Is using social media “good” for the public relations profession? A critical reflection

• The paper presents a critical reflection of existing social media studies.
• It questions the utility of social media for publics, organizations and PR.
• It examines how using social media affects interpersonal relations and communications.
• It highlights the limits of social media research in public relations.
• It provides a ground for why public relations’ discourse about social media is highly positive.

Scholarship in public relations seems to be overly positive about social media. The dominant discourse in public relations is that using social media is “good”, because social media can help organizations in developing dialogs and relationships with publics and in engaging with them. Yet empirical evidence in public relations is mostly case-dependent and limited to the realm of understanding current organizational practices, with limited understanding of the concrete value for organizations or for publics. In this paper I question the utility of social media for publics, organizations and public relations, and I argue that the positive view of social media held by the majority of public relations scholars is grounded on the profession's need to reconcile the two sides of public relations identity—the rhetorical and the relational. A discussion of whether current public relations practices in social media reflect these two main identities is offered, as well as a discussion of the implications of uncritical use of social media for the public relations profession.