Technologies of Strategic Significance to PR

    

The Lords’ Select Committee on Digital Skills published a report on the 'unstoppable' digital technological revolution, which suggested that 35 per cent of UK jobs are at risk of being automated over the next two decades.

A BBC Panorama programme in 2015 put it bluntly: traditionally middle-class jobs are increasingly vulnerable to technology, and this is likely to have a huge impact on the economy and society. Take Margaret Davies, for example, one of those featured in the Panorama programme. Until recently she had worked in a HMRC tax office in Wales handling tax enquiries for 26 years. Advances in technology mean that more of us are doing our taxes online, which brings big cost savings for Government, but also means that Margaret and 33 of her colleagues have been made redundant, and their office closed.

Over the next few weeks, I will be digging into my booklet 'the Automation of Public Relations' to explore areas of automation that point to the technologies of strategic significance to the PR sector.

I start with a warning. There are a lot of services being offered to the PR sector and mostly to the Digital/Social Media area that uses some interesting technologies that are os considerable value to the industry. Many are based on analysis of Big Data, some use Semantic Analysis and some are just fakes. They need to be independently authenticated. A task for the PR institutions such as PRCA, CIPR, PRSA, AMEC etc.