“All current signals point out that the backlash after November 2020 will surpass the one that originated in November 2016”

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