NEW COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGIES - AN ISSUES MANAGEMENT POINT-OF-VIEW

New communication technologies offer many opportunities and several th reats to the efforts organizations expend to build mutually beneficial relationships with key publics. The benefactor of these emerging tech nologies may be those interested publics who want information and eval uations from all participants in public policy issue debate. Taking an issues management approach to new technologies, this article explores the rich dialogues that can occur on the Web. There, because of the l ow costs of information and opinion delivery, companies, governmental agencies, and activists are more on par. Deep pockets do not play a ke y role in getting information out to interested readers. To demonstrat e this point, this article examines the public issues debate between S hell Oil Company, UK and Greenpeace which engaged in a town meeting re garding the best financial and environmental solution to the decommiss ioning of the Brent Spar.