The Search for Jiminy: A Wide Range of Online and Print Resources, He Could be in One of These!

Last semester my journalism professor told my journalism history class that the most important article is placed strategically on the right side of the front page every day, because the eyes always gaze at the right side of the newspaper when the reader picks up the paper.

---> After browsing through front pages from various newspapers, I then was able to understand the generic front page layout, and that's exactly the same layout I have applied to my PageFlakes. The most important part of my PageFlakes, my annotated bibliography that I have compiled for my own research purposes and others to use is placed on the right side, of course.

<--l--> In the middle is my universal blog and news search, and below that are my Diigo bookmarks and my Bookmarking soulmate (remember her?!) below the searches. Just like a newspaper, I placed what I thought to be less important on the bottom below the end of the computer screen, or in the journalism world you'd say that was below the crease of the front page.

<-- On the left side of my PageFlakes, we have ten RSS feeds from blogs I follow on Conscience Communications. Once again (through my own judgment), I placed the blogs in order of quality or importance to the subject of PR, social change and social responsibility.

So, let's take a look at the right hand-side "article," my annotated bibliography.

If you browse through the various sources that I have displayed you will find some odd ones in there that are very specific and don't have any of the key words, "social change" "social responsibility" "public relations" or "activism" in their titles.

For example, this one citation is about animal rights:

Scudder, Joseph and Mills, Carol Bishop. "The Credibility of Shock Advocacy: Animal Rights Attack Messages." Public Relations Review 35.2 (2009) 162-164.

While researching, I like to find a few very broad resources that encompass a wide range of topics in the field I am researching, and then I like to get pretty specific. The citation above is an example of my specificity. This article is about how PETA's PR was effective in gaining awareness towards slaughterhouse issues, which is directing public attention towards a social problem -- animal abuse.

With that said, many more of my sources in my annotated bibliography focus on specific topics in PR, whereas many of the peer-reviewed books I researched are broad; this approach to research has never failed me.

In other words, if it is a peer reviewed article most likely from Public Relations Review or Public Relations Research then expect the information to be specific. Likewise, if the source is a book it is most likely to cover many topics.

Now I will walk you over towards my Searchin' Flake that has a universal blog and news search that is updated frequently.

I used the term in the box "public relations social responsibility" because "public relations social change" did not yield many results, so bare with me. This key word search should be broad enough to bring in news and blogs about PR's relationship with society, as well as many corporate social responsibility news items.

Next, if you scroll down, you'll come across my Diigo bookmarks. I have quite a few from the last few weeks surfing the web, but they are in no particular order of importance or subject. All the book marks are just ordered in the way I randomly found them online while skimming through others' bookmarks, PR websites and the like.

A little farther down we now come across my social bookmarking soul mate's Delicious bookmarks. If you want to know more about my social bookmarking soul mate and what kind of topics you can research through her bookmarks, feel free to head over to one of my earlier posts this month about Andrea.

And last but not least, we stop this tour on the left side of the page at my RSS feed to various blogs. Blogs accompanied on this list all made it through a rough dismissal process. I recently had around 20 blogs that pertained to the subject of this blog, but I picked the ten that I think are the most helpful and useful for anyone who is interested in PR and social change too; I hope you find them as helpful as I have found them so far!

Enjoy my PageFlakes and research I've complied. Glance through the sources and try to help me find just where Jiminy Cricket is hiding in the PR world! Is he in a blog post, a news article about a PR campaign? If you find that conscience before I do, let me know!