Now that you've seen the interviews for my dissertation I conducted with Heather Yaxley, Shelley Fletcher-Bryant, Annie Bowden and Rob Brown, here's the final one to go online (I conducted a few more, but promised to keep them confidential and not publish them).

Below you’ll see the responses of Alison Theaker. Alison has over 30 years of experience in public relations and management as a practitioner and academic. Currently she is a freelance consultant at The Spark and an Associate Lecturer in Public Relations at London College of Communication. Alison is the author of ‘The Public Relations Handbook’ (a principal PR textbook since the 2000s) and co-author with Heather Yaxley of ‘The Public Relations Strategic Toolkit’ (a must read for anyone in PR). You can follow her on Twitter @thesparkuk.

For centuries men and women (have) had very distinct roles in society and business: men were the ones supposed to make money, women were the ones supposed to take care of the children and the household. Such sexual stereotypes have guided the course of society and even today in some cases (and countries and cultures) they still do.

But things have changed. Women are now able to pursue the same career opportunities as men, however when it comes to the workplace it is more than apparent that even if women are just as capable as men doing the very same job they do not reach the leadership positions.

Some may call such inequality in the boardroom total discrimination and injustice, rooted in misconceptions and prejudices passed down over generations where women are seen as week and sensitive.

It is very difficult to dig into the reasons why there are a lot less women in leadership positions than men. It is a fact, however, that there exist serious gender inequities and massive pay gaps between sexes. According to research, women hold only 14 percent of the board seats at S&P 1500 companies. Female graduates in the same job positions earn a lot less than their male counterparts despite laws designed to ensure equal access to careers and pay.

But why?

Digital and social media has been a main area of interest for a number of industries, but it is PR that has been transformed to an unrecognisable state thanks to these new developments. For over a decade now PR professionals have experienced firsthand how social media has affected the practice, but it seems they still haven’t got to grips with it. PR specialists seem to still struggle with this new communications channel.

I didn’t make this conclusion on my own just like that; it was something I discovered while doing proper primary and secondary research for my dissertation about social media’s impact on the PR industry. And as it turns out, a brand new research confirms this lack of digital skills among comms specialists.

LinkedIn is the largest professional social media network in the world and has been steadily growing in numbers and importance for businesses and individuals in the past years. The platform plays an influential role both for personal as well as for professional reasons, from an individual and from a company perspective. If you haven’t yet made use of the possibilities that LinkedIn offers and utilised its power, I encourage you to do so now!

To persuade you why you (and your business or company you work for) have to be on LinkedIn I’ve created a detailed infographic that shows quite a few relevant facts and figures about the platform and how members make use of it.

I’ve always been fascinated with infographics and this is the second one I created myself (the first one represented my dissertation findings; you can check it out here). I hope you find it useful. I would love to hear your comments :)

As someone who has become naturally drawn to anything about social media and PR and is super interested in the impacts of social media on communications (I wrote my dissertation on the subject!), I was thrilled when I saw an infographic called ‘PR Then and Now’ the other day.

The infographic illustrates how barely recognisable today’s PR industry is in comparison to just a decade ago. Technology seems to have played a significant role into this development. We no longer use fax machines, we use e-mails; we don’t wait for user’s feedback anymore, it comes directly to us all the time via social media. Do you see? Technology is in all of this.

Which makes me wonder: has technology changed the practice into a more positive direction or the contrary? Because as you can see, it is gadgets like laptops and smartphones and channels like social media that have pushed society (and PRs) towards a new type of communications – a mobile one, an always-on one. What happened to face-to-face communication? Of course, such interactions are still crucial, but we must admit their frequency has decreased massively. Is that good or bad?

Tough question, I know... And there’s no easy or straightforward answer.