Digital Technology has given David of an ax to grind Goliath

The chapter 18 provides fundamental guidelines when conducting computer-assisted communication of risk. While Lundgren and McMakin (2004) show you how much you can get or how effectively you can communicate from utilizing those computer-assisted applications, I cannot help but get intimidated by the vulnerable side of digital communication. Technology certainly boosts the effectiveness of care and consensus communication by promptly and accurately informing an audience and inclusively gathering feedbacks. However, the list of threats that digital technology brings, especially in crisis communication, is quite long since an organization is not the only one who can manipulate the technology any more.

1. Information overload

First of all, obviously there are choking amount of information, (or let's call 'messages' since some of them are neither informative nor accurate after all) out there and it gets more and more difficult to make your communication message salient enough to get picked up by a target audience. Take blog postings only, for example. A document published by Shift Communication PR firm suggested that presumably more than 2.5 million daily blog postings are being uploaded. Furthermore, not only there is a great chance that your voice will be unheard buried by millions of others, but also is a huge challenge of proving credibility and accuracy of your communication message.

2. No more "what happens here, stays here"

The technology applications, such as online discussion forums, live online training, and distance education, removed the geographical limitations of communication. While the textbook mentions the bright side of such liberation, the intimidating fact is that the risk situation will not end in local settings any more. An article 'Surviving a blog storm' in Business Platinum Ventures Magazine carried a comment from Todd Defren, a principal with Shift Communications that "issues that heretofore had been buried by virtue of the fact that they were regional, now have a national or international scope." A threatening aspect is that any kind of story, whether it is accurate or blown out of proportion, or complete false, gets instantly delivered to internet users in any part of the world. The amplification of risk/crisis issues empowered by technology make public relations professionals' job a lot difficult and complicated.

3. Self-replicating and everlasting nature of cybersphere

Furthermore, snow-ball phenomena on World Wide Web can give you a severe headache. While online forum is a great platform for consensus communication, at the point of breaking rumor such platform becomes headquarter of making mountain out of a molehill. And often times, it is hard to find the origin of rumors or nonsense information on cybersphere. In addition to self-replicating nature, a story that is placed online has no expiration date. Once a story is up online, it is always stays in its stage of searchable. For example, I've recently seen a dull blogger bringing up the Satanism rumor of Procter & Gamble logo as if it's breaking news when such accusation of a satanic symbol was made way back in 1980s.

4. Cyberactivism

With the help of advanced informations and communication technologies, any determined individuals or groups can easily communicate with large audiences about a specific issue and can build troops to make collective actions. Some of the technology-savvy activists, called "hacktivists" make further and rather radical steps to deliver their message. For example, hacktivists break into organizations' Web sites and implant their message on front page. Technical failure of a Web site is not the problem that only IT engineer should worry about any more.

In conclusion, when conducting computer-assisted communication, one should be very aware of both bright and dark side of the deals that the technology can bring.

In terms of surviving from some of the threats I mentioned above, Jonathan Bernstein, president of Bernstein Crisis Management in California presents practical guidelines in his article, "Surviving a blog storm" on Business Platinum Ventures magazine. Although, he throws a couple of 'and-then-what' type of nonsense antidotes, such as "If someone has posted information that is not accurate, contact the site owner company that provide space to multiple bloggers and ask them to take it off" or "If you generate a flurry of positive news release, they will show up on the first release, they will show up on the first page of a Google search engine," the article in overall sense specific points that you should keep in mind to minimize damage from online communication attacks. Three cyberspace crisis case studies provided at the end of the article is quite interesting as well.