Social media and blogs have no doubt changed the PR landscape forever. In a study, Weblogs and Employee Communication: Ethical Questions for Corporate Public Relations, by Dr. Donald K. Wright and Michelle Hinson, the question of employee blogging and its effect on corporate PR was addressed. There is no doubt that the digital world of media has effectively placed much of the control of Public Relations in the hands of the public itself.

According to David Weinberger, the co-author of The Cluetrain Manifesto: The End of Business as Usual employee blogs establish connections "through real human beings speaking like real human beings, which is something companies have forgotten how to do."

And if you let them, your employees will probably write good things about you. Is it ethical for employees to blog negative statements about the organizations they work for? Senior practitioners increasingly say no, it is not. But while many of them stated that it's ok to monitor employees' blogs, only 15% said that they do such monitoring. The positives can outweigh the negatives, and over time that may become more and more true.

Of the PR practitioners interviewed in the study, sixty-one percent agreed social media have changed the way their organizations communicate and said that changes are more pronounced in external communications than internal communications. Two-thirds believe that social media have enhanced public relations practice. Nine out of 10 think blogs and social media influence news coverage in traditional media, and 84% say that organizations are being forced to respond more quickly to criticism.

The senior practitioners think that traditional news media are more accurate than social media - plus more credible, more trusted, more truthful and more ethical. Social media get high marks for offering low-cost ways to develop relationships with strategic publics (80% agreement) and encouraging corporate transparency (76%).