Why you should learn how to blog in Derry (ahem, the Slugger O’Toole way)

I hate telling people how to do things, particularly blogging (just ask my fellow writers on Slugger). For a time I thought it was going to be an idea whose time had largely been superceded by microblogging sites like Twitter and Facebook. However next weekend I’ll be in Derry (yay!!) for a day-long course in which I’ll be exploring the core underlying value of blogging, and why it still matters. Broadly, here’s six reasons why you should take such an …

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“All the time, journalists were missing out on what was actually happening.”

Post the 2016 Irish General Election, RTÉ’s Science & Technology Correspondent, Will Goodbody, was quick off the mark to assess whether, as billed, #ge16 really was “the first truly social media election in Ireland”. In the coming weeks, when the dust has settled, the candidates and parties will be reflecting on what went right, and in many cases wrong, with their campaigns. As part of that post mortem they will no doubt ponder what role was played by social media, who used …

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Raif Badawi: Saudi blogger’s flogging ‘to resume’

Saudi Arabia is to resume the flogging of Raif Badawi, the blogger whose first 50 lashes caused an international outcry, his wife has been told. Ensaf Haidar, who is now living in exile in Canada with the couple’s children, said the same “informed source” who tipped her off to the flogging of her husband in January had now told her the punishment was about to resume. Mrs Haidar, in a statement on the Raif Badawi Foundation website, said: I was informed …

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Blogging: Why I bother doing it.

Blogging, why the hell do you bother? This is the question that bloggers of all stripes get asked A LOT and in the past week I have been getting this question more often than I usually do. It’s a fair enough question I suppose. There is no secure income from it, it is generally looked down  upon from the main stream media and when most people think of a blogger a tin foil hat or a techie geek image comes …

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50 days since 50 lashes – blogging is still not a crime

Whatever we may disagree about here on the pages of Slugger, we can all agree that blogging is not a crime. Yet, Saudi Arabian blogger Raif Badawi is still in jail and still due to be lashed another 950 times. On the upside, it’s now been 50 days since he was flogged very publicly 50 times by Saudi officials. In the week leading up to his flogging on 9 January, Raif’s name appeared more and more frequently in news headlines and statements …

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#FreeRaif

Around 30-40 people attended this evening’s silent vigil outside Belfast City Hall organised by Amnesty to mark the treatment of Saudi blogger Raif Badawi who was recently “sentenced to 10 years in prison, 1,000 lashes [50 a week], a fine of 1 million Saudi Riyal (over a quarter of a million US dollars), and prevented from using any kind of media or travelling until 2034”. Amnesty explain: Raif’s sentence stems from his creation of the website ‘Saudi Arabian Liberials’, which …

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It is not Journalists, bloggers, Twitter or Facebook that make people smarter (or dumber)…

It’s four years since Una Mullally left blogging, just around the time the Irisgate and Liam Adams stories were breaking. Writing in the Irish Times, she makes an important observation of the online melee that is t’Internet… Empathy is one of the great battles of the internet. It is the erosion of empathy – when we’re met with screens, not faces – that sees people become cruel bullies and careless insulters. In controlling empathy, tech companies are at the precipice of wider …

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“If you ask me one thing I could have done without in the last twelve months it’s social media” Jamie Bryson

photo by Brian O'Neill

I finally listened back to the discussion after December’s Transformative Networks – Social Media, Politics and Protests panel event at UU’s Belfast campus. The audio recording wasn’t particularly clear – a large room with everyone sitting around the edges – so at the time I didn’t upload the entire Q&A session. But some snippets are worth sharing for posterity. Harriet Long commented on the continued usefulness of long-form blogging in the age of micro-blogging: I write a blog which is …

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Not sure you’d want to see Slugger posters writing their posts …

Kevin Rose has published a video prototype for a blogging platform called Tiny that (according to The Next Web) would give blog readers … … a glimpse at the content author’s environment through the use of the computer’s webcam. The background would be pixelated, but would almost provide a sense that you’re bearing witness to what the author is penning at that moment. While one possibility was an indistinct video of the blogger’s head as she/he typed up a post, …

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US blogger (and professional trouble maker) Andrew Breitbart dies…

There is nothing quite like the zeal of the convert. And Andrew Breitbart, who has died aged 43, as a born again conservative had more than enough (maybe too much) exuberant zeal to go around. A long time denizen of Hollywood and former lefty he spent much of the last ten years raging against what he saw as a liberal hegemony in the US media and what particularly got his goat was the grip of the Democrats on the rich …

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‘Norrisgate’ blogger upsets ‘balanced’ relationship between Ireland’s media and politicians

Here’s a fascinating post from the blogger who brought David Norris’ presidential campaign shuddering to a halt (see also Pete’s richer note on the wider provenance of the story). Note that ‘all’ he needed was a nudge in the right direction (from a plausibly deniable source), Google and the heavy duty journalistic search engine Lexus Nexus. Two thoughts. For all the slightness of the power invested in the office Presidential elections must be the dirtiest in the Irish electoral calendar. …

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Blogging, journalism and the beleaguered State: Is it time to end the neurosis?

