Thread by @mizjwilliams

But this is again looking at comms as a purely media and digital focused job, which also only a small part of what’s often described as “communication”. I’ll just walk y’all through a few other things comms teams do, and it’s not an exhaustive list, just a list.

https://twitter.com/francescook/status/1401339769141878785

Engagement with communities about what’s important to them? Esp in relation to projects in which they have an interest? That’s comms.

Talking to funders about the impact of their funding for people in Aotearoa? Comms.

Reporting to ministers, govt etc as required by statute - including annual reports, statement of corporate intent, funder reporting? Essential for transparency and ta-da! Comms.

I work in emergency management comms and hoo boy that’s a whole world of comms which often gets overlooked in these conversations. Creating ways to engage communities, whānau etc about preparedness and resilience - you guessed it that’s Comms (and social science)

Then there’s internal comms - which, done well, is vital to creating a strong, collaborative culture in an organisation. Comms! Yes!

There’s a lot more and I will RT anything people would like to contribute :-)

One final thought. A broad definition of comms might include media advisors, social specialists, content creators etc but also internal, engagement practitioners, graphic designers, probably a lot of people who would not recognise themselves in the catch all term “PR people”

And while I don’t know what all those people at NZTA do, I would guess that a substantial number would work with communities on big projects. Or even small ones. Who do you think lets you know about a plan to put speed bumps on your street, for example?

Who gets together the material? Who prints the flyers, runs the community meetings, collects feedback? Oh just one of those comms people. Who work damn hard for often a lot less than people think.

I appreciate the point that journos work hard and are underpaid - but to me that’s a separate issue and honestly the kind of system change that’s needed in order to get journos paid more? You won’t get that by criticising comms people.

So in order to sum up this avalanche of tweets (#SorryNotSorry) - comms does not just mean media and digital, comms does not just mean “spin”, comms is necessary to a functioning society just as journalism is. Oh also, pay journos more. And journos? JOIN YOUR UNION