‪#‎FridayThread‬ – Corbyn’s networks as a modern digital ecclesia?

Newsnight had a fascinating conversation (with not a little tension) between Charles Moore (the conscience of the British right, let’s call him) and Matthew Parris (ferociously bright and pragmatic) over the elevation of a Remainer to the head of a Brexit government. Moore bemoaned the fact that in an age which the voters warm each time to a message of change, the new Prime Minister does not fit the bill of those looking for that change to become tangible. The only …

Read more…

Do we have a media capable of ‘capturing the conscience of a king’?

The play’s the thing Wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king.  Hamlet, Act 2, Scene 2 I’ve been waiting for something to emerge from MediaLens on the Oborne resignation. They tend take a rather puritanical view of what’s ailing the corporate media, nevertheless, this passage in particular is well worth sharing I think… The deeper problem, ignored by Jenkins, is that this corporate structure not only trims individual stories, it excludes entire frameworks of understanding. If writing something disagreeable about …

Read more…

After #IndyRef 4: Credulous Bayesians and the importance of maintaining diversity of thought

Earlier today I was asked to speak on the business of shared space and the political effects of social media in Northern Ireland at an event in Liverpool in the new year. Not long afterwards I came across this paper which was written in 2007 by Edward Glaeser and Cass Sunstein. In the wake of the largest and in many ways most successful social media campaign we’ve ever seen in Scotland I think it explains some of the unmet expectations involved: The information of …

Read more…

When Brand met the Belfast Orange, or why the comedy of new media helps us unlearn…

There’s an interesting conference at the University of Ulster coming up on the 10th December, which seems to be asking some of the right questions about social media, its uses in protest and the implications for democratic politics. The event blurb notes: Over the course of the last twelve months, Northern Ireland has witnessed social media playing a central role in the nature of politics and protests. The period in the wake of the decision by Belfast City Council to …

Read more…

New media and new politics in NI? Or complacency after conflict?

This afternoon’s Political Studies Association of Ireland conference in Trinity included a panel looking at new media and new politics and their influence on conflict transformation in Northern Ireland. Chaired by Niall Ó Dochartaigh (NUI Galway), the panel spoke in the order: Alex Kane (Journalist) Paul Reilly (Uni. of Leicester) Brian J. Spencer (Political blogger and cartoonist) Alan Meban (Political blogger) Topics covered included whether NI actually wanted to change, whether anyone could think of an example of social media …

Read more…

Has the new media revolution changed anything about the way we do politics?

FitzJamesHorse has some provocative thoughts on politics and the internet – not to mention the continuing ridicule of Loyalism. He comes to the ‘sage’ conclusion (again) that bloggers don’t matter. But Facebook and Twitter and YouTube do, he says. Actually, these are all, in whichever form, micro blogging platforms. In all cases, the primacy of conversation and the capacity to network information and comment are the main shifts from older ‘one to one’ or ‘one to many’ forms of communication. Has the …

Read more…

New media is forcing politicians to engage (and the way we will do politics to change)

So the Oireachtas report on the Growth of Social Media and tackling Cyberbullying has gone for a sensible approach to the issue of the internet and cyberbullying. Karlin Lillington in the Irish Times contrasts a measured report with a sometimes hysterical reaction in parliament: One of the more ludicrous sideshows in the online bullying debate surrounding the Oireachtas hearings and submissions and the consequent report, however, was the regularity with which politicians made the story all about them. They too, …

Read more…

Gerry Adams ‘self hacking’ his way through the Irish Twittersphere?

So Alan was on the View last night talking Tweets. In fact talking Gerry’s Tweets. I have to confess I’ve no particularly original thoughts to share on the matter, other than to say that if my memory serves correctly this is Gerry’s second out on the big Twitter fun ride. It’s got him numbers, so I’m not going to knock it. I’ve always advised clients that if you are not having fun when you are doing it then you are …

Read more…

“On newspaper opinion pages, including this one, a shrill keening sound can be heard…”

Today Hugh Linehan in the Irish Times today channels the commonplace American role of reader’s editor, taking on two of the papers most respected columnists, John Waters and Davy Adams. I think this goes in the lesson boxed marked write about you know (don’t write about what you don’t): On chat show panels and newspaper opinion pages, including this one, a shrill keening sound can be heard. The sky is falling on our heads. Newfangled fads with absurd names are …

