PR winners and losers is a couple of days late this week, not good for its second outing, but my take this week is:

PR Winner

Greater Manchester Police is this week’s PR winner for its excellent use of social media that demonstrate how social media and social networks can be a greater force for good in quelling the riots, than it can for some of the negatives that some elements of the media are reporting.

Greater Manchester Police been using @gmpolice on Twitter to report on successful convictions of rioters and looters. Despite a slight hiccup yesterday it’s done a brilliant job and GMP’s web manager Kevin Hoy deserves a round of applause for the sterling job by him and the rest of the force.

GMP has also been using Flickr to publish pictures of suspects and the ensuing arrests. It’s also been using YouTube so bypass the media and talk directly to the public.

PR Loser

The PR Loser this week is the prime minister David Cameron, whose response was simply too little and too late. He just beats London mayor Boris Johnson, who was also inexcusably late in responding, but at least when he did he was more credible than Cameron, not least in his call to halt the police cuts.