Rape threats and DDoS attacks: welcome to the new normal

After reading about what happened to Adria Richards last week, I was struck by a couple of things.

First, I wish we could spend even half as much time educating men on the etiquette of telling really stupid penis jokes in mixed company at professional conferences as, say, the time we spend sending death threats and rape threats to the woman who called out some guys for telling really stupid penis jokes in mixed company at a professional conference.

But that's just me.

Second, what happened to Adria Richards is the new normal.  And our profession is completely unprepared for it.

Cultural conflict has always been a part of business, and social media has intensified some conflicts. Most people in PR have a story about a client who offended a customer and the issue blow up on Twitter or Facebook.  But we're well beyond an angry tweet or a viral video now.  We're at the point where a 15-year-old kid with some basic computer skills and a little audacity can cripple a company or destroy a person's life.

A small group of even amateur hackers (or sometimes a single hacker) can bring down an industry's entire commerce platform for an indefinite time, or steal and share a company's trade secrets, or even publish a person's most private and sensitive information.

So while big companies can afford sophisticated defense systems, the same idiot-proofed digital technology that helps mid-sized and small companies compete on a global scale allows hackers to attack them.  And since startup companies don't have the resources to invest in hacker-proof systems (not that such a thing exists), they're easier targets.  Even tech companies, like, say, SendGrid.

The larger problem, however, is the cultural phenomenon that this same technology has accelerated - homophily. (I've written about homophily before.)

Digital technology has prompted consumers to curate their own news streams and collect the information that fits their interest and their world view.  People organize into groups that reflect those interests and world views - like Facebook groups, boards on Reddit or 4chan, and so on.  When people do this, they form very tight-knit communities that share deep and rich experiences with each other.  The more time they spend with each other and not with anyone else, they also develop skewed perspectives of reality, and they grow more strident in those views, especially when challenged.

Professor Alice Marwick put it really well as she examined the recent controversy: "When people with likeminded beliefs congregate together, they collectively move to a more extreme position."

What's more, online forums often provide a modicum of anonymity to the people who gather there.  Anonymity can certainly provide a safe haven for a whistleblower or a victim - but it also provides an easy out for those who want to avoid accountability. When you don't own your words, you can say anything you want - and push that community to that more extreme position.

And so we get an anonymous comment to Dr. Marwick's piece, calling her an "attention-seeking drama queen with an agenda" and another saying she's an "overly sensitive publicity seeker." Yet somehow techies with aggressively-cultivated personal brands like Robert Scoble, David Winer, CC Chapman, Dave Taylor, Jason Falls, Jason Calcanis, Michael Arrington, or Leo Laporte can make any number of provocative statements or public "call-outs" on "minor" things without receiving a single rape threat.  Tell a woman that they should keep things quiet and polite and many will tell you - without hiding behind a sophomoric pseudonym like "A Canned Ham" - that it doesn't work.

So as people with homophily-enhanced anger issues and reasonable technical skills decide to attack our clients (remember, SendGrid got attacked in this fiasco as well), PR firms and professionals have a lot of work to do.

First, we have to add strong security expertise to our firms and our professional offerings, or at least to our networks, to fight off the basic attacks we can easily predict.  Most of us aren't anywhere close to where we need to be.  We need people who can effectively translate security concepts and practices to the worlds of PR, strategic communications, and marketing.  I think the list starts with Jennifer Leggio, and there are others.

Second, we have to provide the right kind of training for PR professionals to help recognize and address these issues - recognizing that the companies most at risk are the small/mid-sized startup types who, if they have outside PR help at all, tend to use a sole practitioner or a small firm. I can see someone like  Kellye Crane working with experts on this and providing this kind of training to solo PR's as well as big firms.

Third, we have to revolutionize our social media monitoring.  Keyword searches that give you yesterday's Twitter mentions don't cut it.  We need digital explorers who have no fear of joining new and unfamiliar communities to learn what's really happening - so they can provide subjective, predictive counsel to a client and the rest of the team.  I'm not talking about a covert operation here, posing as an activist or lurking in a chat room.  I'm talking about transparent entry with sincere gestures of goodwill and even advocacy when appropriate. (OK, that's pretty much what I like to do.)

