The Grunig crowd resemble religious fundamentalists. They ask “what comes after Grunig?” and their answer is “Grunig comes after Grunig”. So they are absolutists. They believe that their man ended PR history – as in the development of its thought, methodologies and insight – once and for all. Meanwhile, they try to make reality fit the theory and end up talking nonsense about social media and much more.

Maybe the challenge with Grunig’s model is that he puts too much emphasis on stakeholder involvement. Perhaps modern audiences — dropping in and out of issues and topics so briefly based on the nanosecond media cycle — can’t even qualify as stakeholders. Grunig imagined a world where angry mobs stood vigilant outside corporate HQ with pitchforks, ready to riot. Instead, we have audiences that are disengaged in general. In other words — communications chaos.

Thus, your analogy to PR as art is apt. Flexibility is key, as you indicate. While I don’t consider myself a postmodernist, I do favor PR thinkers who reflect the reality of communications in this environment. Scholars like Derina Holtzhausen, Priscilla Murphy, Bruce Berger, and Robert Heath offer something beyond the orthodoxy of Grunig and the wobbly “excellence” study.

Proponents of that study are attempting to show that social media is the ultimate form of two-way symmetrical communications, which (again) is a rather utopian vision of it. The real point is that it doesn’t even matter. Most people favor gut reaction, or “gungho certainty” as you say, which places critical thinking at a deficit. In that sense, we’re all getting what we paid for…

Certainly, I’m not taking sides in US politics so much as exposing PR hype about social media and making the case against there being a new age of engagement. If others can cite Obama in support of their case, I’m entitled to interrogate the evidence.

Barrie Obama – Harvard Law, Professor, youngest editor EVER of the Harvard Law Review – intellect, cool headed lazer analysis and cold logic yes.. but man of the people not really and noteven a politician of the Nixon, Kennedy, Reagon, Clinton or Teddy Roosevelt class.

The guy needs an LBJ to manage the Senate and Congress, do the politics, get people into the tent pissing out not another virtual movement.

Try reading John Naisbitt – Hi Tech World demands Hit Touch politicians – vide Sarah Palin and the T Party movement.. learn the lesson quick.

Nothing in the social media project says all these dyads will exist. There is no need. The networks interconnect and if the research is to be believed we are 6 jumps away from anyone.

We just have two way conversations with the Dunbar number around us (around 150). With only one connection between each tribe we have room for a 10x increase in population before 6 degrees is impossible.

As you say, in the top down world of strategy, we think through how information ripples through the world. And we think through which ripples we notice and how new communication forms change the pattern of ripples.

You’ve got heaps of arguments bundled together. They might go together or maybe the weakness in anyone leaves the whole begging an argument?