Dancing the New Two-Step
In the golden age of radio and newspapers, the Two-Step Flow Model held sway. Developed in 1948 by Paul Lazarsfeld and Elihu Katz to help explain voter decision-making, this classic communication model proposed that media messages flowed in two distinct stages. First, messages tended to flow to “opinion leaders,” such as political pundits, influential journalists, or community leaders. The message was then transmitted from these influential figures to the wider populace, often becoming interpreted in the process. Consider the popular mayor of a small town, who listens to the news and then sets the tone of the conversations happening that evening at the local diner.
With the emergence of the internet, search engines such as Yahoo, Bing, and Google took on the role of information curators. More recently, social media platforms such as Twitter and Instagram provided a vast public space where content creators and influencers included not just local dignitaries, but also beauty vloggers, tech aficionados, and TikTok video artists. These digital trendsetters, armed with hashtags and followers, filtered and communicated information on a worldwide scale, replicating the two-step flow.
Now, the dance has a new participant: artificial intelligence. Today’s influencers aren’t merely human; they’re also algorithms and machine learning systems, like recommendation engines that curate our online experiences. The age-old function of the two-step flow remains, but it has evolved for the AI age. For PR professionals, there is a new game to learn. Public relations and marketing are now performing for both human and algorithmic audiences. The new challenge is how to navigate the nuances of these powerful and intelligent, but often opaque and sometimes unpredictable, tech-driven ‘opinion leaders.’
AI: The New Audience
Public relations practitioners have traditionally considered their “audience” to be the collective of individual persons with whom a message resonates. An audience is composed of recipients, reactors, and responders. Historically, these audiences were human, but the contemporary digital landscape, with its search engines and automatically compiled social media feeds, is already compelling us to stretch that definition.
And that was before Artificial Intelligence entered the conversation. For the modern PR professional, AI is no longer just a sophisticated tool that can help formulate captivating messages, provide grammar checking, automate messaging, or analyze data. Today’s AI has evolved into an “audience” in its own right. Consider that algorithms determine which content gains visibility on social media, which news articles rise to the top of search engine results, and even which products get recommended on e-commerce platforms. If PR professionals don’t “communicate” effectively with these AI entities, their messages could be lost in the digital void.
As we have been saying and writing for years, crafting a successful campaign now demands not just an understanding of human psychology but also of the intricacies of machine learning. Tailoring your message and content to resonate with AI helps to increase its chances of reaching and impacting the right members of human audiences. Public relations and marketing increasingly must blend science with art, calculations with creativity, in this ongoing demand for algorithmic appeal mixed with human relevance. In this brave new world, PR maestros must become bilingual, speaking a novel patois that combines human desire with computer algorithms, to engage their newest audience: AI.
AIO: Artificial Intelligence Optimization
AI is already becoming integrated with search engines in a number of ways. For example, Google Search can now answer complex questions in a comprehensive and informative way, even if they are open ended, challenging, or strange. Machine language algorithms are used to train search engines to identify patterns and trends in search data. For example, Bing Search recently launched a new AI-powered feature called “Prometheus” which is designed to provide users with more relevant and timely search results. And Generative AI applications, such as Bard and ChatGPT, can be used to generate new content, such as text summaries, product descriptions, and code. Importantly, AI is becoming increasingly conversational. For example, Alexa can now be used to search for information on the internet, and it uses AI to understand the meaning and intent of user queries.
Much like the need to keep up with the ever-shifting algorithms and unique features of search engines, professionals now face mounting demands to stay abreast of the burgeoning field of AI products. From giants like ChatGPT and Bard, to the myriad specialized offerings entering the marketplace, the AI landscape is as diverse as it is dynamic.
In the early days of search engines, search engine optimization (SEO) emerged as the frontier for digital professionals. SEO was not simply about understanding the digital medium, either; true SEO masters could tweak, refine, and sometimes completely reinterpret the message for the spiders, bots, and algorithms in charge of search engine rankings. PR professionals had to learn the steps to this new SEO dance that involves anticipating algorithmic changes and continually adapting content to align with the criteria set by search engines.
Now, as AI transcends being a mere tool and rapidly becomes an integral part of the communication ecosystem, a parallel shift is occurring. Recognizing this shift means realizing that AI is not just a passive receptor of content. AI evaluates, sorts, and often determines the visibility of information. It may even change its form, interpreting it before passing it on to a human audience, just as the opinion leaders of the past have done. This transition necessitates a new mode of optimization.
Enter AIO: Artificial Intelligence Optimization. Much like its SEO counterpart, AIO isn’t just about disseminating messages, but about ensuring that these messages effectively “communicate” with AI systems.
For PR professionals, AIO implies a dual role: ensuring that their narratives resonate with both human and machine audiences. They need to grasp the technical intricacies of AI applications while retaining the emotive essence that appeals to human sensibilities. AIO is not just the future; it’s the present frontier. As algorithms and large language learning models grow ever more sophisticated and AI’s role in content curation and recommendation becomes increasingly important to the conduct of daily life and business, we predict that mastering AIO will become an essential skill for all PR professionals.
Robert Kozinets, PhD, and Ulrike Gretzel, PhD, are the co-authors of Influencers and Creators: Business, Culture and Practice, published in May 2023. Kozinets is a professor of journalism at USC Annenberg whose methods and theories are widely used by researchers and organizations around the world. The founder of netnography and a social media influencer and brand research pioneer, Kozinets develops theory and method to apply to marketing, communication, and other fields that seek a contextualized understanding of digital culture.
Gretzel is the senior research fellow at the USC Annenberg Center for Public Relations. She is currently the director of research at Netnografica, an innovative market research company that provides actionable insights by extracting meaning from online conversations.