Media Studies embarrasses the government again.

For most of the past few years, our politicians have gone round the world telling less democratic regimes to open up the web to release the creativity and political yearnings of their citizens.


Meanwhile, Western technology companies sold these repressive regimes all the tools needed to monitor and throttle online activity. Cisco, RIM, Google: they don't have political principles, they have shareholders.


Our leaders' enthusiasm for web freedom turned out to be - like democracy - something you only drop on your enemies. Wikileaks and the recent riots have seen them turn to exactly the same techniques employed by the Chinese, Egyptians and the Libyans. For instance, the Home Secretary has suggested turning off Twitter and similar services, and is meeting the tech companies to discuss how to censor the web during disturbances. No sense of irony, these people.


But here's an inconvenient truth: the medium is not, in this case, the message. The Guardian's analysis of riot-related Twitter feeds reveals that it wasn't being used to plan or co-ordinate looting and destruction. It was used to comment, and to organise a clean-up. 

A preliminary study of a database of riot-related tweets, compiled by the Guardian, appears to show Twitter was mainly used to react to riots and looting.

Timing trends drawn from the data question the assumption that Twitter played a widespread role in inciting the violence in advance, an accusation also levelled at the rival social networks Facebook and BlackBerry Messenger.

The day after the riots subsided, the prime minister told parliament the government was looking at banning people from using sites such as Twitter and Facebook if they were thought to be plotting criminal activity. Cameron said the government would do "whatever it takes" to restore order, adding that a review was under way to establish whether it would be right to attempt to prevent rioters from using social networks.

This kind of analysis, in fact, is one of the things that Media Studies does.


The government's reaction proves that it isn't interested in specifics, details or truth. It, like all reactionary bodies, simply reacts to something it doesn't understand by stamping on it. Institutions are very slow to grasp the potential and actual benefits of new tech: they're too quick to see how their own authority might be eroded by the sheer speed and privacy of services like Twitter.


I'm not a Twittevangelist. I'm not on Facebook or LinkedIn or Foursquare… I had my doubts about how useful it might be, and I'm still not convinced that footballers tweeting 'stop the violence', me suggesting satirical names for Jeffrey Archer's cat, or people announcing that they quite liked TOWIE adds much to the sum of human achievement. But the organisational and information-seeking opportunities inherent in a service which lets you tap into the collective wisdom of early adopters shouldn't be denied.


But for the government, there's are some simple rules which they can apply to new media, to welfare provision, to rioting teens. They also work for me in all aspects of my life.
1. Your initial instincts shouldn't dictate subsequent decisions.
2. Everything is more complicated than you think it is.
3. Take some time to think through the consequences.
4. Don't just consult people with whom you already agree.

Shit Harper Did

This is a lovely political website - beautifully designed - pointing out the things done by Stephen Harper, Tory Prime Minister of Canada, who prefers to rule without a parliament, and is the only person on the planet to see George W. Bush as a role model.

We also serve who stand and Tweet?

I've been following Egypt's 'Day of Rage' (live here), designed to reproduce Tunisia's revolutionary situation. Did you know that Egypt's a dictatorship?

nearly half of Egypt's 80 million people live under or just above the poverty line set by the United Nations at $2 (£1.27) a day. "Poor quality education, healthcare and high unemployment have left large numbers of Egyptians deprived of basic needs," 

Far too many people holiday in repressive places, lulled into acquiescence by a pina colada and cheap exchange rates, unaware that their money doesn't help those in need.

There's been a lot of talk about the positive and negative effects of new media on protest. The jury is - of course - still out. But I do worry that our hyperreal condition (read your Baudrillard) weakens the possibility of full-on, successful resistance. Take a look at this photo.

What I see are brave men and women facing down the security forces. But if you look closer, there are at least half a dozen mobile phones and assorted cameras in use. Where once they would have clenched their fists or clutched petrol bombs, they're now engaged in a process of recording, rather than participating. Evidence collection and propaganda are certainly important, but I worry that we no longer feel something's real unless we've captured it: photos, Tweets, status updates and texts.

That said, I'm protesting on Saturday (Manchester: be there) and I'll be taking my camera. Meanwhile, take a look at these witty New Media takes on classic WW2 Information War posters by Brian Moore, who most definitely knows the score. I couldn't reproduce my favourite, 'Somebody Blogged'…

Ignore him: Wikipedia is cultural misinformation on a grand scale

I'm so cutting edge

Only because I've bought a book. It's Evgeny Morozov's The Net Delusion: How Not to Liberate the World. His thesis is that technocentric utopians have assumed that access to new media will inevitably liberate the oppressed. (In these circles, 'the oppressed' always refers to the citizens of countries you don't like: the joy of Wikileaks proves that these things are double edged).

