The results of the European Communication Monitor (ECM) have been published for 2017.

This year’s research was, to a greatest extent dedicated to the challenges of the hypermodern age and to its influences, as well as to the importance of the social networks. The questionnaire filled by 3,387 communication experts from Europe was aimed at exploring the trends in relation to a visual communication, quality management, benchmarking in communication departments, and their contribution to the success of the organisation.

The results indicated that almost all the interviewees recognised the increase in importance of the visual communication. However, 53 percent of the interviewed experts has a low level of knowledge for use of the visual tools (instant video and photographs and info-graphs), compared to 12 percent of those who can work with the said tools. A great majority of the interviewees (71.5 percent) testified on cultural metamorphosis in their country. A transfer from post-modern to hyper-modern culture is present mostly in the consultancy (57.2 percent), and then also in the private enterprises (51.8 percent).

Most of the interviewees (75 percent) from the consultancy, and/or private enterprises, deemed that they changed their communication with the stakeholders, and a great majority of them also deemed that they would change the communication in the next three years. That, in the context of digital communication, would be greatly influenced by the “social bots”, the term related with self-learning systems that serve for administration of the accounts, and increasingly for communication with the users on the social networks.

The research demonstrated that this phenomenon was mostly neglected in European communication experts. That is, only one third of the experts is familiar with the discussion on the social bots, and as much as 15.9 percent of them knows nothing on the systems that communicate with the users instead of real persons. Regarding quality management, it is less common in the communication and marketing departments, then in other organisation departments. When they evaluate their activities, they predominantly focus on the performances or effect of the activities of message sending.

The European Communication Monitor is an online research on the status and the future of strategic communication, which is annually implemented by the European Public Relations Education and Research Association, spearheaded by the group of recognised university professors, in cooperation with the European Association of Communication Directors, and under the auspices of the Prime Research International. This, already traditional, research aims at establishing the direction of development of the field of public relations, as well as trends.

The research can be downloaded on http://www.communicationmonitor.eu/.