Pizza v. Rice

"You like pizza and I like rice. So, let me have my rice and you can have your pizza" -Filippo Ciampini and Sarah Jingsi Wang, Westminster MA PR students 2010.

The quote above was taken from a debate discussing globalization in Public Relations. While this was a popular school of thought (Think Global, Act Local), within the last 20 years, with the rise of social media and the interconnectivity of the world, this stance on globalization might soon cease to exist.

"Think Global, Act Local," is a popular movement that reinforces thoughts of considering the well-being of the global society, but acting locally within their own communities. This could be used in many different instances and makes for an interesting case for practicing public relations on a global scale.

The rise of social media, has connected people from all over the world. And we are ever increasingly becoming a more succinct global community. This will become more predominate in PR in the sectors which deal with crisis management and brand reputation. With the speed and breadth of social media networks, these sectors need to be thinking globally as this could potentially help or hurt the business, because lack of speed or negative word of mouth throughout an online community. However, on the other side of the coin, as we saw through Hofstede's studies the cultural dimensions of different countries change vastly through out the world. We cannot assume, that because social media is on the rise and people are participating in social media in record numbers, that the cultural barriers have all but broken down.

We must be able to find a balance in practicing PR on global and local scales. While cultural barriers are breaking down and participation in a global community is more common now than ever before, we, as citizens of the world have not completely broken down all cultural differences and must be able to integrate strategies that are aware of both communities.

So why not have both rice and pizza?