Morozov also feels that there's a difference between online activism and street politics, and I partially agree. Joining a Facebook group calling for world peace or the immediate execution of paedophiles makes absolutely no difference to the world at all. On the other hand, TheyWorkForYou has been indispensable in my ongoing pursuit of that Tory ratbag Paul Uppal (according to his voting record, he'd like you to carry on smoking while waiting for the nuclear holocaust - he voted to legalise smoking in pubs again, once more demonstrating his acute concern for the underpaid pub workers), and the fast dissemination of information is essential to activism. That's a double-edged sword, however: all governments have new media specialists, many of which shade into organised dis- and misinformation projects.

Activists are quick and nimble: governments have power, resources and lots of men with guns. When it comes to iPhones v. M16s, M16s win. I can't see that the Tiananmen Tank Guy would have done better if he'd been Tweeting, though it's true that a lot more people (though no Chinese people) would have known about it. The attempted Iranian revolution last year was widely promoted as the Twitter revolution, mostly by American spies keen to exert influence without spending any money, but it turns out that Twitter was hardly used within Iran, and a lot of what was carried turned out to be inaccurate or untrue. The moment may well have passed anyway: so many new media organisations are happy to turn in their users to whichever government they happen to need licences from (Google bows to everyone from the US to China and Blackberry have given in to all sorts of regimes to retain business). Twitter has just been ordered by an American court to turn over the details of people connected to Wikileaks, whether they're American or not. There's certainly no security online: even if courts refuse access, you can guarantee that the security services have their own ways in.

The most interesting thing about Morozov's argument is that the Internet is becoming the Opium of the People: distracted by the feeling that Twitter, Facebook and so one actually are protest, we might not be engaging in the kind of activity which really overthrows tyrants.  It's an interesting idea, though I imagine the truth lies in between. Tunisians seem to be getting on quite well without Twitter (there are a few users), and it's probably wise to distrust a lot of what gets passed around. On the other hand, I followed the student protests in London via Twitter, which was exciting and useful. Colonel Gadaffi of Libya clearly feels vulnerable: he condemned the Tunisian uprising as the product of Wikileaks distortion. I'm sure his 41 year undemocratic rule over Libya played no role in his condemnation of Ben-Ali's overthrow.

What do you think? I know Ben's a keen blogger (I've lost track of how many he has) and Twitter, and many of you use all sorts of services.

We're modern. We've got a website.Telnet us!

A few weeks ago, I reproduced this witty Venn diagram from XKCD.com, about the clash between spiffy university website designs, and what people actually wanted to find.

Talk about prophetic. The Hegemon's brand new, very expensive site has been awarded the worst possible score on 3 of the 5 criteria (though there are a couple of really moronic comments from potential students in there).

The universities of York, Worcester and [The Hegemon] all say that plans to overhaul their sites are in the offing.

That's balls of the highest order: it's only just been overhauled. 3rd from bottom in yet another league table… Another victory for the consultants!

All serious universities do this

Yes, every university has a teddy bear with its own e-mail address which we're encouraged to photograph in exotic locations. He even has his own page where he tells us about his adventures.

It's behind a passworded intranet page, so I can't direct you there to marvel, but here's a taste:

Well here we are again, everyone else has gone on their holidays and I’m left to do the work – you can see that I am in Poland to meet our very new and very eager students coming to us in September, there are also a few very nice parents around - so I have to be on my best behaviour!

So early to bed and up in the office first thing ...  oh how I fancy myself as a Knight in armour, I’m sure I’d have more success with the ladies if I looked like that!

I feel a satire coming on…

Very appropriate in an age in which air travel should be discouraged. I certainly feel that a corporate teddy bear makes up for the sackings, imposed curriculum changes and disastrous morale.

I direct you all (including my management superiors) for enlightenment to this blog post, 'What the Fuck Is My Social Media Strategy?')

Handing over the baton?

Today's one of those occasions on which the new media/old media divide is up for examination. I'm watching BBC News 24, which is leading on two stories which originated on the web, one of them weeks ago. The first is the Wikileaks release of 90,000 US military documents relating to the war in Afghanistan; the other is a story about a bear which got trapped in a car.

The Wikileaks story has been floating around for a long time. It's the kind of event an anonymous, locationless organisation can do: the BBC or another established, regulated media organisation would have avoided the legal ramifications, would have spent too long considering the national or security implications, and would probably have been penetrated by the security services in any case (there's a long history of news media aiding the secret services).

On the other hand, it's interesting that Julian Assange is now giving a press conference for the offline media, and three chosen newspapers have been given full and early access to the material- clearly the 'old' sources are still important, for informing the wider public, and because they have greater journalistic resources when it comes to investigating stories. Strikingly, however, Assange's conference displays his awareness of the limitations and responsibilities of classic journalism: research, fact-checking, skepticism. He's also engaged in some weeding of material which would, he says, cost lives or damage security, which is a major assumption of authority. His nomadic, independent approach gives him the freedom to subvert the cultural and legal boundaries which hamper established media, but it makes him immune to the checks and balances too (though Fox News behaves in exactly the same way, as its disgusting behaviour over the Shirley Sherrod story shows (rightwing blogger edits a black Department of Agriculture official's speech to make her look racist - she gets the sack by a cowardly employer but is reinstated when the true story emerges, Fox refuses to apologise or alter its position - as does the blogger: original, unqualified and uncorrected story here).

