Communication Integration

Integration of brand messages has become an important tenet of modern marketing communication as seen with the rise of Integrated Marketing Communication (IMC) during the late nineties and early two thousands. The central concept to IMC and subsequent, more strategic theories relating to communication integration, is that a single-minded message, across multiple media forms, is more impactful than disparate ones (Baalen and Mulder, 2016). This idea of integration is encapsulated by Bruhn’s (2008, p. 17) definition of IMC which is:

“a process of analysis, planning, organization, implementation and monitoring that is oriented toward creating unity from diverse sources of internal and external communication with target groups to convey a consistent impression of the company or the company’s reference object”.

Subsequent theories of IMC and the more strategic IC have their basis in integration, a concept that the respondents of this study also identify as being important to combatting the effects of Computational Propaganda. The theme of integrating messages and using multiple channels to communicate to end-users was the fourth most popular theme to come out of the content analysis. Respondent 7 touches on this: “You need to begin engaging with influencers on the platforms as well as media partners to try and mitigate and contain the matter by saying look, this is our side of things.”

Respondent 6 warns against an over-reliance on social media suggesting that using other platforms such as websites can assist in turning the tide against Computational Propaganda: “Another tactic that can be used is always refer back to a website, a credible web presence to reaffirm the credibility so say to your community, if this statement is not on our website, then its untrue… Don’t be too reliant on your social media presence.”

Respondent 8 suggests doing the same, albeit more aggressively: “What I would do to mitigate against misinformation if I were a political party, would be to bake the facts into every piece of communication that goes out and link an information portal at every turn.”

Respondent 7 references KFC in the UK and their handling of supplier change which led to a stock outage, resulting in closed stores across the country and a trend for the

#KFCCrisis hashtag (Topping, 2018). The respondent indicates that KFC turned the crisis into a positive by rolling out a print ad which swopped the words KFC to FCK, wittingly using its powerful brand name to admit failure and subsequently trending again and earning one billion impressions this time with positive sentiment (Griner, 2018): “There’s room to use other channels, as digital people we rely on digital too much and forget the real value that a great print advert can do.”

Respondent 1, shows the importance resolving crises in action and not just message, a practice which can ostensibly be carried out when debunking misinformation too: “It’s

important to take corrective action by linking back to what the company does so as to ensure it doesn’t happen again. It shouldn’t just play out on social media, social media is just another tool.”

Integrating messages and delivering them across multiple forms of media like television, radio, print and coupling this with consistency has become a popular method for building brands. Based on the insights provided by the respondents, this may also be a viable approach for brands in terms of crisis, whether it be self-inflicted or the result of Computational Propaganda. The effectiveness of using multiple channels beyond social media to reduce the impact of Computational Propaganda is further reinforced when considering that algorithmic filtering is central to how social media platforms operate. What this means is that unique content is distributed to users based on their preferences, so information debunking fake news may never reach its intended end user.

In terms of communication integration the political party respondent indicates an appreciation for distributing a unified message: “We still do rely heavily on traditional mediums … Over the years we've had to be able to sort of adapt the way in which we engage, so it's almost got to be simultaneous. In the past we would just issue press statement and be interviewed we now do everything at once so when I issue a written statement I also do a video recording of the main thrust of this statement as I know society can engage with it or media would engage”.

This appreciation for distributing a unified message across social media platforms indicates the ANC may be well positioned to take the social media managers’ advice in using these channels to debunk misinformation.

A rebuttal to the use of other media channels to distribute information debunking fake news may be that some users, by nature of actively consuming fake news, aren’t interested in information that may debunk their wrongly held beliefs, a point raised by respondent 8: “I see something that supports my belief system, I don’t want to hear a

counter argument, then I want to share it with everyone else to show them I’m right.

People really want to share things that prop themselves up. There may be instances where people have been able to nip things in the bud, but I think the only thing you can do is make all the information available and give a link to it like Snope, I think snope is amazing and I’m seeing more and more of it in threads where people are using it to debunk misinformation.”

Clearly the discussion around algorithmic filtering and beliefs is nuanced, although this theme was present in the research, it surprisingly did not feature prominently. However, given that a critical modernism paradigm was chosen to underpin this research, it is important to unpack algorithmic filtering, censorship versus freedom and the power dynamics at play in computational propaganda, a look at these issues follows.