Social media mayhem

So as my dissertation is on the role that social media plays during the reporting of a crisis I have tried to get as much information as possible about crisis communications, online pr and how social media has changed PR.

Like any dissertation student (or student in general I suppose) try as I might, I cannot find one exact journal article that will provide me with all the information that I need to know and something that I could class as a solid background to my dissertation. You know the article that I mean, the one that you read that makes all the research that you have done prior to that seem insignificant, the article that gives you that “eureka” feeling and provides you with an excellent bibliography to look at.

In uni we are taught how to search smartly and make sure that the information that you find is relevant enough for you to include in your literature review but not so narrow that you are unable to make links between that subject and your diss. This however does not stop you from sitting at a laptop for five hours searching an online database only to find that the articles that you have found will not take your dissertation where you want it to go.

One of the main issues that I have come across in my search is a lack of academic writing about social media and crisis communications. There is an abundance of sites, blogs and articles about the subject but as of yet an in-depth analysis has not been done. This is what I propose to do in my dissertation and possibly with it, include a case study on the way that the Haiti crisis has been managed.

While the world wide web is an excellent resource that has changed the way that we communicate forever, it is not a miracle worker and my research currently needs a strong push in the right direction.

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