Response: Digital Era challenging PD Principles

This week when thinking about my blog entry I kept thinking about how the digital age has shaped, and perhaps defined, our generation. Between Facebook, Twitter, Smart phones, and now smart TVs, any and all types of information is at your fingertips. While this could be advantageous, and it often seen as such, there are real challenges. Kim’s entry this week did an outstanding job tying together our readings, as well as others, pointing out the key challenges. 

In addition to some of the challenges, pointed out by Kim, I feel the biggest challenge to PD within this digital era is the speed of information flow compared to the overall objective of PD. I see this almost as a “race” – as of now either information win or PD principles win. As we have been learning throughout this course, PD is not just about getting the message out, but about getting the right message out. If we look back to one of our first weeks, Matthew Wallin describes the principles of PD as understanding the policy objective, understanding the target audience, identify the target audience, listen, establish a narrative, be truthful, follow through on policy commitments use force multipliers, don’t reinvent the wheel, and then select the appropriate medium (21). If PD is based on the success of each of these tenets, then it could be assumed that as a field, PD is strategic in nature. Through the use of digital or social media, targeted or tailor approaches are less possible. Basically, PD may have to choose, get information out or hold true to the principles of the field.   Perhaps through a better understanding of their target audience, examining online users and the investments in knowledge management, PD and the digital era can find equilibrium.