Social and Semantic Web Technologies for Enhanced Public Relations

Although information technology provides us many ways to better ourselves, it has also significantly increased the complexity of our lives. Everywhere we turn, there is more data. Data about our friends and families. Data from applications we use to conduct business. And data about the hundreds of thousands of events happening around the world every second. This explosion of data, along with empowering us to make better decisions and stay closer connected to each other, has also created problems with (1.) data consumption and information gathering, (2.) effective collaboration, (3.) measurement of the effectiveness and processes, (4.) social integration and engagement. In many aspects of our lives (e.g. Healthcare, Music industry, Design of machinery etc.), additional technologies such as semantic and social media, have helped provide structure to the information. Whether it¿s through collaborative tools like Sharepoint for our business lives or powerful social networks like Facebook in our personal lives, these technologies give us a way to make sense of all the data. But in some areas, such as public relations and journalism, these tools have been unable to keep pace with the amount of information.