Sinn Fein’s social media evolution has eroded its old mystique of ‘Leadership’

Exceptionally good piece by Fionnuala O’Connor in the Irish News yesterday. To summarise, she thinks despite it’s obvious successes with social media (Gerry Adams is the most influential politician in Ireland for example), that he and the party have been over communicating: Sinn Fein is resilient, for good reason. Handling the fallout from atrocities over decades taught the fore-runners of today’s machine-minders. Rule number one is still to say whatever needs saying. Much as other parties but with the exceptional element …

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Facebook: A Breeding Ground For Racism

UPDATED In the past twelve months racist attacks in Northern Ireland have increased by 50%. In the early hours of Sunday morning yet another home was attacked in South Belfast – an attack that the PSNI described as a ‘hate crime’. A bottle was thrown and smashed the living room window of a house owned by a Bangladeshi family on Ulsterville Avenue and a car owned by a Kuwaiti family was set alight. The attacks have been widely condemned by …

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So, you want to be a Cllr? Here’s some social media do’s and don’ts.

This round of local elections were interesting for me as I watched in January my twitter feed being swamped with tweets of election hopefuls announcing their candidacy for the various wards in the upcoming election. Ever since the election of Barack Obama in 2008, candidates have looked to social media to promote themselves and their issues. Now, the impact of this is debatable, I think that for local government elections, social media is a nice stocking filler for candidates. It …

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Phil Mac Giolla Bhain showing what ‘socially present journalism’ looks like…

“Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth.” ― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations       So a little vicarious glory via sometimes Slugger blogger Phil Mac Giolla Bhain who has made it to number 10 in the Press Gazette’s top social journalists (not bad for a Glasgow Irishman ensconced in the west Donegal Gaeltacht…) It’s all his own doing of course. The key is to maintain social presence. Phil’s success has been …

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Does social media have much influence or use in NI politics or protests? #nisocialpol

Researchers Orna Young and Jonny Byrne hosted a panel discussion in the University of Ulster this morning on Transformative Networks – Social Media, Politics and Protests. A panel gave their thoughts and afterwards there was a discussion. In the first part you’ll hear Orna Young introduce the event, followed by Alan Meban and Dave Magee. listen to ‘Part 1 of panel on Social Media, Politics & Protests #nisocialpol @alaninbelfast, @dgmagee ’ on Audioboo The second part covers Harriet Long, Brian …

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[Soapbox] Shinners, please don’t blame the messenger!

Gerry Adams is a liar.  There.  I’ve said it.  Cue the wolf circling the sheep and herding them all in.  He’s never been in the IRA. (yeah, right) He was in jail when ‘Always look on the Bright Side Of Life’ was written (not true).  He is reported to have told the family of Jean Mc Conville that he was also in jail at that time (he wasn’t). Lies have a habit of tripping you up.  Not so, if you’re …

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#RuthPatterson: Would I shed a tear, No.

At one level, social media and politicians don’t mix. At another it merely allows them to share their innermost thoughts with us, with the unfortunate effect of making us all stupider by having read them. Yesterday, Ruth Patterson responded to a post from Brian Ulsterman on Facebook as below.                                         [I’ve updated this with the full text and image, I’d originally …

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Matt Baggott on flag protests, Boston tapes, G8 summit, drones & social media

It’s all looking a bit fraught. We need a recovery plan. The words of the Chief Constable Matt Baggott describing the fortunes of his football club rather than the PSNI’s response to the flags crisis. Though the words must echo what went through the PSNI senior officers’ minds when the flags crisis didn’t abate before Christmas. Monday’s post covered PSNI transformation, regulation and vocation. Remember that blogs aren’t newspapers, so not every post has to try to make a news …

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Grillo’s 25% demonstrates the extent Italy’s disbelief in Politics…

So, those of you who have just finished sniggering at Gerry’s tweets, listen up to the news from Italy. Berlusconis has not gone, and the left have not arrived. In fact the big ‘clown’ is in control of the Senate. Still not laughing I hope? Well, Demos have some research that gives us some hints as to why a candidate that refused to talk to Italian journos, and had no presence anywhere but the internet took 25% of the vote. …

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Coming to terms with the Internet will not entail switching it off, but facing and evaluating fears

