PRovoke (formerly, The Holmes Report) published an article
about the Techlash. I'm glad
that I could contribute to this piece and be featured alongside brilliant PR professionals. Here are a few snippets out of my interview. I recommend reading the whole
story HERE.
Nirit Weiss-Blatt, Ph.D. and author of Techlash and Tech Crisis Communication, says what's we're seeing today began as a "post-election reckoning" in 2017, including Russian interference in the election, misinformation, extremist content, hate speech, cyber-attacks, and data breaches.
"All current signals point out that the backlash after November 2020 will
surpass the one that originated in November 2016 in magnitude," she warns.
"Some politicians and citizens will create total chaos, and tech would be
blamed for all of it. The pendulum is drawn to such extremes. So, I don't expect
that the near future will help us reach any middle ground."
The concept of the middle ground that we are among pendulum swings emerged in
many interviews for this piece. For instance, we went from fawning stories on
founders and the media awestruck by the trajectory of unicorns to now, tech
companies being framed as villains. There's plenty of evidence that tech
players squandered the initial goodwill, but Weiss-Blatt says the picture
is more nuanced.
"As you would expect, tech PR professionals think the media pendulum has swung
too far in the negative direction," she says, adding that as investigative tech
journalists discovered scandals, others jumped onto the news cycle. But also,
tech PR's "infamous secrecy and limited access heavily contributed to where
they are today."
"We move from hero worship to villainy, but the next phase
is to find a balance, most likely through adjustments in design and, possibly,
regulation," says Kim. "Those are the types of conversations we need to drive."
And those conversations need to happen across multiple threads, as Weiss-Blatt
points out, techlash spans the cultural and the political.
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The article discusses the importance of companies taking a stand on social issues. In that regard, my host at USC, Fred Cook, the Director
of the Center for Public Relations and the Chairman of Golin, initiated
research on New Activism. It examined the PR industry's
views on activism and how prepared communicators are to react or work with
various activist groups. I highly encourage listening to his conversations with
leading activists and PR executives in the #PRFuture podcast. I think that purpose-driven employees are actually a source of optimism, even when there's not a lot of it
left.
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Update (10/30/2020): The full video of the "Techlash panel" is now on YouTube
