Uncategorized Melvin Yuan on 14 Dec 2007 01:58 pm
Rewriting rewritten rules – Uncovering Social Media truths
But are these sayings completely trustworthy?
I wrote in a recent post that “maxims have the power to form paradigms that eventually shape our thinking and consequently (in our case), strategy.”
But while these maxims are fantastic in helping us understand social media, we deceive ourselves when we take them at face value and fail to consider the truths behind counter perspectives.
Think of the proverbial Blind Men and an Elephant story, in which the true physical characteristic of the elephant (truth) is misrepresented by the interpretations of several blind men left to feel with their hands, the different parts of the animal.
True wisdom in PR 2.0 then, is not simply taking every buzzword and saying, and crafting strategies and tactics around them; but rather, in understanding the essence of these ‘new rules’ and turning them on their heads to get to the real truth. It’s all about eliminating the “either-or” fallacy that logical psychology warns of.
If we systematically question every social media maxim that we know, and examine them carefully, we will gain a tremendous amount of insights. Kudos to Chip Griffin who, in his post on “Throwing Out the Social Media Rulebook“, has given us a head-start. John Cass’ commentary following Chip’s post is well worth the read too.
Enjoy.
on 25 Dec 2007 at 2:59 am 1.John Cass said …
Thanks so much for the mention. The whole debate has been interesting. I was reading a Boston Globe article today on copyright issues, and how several scholars are suggesting that many professions don’t need tougher copyright legal protection because a community will police itself. The article gives the example of magicians, and comics. I thought that was interesting. Chip might be right on a number of things, but sometimes the community determines what is right and wrong.
I wrote a post about the elephant story a while ago. Unrelated, but I thought you might be interested.
http://www.newcommreview.com/?p=164
on 25 Dec 2007 at 9:49 am 2.Melvin Yuan said …
Indeed. A community often does police itself… and usually pretty well. I only worry when we overestimate the ability of a community to make the right decision. History leaves us many examples of grave mistakes made by consensus.
Thanks for the link to your article. It’s good and I enjoyed it.
Merry Christmas!
on 04 Jan 2008 at 3:22 am 3.John Cass said …
You might almost be suggesting democracies don’t work. I think the consensus opinion might not always be the best result but it’s the one that results in the least conflict. I personally would agree that many times a decision might not be the best result but I do think it is what is realistic within a community. Though in this case I do have some disagreements with Chip on his ideas for social media against the community. Thanks this is an interesting discussion; I might revisit my second article and include our discussion.
Cheers for the words of praise for the elephant article.
Happy New Year!
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