After publishing two of the interviews for my dissertation that I conducted with Heather Yaxley and Shelley Fletcher-Bryant, now it’s time for the next one.

Below you’ll see the responses of Annie Bowden. Annie is a PR & Communications Officer at the Royal Society of Wildlife Trusts and is also a freelance PR Consultant. She has worked with a wide range of people from professional sports men and women to students, company directors to community projects. You can find her on LinkedIn.

Q: How do you think the emergence of social media changed PR? Is it a positive or a negative impact and why?

I think social media has forced PRs to sit up and take notice of the digital world and the impact of its activities within it. The PR industry now has to be even more reactive than ever before – before services like a bad news story for your company/client would hit the next day, giving you time to think about managing the situation and what you were going to do to combat it. Now, a story can be both live and viral within minutes, cutting down the time in which you are able to manage the crisis. This can, of course, be a good thing too and something that PRs can use to their advantage if they are savvy in their use of social media tools, particularly Twitter.

Back in October last year I reported the results of a research by Cision on how social media has affected the work life of journalists in the UK and why this matters to PR. As the researchers called it, this was a study on Social Journalism. Earlier this month Cision & Canterbury Christ Church University released the global findings of the same study, examining how journos around the world use social media and how it impacts their work.

Over 3,650 journalists from 11 different countries participated in the online survey.

The results have captured some interesting recent developments in how journalists and media professionals use social media for work. However, there were no major changes regarding contact between PR professionals and journalists with email, telephone and face-to-face remaining the three most common ways to communicate with each other.

As to be expected, the study found that the country was the most significant factor influencing patterns of social media use by journalists as well as their attitudes. This again, is no surprise, because cultural differences not only affect our beliefs and how we communicate with others, but also the way we do things, including our work activities.

Less than one in five of the general public believes that business leaders and government officials will make ethical and moral decisions. This was one of the main findings of this year’s Edelman Trust Barometer – the 13^th annual trust and credibility survey by one of the leading public relations consultancies in the world Edelman.

With 31,000 respondents in 26 countries, the study found that in general there are significantly lower levels of trust in business and governments and the traditional authority figures such as CEOs or prime ministers, but also in the media. According to Richard Edelman, CEO of Edelman, what we are seeing today is “a crisis of leadership”.

50% of respondents said they trusted businesses to do what’s right, however only 18% believed that business leaders will tell them the truth in a difficult situation, suggesting that trust in leaders’ ethics and morality are very low. This massive gap between trust in business and trust in business leaders is an indication that the general public is much less confident in chief executives, but rather in company employees.

On the other hand, academics, technical experts and a person like yourself are nearly twice as trusted as a chief executives or government officials.

Now that you’ve seen the survey results of my dissertation about social media’s impact on PR and read the interview I conducted with Heather Yaxley, it’s time for the next interview to go online.

Below you’ll see the responses of Shelley Fletcher-Bryant. Shelley is a Strategic PR & Marketing Consultant, Business Owner at Firegrass Communications and Co-Founder at Ladies That Tweet. She is a CIPR Accredited Practitioner and award winning PR specialist with more than 12 years' experience in marketing and public relations. Shelley has worked both in-house and agency, managing campaigns and projects on a local, regional, national and international level for clients. You can follow her on Twitter @shelleyfletcher.

Q: How do you think the emergence of social media changed PR? Is it a positive or a negative impact and why?

It is both positive and negative; it provides opportunities to reach and engage with a broader market and communicate more effectively with both your customers and the media, however, the availability of social media channels means that everyone can now be a publisher, editor and journalist.

As I’ve mentioned in my blog posts review for last year, it turns out that my first post about why I wanted to work in PR was the most viewed one for 2012. It is also a topic that people extensively search for online and so are being referred to my blog. It’s no surprise then that I’ve decided to write an edition of this blog post every year. Here’s 2013!

It’s been a whole year since I wrote 2012 edition and since then things have changed a lot. I now have gathered months of practical experience in PR and social media and I am very happy to say that I have definitely chosen the right career path and PR is the profession for me.

Over the past few months during my PR internship I dived into agency life and I have learned a lot about writing, media relations, client liaison, social media communications, meeting deadlines, teamwork and many more. I must admit, PR is certainly a stressful profession! I am not surprised that according to a new research PR Executive is one of the top 10 most stressful jobs in the world along with firefighter, pilot and military.

On the bright side though, PR is on the rise! As this brilliant article in Management Today highlights, because “the world has changed and communications has become more immediate, more important and varied” and “incredibly transparent” PR is being put at the centre of businesses: “In the modern world... the most important commodity for a business is trust, and gaining trust is about giving people what they want. Who knows what people want? PRs do.” (I’m glad I chose this career :-))

So, enough with the talking, here are the (2013) reasons why I want to work in PR:

Why Work in PR: The 8 Reasons: