Culture & Religion — September 13, 2011

PR Should Be More Social Media Savvy

Digital fitness–the ability to adapt to changes in the digital environment—is lacking in the PR sector though it was an early adopter of social media. Time to rethink traditional PR tactics.

bigthinkeditor

What’s the Latest Development?

Director of Digital and Social Media at PepsiCo, B. Bonin Bough, busts PR agencies for not keeping digitally fit—able to adapt to changes in the digital environment—though they were early adopter of social media. The key in moving forward? Understand the science behind technology; know how your consumers consume information; rethink traditional PR tactics; and foster a mindset around experimentation.

What’s the Big Idea?

Community management of fans, strategic partnerships with startups and the chance to purchase some of the latest platforms are opportunities that can grow PR into a tool for grassroots consumer engagement. “How can you effectively utilize a tool if you don’t understand how the algorithm works? …For example, Facebook aggregates its newsfeed in real time according to three factors: affinity, weight of engagement and time decay.”

a computer generated image of a human brain.

Thinking

The great free will debate featuring Michio Kaku and Steven Pinker

Who — or what — really controls your mind?

Building destroyed by the Halifax Explosion. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.

The Past

The largest accidental explosion of all time

More than a century ago, Halifax suffered an accidental blast one-fifth the size of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

a collage of photos of a man with a hat and a book.

High Culture

6 great books with wildly unreliable narrators

Dive into the twisted truths and concealed realities told by literature’s most unreliable narrators.

a group of five matches on a pink background.

The Well

Signs you’re burned out — and how to bounce back

If you don’t feel better after the weekend, the “burnout paradox” could explain why.

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7 min

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with

Laurie Santos

Starts With A Bang

The trick to instantly identifying JWST images

If you can identify a foreground star, the spike patterns are a dead giveaway as to whether it’s a JWST image or any other observatory.

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