Read more…

New media networks are undermining traditional media formats yes, but…

Nice piece from Noel Whelan on media change in Ireland (and further afield)… What makes it interesting is the debate (originally between Conor Brady and John Bowman) about which medium was the main ‘significator’ of change in Ireland, newspapers or television. Whelan is in the Bowman (ie TV) camp: The Irish Times and other newspapers may have been creating ripples among their own readership segments, but television was the big change agent. There were also, as Brady points out, “clear-minded …

Read more…

New media, Libya and the shift in politics now civilians have “rushed the field”…

There was an interesting conversation between Noel Thompson and Jonathan Chavez on Hearts and Minds last night, regarding how new media is changing politics… Well earlier in the week, I’d been conducting my own series of interviews with John Pollock who is contributing editor to MIT’s Technology Review… His latest work looks for a feel below the systems and the technology to take a worms eye view of how individuals and groups used new media and then teasing out what …

Read more…

Social media is about social agency, not ‘just’ gossip, entertainment or power…

If you didn’t hear it, it is still very much worth listening to this week’s moral maze programme on BBC Radio Four… The whole thing is worth listening to (even Michael Buerk’s introduction, which almost visibly drips with contempt)… Padraig Reidy from Index On Censorship, probably came as close as any of the respondents to getting close to the nub of the problem with the often glib comparisions made between traditional media and the new platforms which seem to be …

Read more…

Why distinctions between public and private don’t really exist in new media…

Hat tip to Davy Sims on Facebook (who really knows his new media onions)… This clip is from Monday’s Stormont Today, and needs no more introduction from me… Mick FealtyMick is founding editor of Slugger. He has written papers on the impacts of the Internet on politics and the wider media and is a regular guest and speaking events across Ireland, the UK and Europe. Twitter: @MickFealty

Kicking off St Patrick’s week in London tonight..

If you are in London tonight (as opposed to Austin, Texas) come along to the Irish Club for the Not SXSW event. It should be an interesting group of new media, and business folk, and a good way to kick off St Patrick’s week… You can book here…. Mick FealtyMick is founding editor of Slugger. He has written papers on the impacts of the Internet on politics and the wider media and is a regular guest and speaking events across …

Read more…

The lost art of reading (or drowning in too much information)…

Here’s a great review of a fascinating book (H/T reader Rory) on how the Internet is destroying our capacity for intelligent, focused and critical thought. It opens thus: …here is the news that Ulin brings in this slim, meandering book: that reading is “an act of contemplation”; that such an act becomes more difficult in “our overnetworked society, where every buzz and rumor is instantly blogged and tweeted, and it is not contemplation we desire but an odd sort of …

Read more…

Blokes blog, birds don’t: the impoverished political potential of the internet?

Since he flagged up the votes for the Top 20 blogs (as reported by Iain Dale), I’d been figuring on looking at Mick’s point about the lack of nationalist blogs on the list since they are maybe 2 of the 20. I’m going to do that in the next week or two, but first I thought I’d flag up the equally glaring under-representation of the majority community on that list: the 51.25% of society that are female. Some have argued that blogging as a pursuit is predominantly male, …

Read more…

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 …

Read more…

Bloggers not to blame for the broadening of journalism

Not sure I agree with everything Malachi says in his oped of earlier this week, but this part is worth repeating, for those who still think there is a war on between MSM and the blogosphere: …there is one big flaw in the perception that bloggers and journalists are at war with each other; they actually feed off each other. They have a symbiotic relationship – and it is changing. It used to be that journalism was a coherent and …

Read more…

Irish MEP: Facebook makes you mad, so let’s have a law against it…

Of all the political parties in the south, Labour is one of the ones which ‘gets’ t’Internet most. But I wonder if Labour MEP Nessa Childers‘ question seeking a written answer in the European Parliament ever saw the desk of leader Eamon Gilmore? There is certainly no sign of it on her blog. Adds: Clare Minnock seems to be the only member of the MSM (well, the Carlow Nationalist at least) to pick up the story and she treats it an …

Read more…

Geoff’s blog round up…

Great to see blogs going mainstream in the Belfast Telegraph and Geoff is really getting nicely into his stride… What’s better is that the Tele is going with the internet thing… You have to watch the YouTube Fair Deal’s dug up from Nowhere, Alabama… Mick FealtyMick is founding editor of Slugger. He has written papers on the impacts of the Internet on politics and the wider media and is a regular guest and speaking events across Ireland, the UK and …

Read more…