Public Relations Matters

We are a nonpartisan, nonprofit, "consumer advocate" for voters that aims to reduce the level of deception and confusion in U.S. politics. We monitor the factual accuracy of what is said by major U.S. political players in the form of TV ads, debates, speeches, interviews, and news releases. Our goal is to apply the best practices of both journalism and scholarship, and to increase public knowledge and understanding.

This morning there was a neat new toy in my web arsenal. First let me set the stage for you, you see, I use a lot of Google services; from Gmail, Google Calendar and the Google Documents suite, all the way to Picasa and even Goog411. From that last sentence you can already guess that I know a lot about Google, and that Google knows even more about me. But, I guess I appreciate innovation when I see it.

Attempts to manipulate consumers with subliminal messages, flashed onto movie or TV screens, once thrilled advertisers and panicked the public, but the furor faded when the technique failed to work.
But a study published on Thursday has given what is claimed to be the first evidence to the contrary — that our decisions can, in fact, be influenced by subconsciously perceived cues.

People can be very passionate about their politics and what they believe in is a major part of their personal lives. But when does a person’s politics start to affect their professional brand?

Are there best practices in Social Media Marketing?
Marketers struggle to come up with answers because Social Media is still a very new and exciting channel that we're all discovering. Some might even debate if you can have best practices in Social Media at this point in time? The debate rages on whether the actual practice is one for the marketing professionals or for the public relations industry.

So, why am I including this quote from graphic design and typography author Robin Williams? Because her little story about suddenly discovering the joshua trees in her neighborhood as a young girl is relevant to anyone learning something new about the world that has already been seen, and lived in, for one's entire life.

All artists have to rediscover what seems like the obvious, and each one of us has our own approach. No one way is THE right way.

In order to understand what a fallacy is, one must understand what an argument is. Very briefly, an argument consists of one or more premises and one conclusion. A premise is a statement (a sentence that is either true or false) that is offered in support of the claim being made, which is the conclusion (which is also a sentence that is either true or false).

Tweetrush is a service based on our Rush Hour engine that aims to provide estimated stats on Twitter usage over a period of time. Feel free to click on the top graph for more detailed information about Twitter usage for a given date. You can find out more about us by reading our About section.

Slang is made of informal words and phrases that originate in speech, and often includes substitutions for formal words, like “ride” or “wheels” for a car. Getting down or coming down, tripping, throwing a spaz, digging it, groove, and so not into or so into anything are all slang.

It’s the all-night amusement park of language, where different subcultures like artists and street criminals get to play with words and meaning. But nothing ages writing faster than slang.

Hmmm . . . so plagiarizing (and admitting to it) can help you earn the Democratic VP nomination? That's troublesome.

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