http://www.miningweekly.com/page/americas-home
TORONTO (miningweekly.com) – Mining companies that fail to engage with social media or other online platforms face the risk of increased criticism, scrutiny and protest by opposition groups, speakers told delegates at the Risk Mitigation & CSR Seminar in Toronto on October 17.
Many companies are also failing to successfully broadcast the benefits accrued by project stakeholders and, in doing so, are not realising the full value inherent in their CSR programmes.
TURN ON, TUNE IN AND TWEET
HigherEye Trade & Consulting president and CEO Radcliffe Dockery emphasised how perception can quickly dictate a narrative. This includes the impact of protests. “Perception is reality … Protests that gather steam [can] create a new reality,” he warned.
Social media is a superb, cost efficient vehicle for mining opponents to convey their message and set the parameters of a story. This is frequently achieved through an eye-catching headlines or 140-character tweets.
“And we live in a headline society … When someone posts something on Facebook, they’ll often just read the headline and not the story,” Dockery said.
Mining companies that downplay the importance of social media, or believe it is niche territory, or even fail to engage, are forgetting that half the world’s population use the platform and often formulate their beliefs and opinions by doing so, he added.
Dockery’s argument was underscored by figures highlighted by the UK’s Daily Telegraph on October 31; Facebook currently accounts for one in every five minutes spent on smartphones and one in eight on the Internet overall.
But only 16% of CEOs were using social media to promote their company’s aims, objectives and narratives, Dockery said, citing IBM statistics.
Part of the problem here lies within the mining sector’s inherent conservatism and unwillingness to engage with the causes of its unpopularity, Radius Communications president Jeff Silverstein argued in a later speech.
In turn, this opens the sector up for greater scrutiny and fiercer attacks by opponents. “We live in [a world of] increased expectations and increased scrutiny,” he said.
YOUR EYES ONLINE
The impact of robust and negative online opinion can soon percolate through to affect investor confidence and, if left unchecked, start to damage a company’s relationship with its shareholders.
“The increase in scrutiny alerts investors to ESG [environmental, social and corporate governance] risk in a way they’ve never been alerted before,” Silverstein said. “The stakes are high and include the loss of reputation and public support. Ultimately, it could include the loss of opportunity and productivity.”
For the rest of this article, click here: http://www.miningweekly.com/print-version/miners-urged-to-modernise-csr-communications-2013-11-01