Communications managers of corporate organizations have been urged to maintain strong working relationships with journalists in order to tackle the challenges posed by social media with regards to fake stories.
The Development expert, Mr. Micheal Bociurkiw, who gave this charge during the 2017 World Communications Forum (WCF), in Geneva, Switzerland noted that reputation is key and that the challenges of the present era require CEOs of companies to be ready to spend on social media, social media strategy and crisis communications.
Bociurkiw in a statement made available to journalists said “you or your company’s reputation is everything because it takes years to build a trusted brand but minutes or seconds to bring it down, urging managers not to allow a gap in communications so that others will not have to do the speaking for them.
“Information is fast food, because today people consume 87 per cent more information than 30 years ago. In the past four months, the communications environment has changed completely, now communications wags the tail of diplomacy,” he said.
According to him, fake news is a danger to democracy and could easily become hate speech, adding that large new media companies such as Facebook have been slow to introduce policies or tools to combat the threat.
He highlighted this as one of the challenges of the social media, in spite of its advantages, maintaining the hope that there will be a solution to it.
He reiterated that the, “mainstream media plays a crucial role in transmitting impactful stories from a crisis,” much as it also gives context to news.”
At the event, not less than 19 awards were given to their winners from all around the world, to recognize those he described as “highly professional and globally remarkable individual communicators and organizations with a creative approach and unique vision of the future of the communications industry worldwide.”
According to the Founding Director of the Communications For Future Awards, Yanina Dubeykovskaya, “The Forum in Geneva collected many communication specialists from all around the world. The event has developed with the time into a platform to go beyond local borders and talk about global communication with the participation of a diversity of the related counteracting parties.”