spent. The measure is actually just an imperfect gauge of value. Saving people time is always a good product strategy.”
Fake news
Don’t Say I Didn’t Warn You: An Agenda-Setting Experiment of Public Diplomacy
IPR
“This stands as another tangible cost of poor media literacy. The participants in this study were willing to transfer credibility of a western outlet to the soft power public diplomacy tool when it was cited within the article, and that then fed into an inflated credibility of China. If you’re a government communicator in China, it worked. If you’re a government communicator in the US, you should take notice.”
Someone *wrong* on the internet? Correcting them publicly may make them act like a bigger jerk
NiemanLab
“After getting replies that debunked false political news they’d shared, users were more likely to share low-quality news.”
Shadow bans, fact-checks, info hubs: The big guide to how platforms are handling misinformation in 2021
NiemanLab
“…a guide to identifiable patterns in the variety of tactics used to classify and act on information credibility across platforms.”
Stanford Internet Observatory Cyber Policy Center Two Year Review
Stanford University
Scary summary of nefarious fake news efforts by Stanford Internet Observatory, a cross-disciplinary laboratory for the study of abuse in current information technologies, focusing on the misuse of social media.
Why It’s So Hard To Gauge Support For QAnon
FiveThirtyEight
“As much as QAnon feels like a distinctly modern phenomenon, much of its lore is rooted in conspiracy theories that have existed for decades… It’s part of what has helped QAnon gain as much traction as it has… But it’s also what makes it hard to measure.”
How to measure
Beyond Share of Search: What Matters for PR
PRCA
“The project seeks to challenge the advertising industry’s claim over Share of Search. It was created by the newly formed PRCA Innovation Forum after a series of discussions about the IPA’s assertion that Share of Search is a predictor of market share,” said Stephen Waddington FPRCA, Chair, PRCA Innovation Forum. The discussion paper finds a far more complex and nuanced situation and sets out the opportunity for public relations.”
What If Video Games Were Measured Like TV Networks?
MediaPost MediaInsider
“More top video games are beginning to test similar opt-in and rewarded ad formats… a dozen or more of those games will very soon surpass both linear and ad-supported streaming services in the ability to deliver younger audiences, particularly younger men.”
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Photo up above by delaram bayat on Unsplash.