Gavan Titley has it about right. Moral panic is about the best way to describe the latest outbreak of social media bashing in the Republic. The first political party in the south to take to the business of engaging online was Labour, as this report from Damien Mulley outlines. The first Twitter storm I witnessed was a spectacular one when Fianna Fail used Joe Rospers as blogger bait, and got burned for their efforts. Much of the criticism we’ve seen …

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PSNI told Asda bosses: Don’t remove tributes to sectarian killer

In today’s Irish News*, Connla Young reports that it was the PSNI that advised Asda not to remove tributes to UVF man Billy Hunter from outside their Shore Road store: Seaneen McErlane, a daughter of John’s, says her family have no objections to ordinary tributes and cards left in memory of Hunter. She said she had a “major issue” with Asda and police facilitating “a UVF poppy wreath to remain on their premises for a period of a week”. “This was the …

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Twitter v #NOTW: the growing power of social media?

Over on the BBC, Rory Cellan-Jones has some background on an interesting aspect of the News of the World story. For a while now, traditional news outlets have been in competition (of sorts) with social media to feed a developed appetite for rolling news. However, as Cellan-Jones has flagged, this story appears to be bringing the print and broadcast media into conflict rather than competition with social media, particularly Twitter. A quick click on the current picture on trendsmap.com (at 12 pm on 06/07/2011) shows all the …

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Social Media and the Assembly Election

A number of people have referred to this week’s Assembly Election as the “Twitter Election”. This can be looked at in a number of ways: the number of politicians and parties on Twitter/Facebook, the number of journalists now using social media, as well as members of the public discussing politics and election through these online methods. During the course of last night’s leaders debate 950 tweets were sent using the hashtag #ae11 and 660 sent using #ae11debate (many of those …

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Take that (Mulley makes a bad call?)

As the north of Ireland’s twitterati attempt to trend #notinmyname the undisputed king of Irish social media says: Ah yes, a hashtag on twitter, take that Omagh murderers Blank

Social media fuels protests across political divide

Yesterday it was the turn of hundreds of school children demonstrating outside Parliament to save their playing fields and delivering a petition signed by 500,000″ organised by 17 year old Debbie Foote from Grantham , Lincs.” Last Saturday, TopShop at Oxford Circus, the shopping mecca for metro youth, was forced to close as hundreds protested against Philip Green’s tax avoidance. The organiser if you can call it that, was Ununcut – ( another potential disaster area for the Today programme’s …

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Ócáid phoiblí: Speak Irish on Facebook Day

An mbeidh foireann margaíochta sásta le 36,942 daoine ag freastail ar ócáid phoiblí ar an gréasán meáin sóisialta Facebook? Bhuel, sin an méid cuairteoirí atá ag ‘Speak Irish on Facebook Day’, tosaíodh ar an gréasán meáin sóisialta sin ag beirt déagóirí ógá ó Béal Feirste (as tuaisceart an chathair, fósta). Bhunaigh Ruairí Ó hÉigeartaigh agus Dónal de Brún é i Lúnasa seo chaite. Inniu, deirtear ag 36,942 daoine go mbeidh siad ag freastail ar an ócáid phoiblí seo (agus tá go leor …

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Facebook hate site targeting Gregory Campbell removed

Last week saw incredible scenes of human and political theatre as the relatives of the Bloody Sunday victims found some degree of closure over the killing of their loved ones… But there was also a pretty nasty backdraft against some public figures who dared to asked questions of the public consensus not least around the bloody context of the killings. Chief target for the permanently angry brigade was Gregory Campbell, who had a particularly nasty Facebook group closed down: I …

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Bloggers flash mobbing at Fianna Fail web launch…

Tonight Blue State Digital gathered a few Irish bloggers to show them their new FF 2.0 website in Dublin tonight… No doubt the report will be on Irish Election, Suzy and several other watering holes tonight/tomorrow. It sounds like ‘authenticity‘ was the bloggers problem (too much Fianna Fail not enough BSD, as per the publicity promise)… Just the appearance of a FFer in a blog space is enough to raise heckles (Shudnta left it to Damien to hold the fort …

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The plurality of blogs and how they dig into context…

Blogs: exposing the hidden contextsThe Irish Times have published my piece on blogging, written originally in response to Brian Boyd’s article on how blogs can give a biased and misleading view of the events they purport to give witness to. Also at my own site.Blogs: exposing the hidden contexts Blogging is dangerous, radical and going mainstream, writes Mick Fealty It has been argued that blogging is both partial and subjective and that its many often- conflicting truths should be handled …

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