I had intended writing another instalment on the ongoing crisis within journalism, but time’s short for original thought these days, especially when there are folk like Jay Rosen (et al) to do the thinking for you. Here’s the Guardian’s excellent précis of his presentation to SXSW. It’s refreshing to say the least: Mainstream journalists’ antagonism towards bloggers, he suggested, was sustained by the huge stress they find themselves under, which stems from five developments: 1. The collapsing economic model of …

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Egypt: Will it be the secret policeman’s fall?

President Hosni Mubarak’s shuffling of the Egyptian cabinet while Cairo burns, has all the appearance of rearranging deckchairs on a doomed Titanic. Yet, despite the protests, he may still survive. If he were to go, who would replace him? His son, the just as unpopular Gamal?  The Muslim Brotherhood? Mohamed ElBaradei? Or Omar Suleiman, intelligence chief and new vice-President? Whatever the outcome of this week’s events across Egypt, any administration genuinely wishing to bring the country out of chaos must urgently address …

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The broadening inkblot: Self-improvement for people who read newspapers (and blogs…)

This is a cross post from Miljenko Williams who blogs at 21st Century Fix. It was originally posted on the Political Innovation site here. If you’re reading this, you’re probably a regular lurker around the blogosphere and the longer, cleverer articles on media websites. You may even go further than that and comment occasionally, “Digg”, share or “like” postings on Facebook. And if you’re very clever with your RSS reader, you may have found a way of getting some of …

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What’s the point of journalists any more?

Though Saturday is largely an Unconference and the attendees will be fixing the agenda and timetable on the day (with a bit of healthy pre-event lobbying on the Uservoice site), I’m going to be chairing one whole-event session after lunch on the whole question of the Fourth Estate. We’ve got a democracy that relies on them, at least in part, to provide a counterweight to powerful interests. But their current business model appears to be changing, and we – in …

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Political Innovation, Edinburgh and ‘disciplined crankery’?

At Saturday’s Political Innovation event (you can see the full commentary on the #picamp hashtag on Twitter), we asked a panel of speakers if there is some social good that can come out of our interactive alternative to the mainstream media. Political Innovation plenary session from Robert Stewart on Vimeo. Pat Kane (Hue & Cry frontman and author of The Play Ethic) urged the participants to ‘embrace your inner and outer crank’, and in doing so, underscored one of the …

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As governments change, so change the blogs

Two similarly themed items here. The first one – this post over on Comment is Free wondering whether it makes sense to lament the decline of the right-wing libertarian (or bloggertarian) blog. The second item – Left Foot Forward’s observation that Liberal Conspiracy and their own site are now beating the main right-of-centre bloggers in their Wikio rankings. Wikio measures inbound links rather than unique visitors and both Iain Dale and Guido Fawkes are still significantly ahead in that regard. …

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And the winner is…

The BBC’s Nick Robinson, apparently.  According to the [ei] Comment Awards he’s the “Best Blogger” of 2010…  At the Telegraph blogs, Toby Young suggests that “Asking Robinson to blog is like inviting a eunuch to an orgy and expecting him to participate”.  Nevermind, Toby.  Maybe next year…  But, perhaps, that’s who [his BBC colleague] Andrew Marr had in mind? A lot of bloggers seem to be socially inadequate, pimpled, single, slightly seedy, bald, cauliflower-nosed, young men sitting in their mother’s basements …

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Political Innovation no 3: Assertion-flagging: for less partisan, prejudiced blogging

This is a guest cross-post by Andrew Regan – originally posted on the Political Innovation site here. Most political bloggers are motivated to fight what they see as bigotry, prejudice, and ill-informed, unjustifiable assertion. This is a fine and noble cause, because the spreading of false beliefs – without the evidence to support them – is bad for all of us, as is the displacement of informed argument by mere rhetoric. All the more so when the perpetrator is powerful …

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Total Politics: Top 20 NI Blogs…

Fair play to Iain, he managed to get over 2,200 people voting in his poll for the top Northern Irish blogs this year… We (just, I imagine) retained our top spot, with Splintered coming straight in at number 2, no doubt his pet subject du jour will have garnered him a lot of fans… I’ve given him a bit of mention in my review of the Irish blogosphere for 2010, which for now you’ll have to buy the book to …

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