Finally - and this is the long-term, big picture, probably-impossible-but-we-still-have-to-try thing - we must work with people like Dr. Marwick to develop strategies that overcome the negative impacts of homophily. We will never resolve certain conflicts and we will have tribalism as long as we have tribes. But if PR firms can't figure out a way to more effectively take what we know about "third party validators"or business diplomacy and apply it to the most provincial online communities, if we can't prod our clients to get out of the bunker when things get tough, if we decide writing off entire communities is less expensive than building allies and understanding, then we've failed our clients and we've failed ourselves.

World Kidney Day

In honor of a brilliant colleague who has been a long-time advocate for kidney health, I'm pleased to recognize World Kidney Day by sharing an infographic from our client, AMAG Pharmaceuticals.  She's been working on a campaign to help educate people with Chronic Kidney Disease on how to recognize the symptoms of iron deficiency anemia and what you can do about it.

I don't typically share items like this on the blog here, but I'll make an exception in this case because the infographic is very well done and I know my friend and colleague would want me to.  Here's hoping everyone can make informed health decisions.

This above all: to thine own self be true

A science communicator friend of mine teaches a class at NC State and asked me to talk with them next week.  His students are a mix of undergrads in different majors - journalism, PR, and so on. He asked me to talk about how the skills or principles we use in PR can translate into other careers.  Here's an outline of what I plan to say.  And yes, this may be on the final exam or something.

It's probably important to explain what Public Relations is - not that my definition of it is any more useful than anyone else's. The Public Relations Society of America says it's "a strategic communication process that builds mutually beneficial relationships between organizations and their publics."   I tend to think of it in less fancy terms - PR is how we bridge the gaps between what we say, what we mean, and what we do. 

To me, the first rule in PR - or in any facet of communication, for that matter - is know your audience.  Learn their goals, their preferences, their taboos, their language.  Show them the respect of investing your time into knowing a little bit about them. Discover what you have in common. Persuasion is often about finding shared perspectives and building trust.  Further, a little up-front research can help you avoid the really stupid mistakes. Of course, I think today the word "audience" should probably be replaced with the word "community" - because an audience tends to be more passive and receives information, while today technology helps people talk back. (There's a reason I call this blog It's Not a Lecture.) 

Second, and again, this is nearly universal - tell a good story. Not everybody does this well, and I'm not convinced there's a set formula for success. However, to me the best stories engage quickly, surprise you a bit, and contain an unmistakable element of truth. The more you do it, the better you get at it.  I think the more you know your audience the better chance your story will be good, but there is a creative skill set that goes along with storytelling. Some people have it, some people don't. 

Finally, and this is a bit more important to my field than to others - understand that when your job doesn't let you communicate in the way you'd prefer, you have to stay true to yourself.  

Organizations generally don't hire PR firms because they just can't find enough time to talk about puppies and sunshine. They may hire PR firms because they often do things that are hard to understand - they involve a lot of accounting lingo or policy wonkery or scientific terminology. They may hire PR firms because they actually did the things their critics accuse them of doing. They may hire PR firms because something very, very bad happened. 

If you're in crisis PR, as I sometimes am, a lot of what you do is defense. Sometimes you can't say a lot because there's an ongoing lawsuit or an investigation. Sometimes your client is "in the bunker" and is so risk averse they are hesitant to do anything and hope everything will just blow over.  Sometimes you learn information that you want to share - something that would land on the front page of a newspaper or move a stock price or maybe get someone in trouble - but you realize that sharing it has consequences too.

You have to be able to live with that. You have to be willing to serve the interests of your client. You have to manage your internal conflicts, and figure out a way to make sure you're giving the best advice you can.  

The good news is this - most of the time, the right thing to do is also the best PR move.  These include things like telling the truth, or making a mistreated employee or customer whole, or announcing that the product you made isn't completely safe and should be recalled. And most of the time, the client sees that too. 

For those rare times when the right thing to do isn't the best PR move, only you can decide what you do next.