 Either way, we're into a new era when the power of major news organisations fail to uncover major scoops - they're sclerotic, timid and too dependent on their relationships with authority.

The bear-trapped-in-a-car story is the other side of the new/old media coin. Ten years ago, it's the kind of thing which would take up page 3 of a local newspaper. Now it's a light-hearted bit of fluff which fits in with 90% of what's on the internet. What's shameful is that it's now a story for the global news media: rolling news has very obviously led to dumbing down, simply to fill space. IT'S NOT NEWS, PEOPLE!

What's still unclear is the implication for Wikileaks and similar sites. No doubt the security services are chasing it through legal and illegal means - cyberwar resources will engage in DOS attacks and more, but it'll be like nailing down a jelly. I'm hugely positive about this. Wikileaks claim they're politically neutral, but a commitment to the free exchange of information is clearly a libertarian/anarchist position which will hopefully challenge authorities which act with impunity by keeping us in the dark.

First remove the Moat in your eye

There's a bit of a flap on about the dead murderer Raoul Moat's Facebook tribute page. An ugly section of society seems to view him as a folk hero for, variously, hating women, hating the police, and evading them for a whole week.

Naturally, the politicians are outraged by this, which seems fair enough to me, but they've responded in a way that demonstrates how little they actually understand about new media. David Cameron rightly condemned the wave of sympathy expressed for Moat (though it seems that he did in fact seek psychological help and was refused), but his minions are treating Facebook like some kind of official publication to be censored.

I listened to a Tory MP, Chris Heaton-Harris, on the Today programme this morning (listen here). He explicitly said that Facebook should close down the tribute page in the same way that the BBC would refuse to broadcast offensive material. The interviewer pointed out that the BBC is a public body with legal responsibility for the programmes it makes, which is a good start, but he didn't point out the central difference which makes new media legally and culturally interesting. Unlike the BBC, Facebook isn't a content generator. It doesn't make the sewage, it provides the pipes along which the sewage flows. Its main business is to analyse the material and sell it to advertisers. Telling Facebook to censor pages it hosts is like suing the phone company every time somebody swears during a conversation.

Furthermore, if you're likely to be offended by a particular Facebook page, don't go there. I don't watch soap operas because I don't like them - I don't watch them then complain about them. The MP's complaint was that his young daughters could view these pages. I found this a very curious argument for a Conservative, as their central political philosophy is private responsibility over state intervention. Rather than telling Facebook to censor its users' pages, how about engaging in some active parenting? Educate the children, and if necessary, block access to the unsuitable material.

Finally, I'd view the Moat tribute page as a public service. It's a record of the fact that a small number of people in this country hold some offensive and misguided views. Don't censor them and pretend they don't exist - argue with them, point out the error of their ways. Instead, these Tory Scum think like this:

Heaton-Harris said the page contained anti-police statements, which should be taken down. Cameron said he was making a "very good point".

Really? Have we got to the stage when holding an opinion - however dumb - you don't like justifies censorship? I think this is very sinister. I agree with the PM that many of the opinions aired are revolting - but I think it's very very wrong to silence people with whom we disagree (other than fans of Friends: they're beyond the Pale).

Damn. I hate defending corporations against governments. That's what happens when you get an evil government, I guess.

Old media vampires

Bloggers who quote from Associated Press material (the guys who really write the news articles which appear in newspapers under someone else's name) are meant to pay a fee.

So you'd think that bloggers quoted by Associated Press would be… paid a fee!

You'd be wrong. They just steal it. I wouldn't mind at all if the relationship was mutual, but hey-ho, that's capitalism in a nutshell.

W00t has sent them a witty bill. Wonder if they'll pay.

Rupert's Bare

… Or, The Emperor Has No Clothes.

Rupert Murdoch has started putting his newspaper sites behind pay walls. As predicted, this has had a wonderful effect: traffic to the sites has halved. People confronted by the registration page head either to the Telegraph (boo) or the Guardian (qualified yay).

It's early days, but this isn't going to be good for News International. They already make a whacking loss on The Times, and without readers, their advertising rates will drop, with no compensation by subscriptions. Result: a better informed public.

"Aging, scared newspapermen throw themselves at the latest mobile technology trend in a humiliatingly futile attempt to remain relevant."

I think The Onion's writers are getting bored by the tedious BS generated by anyone with a social network to hype:

While millions of young, tech-savvy professionals already use services like Facebook and Twitter to keep in constant touch with friends, a new social networking platform called Foursquare has recently taken the oh, fucking hell, can't some other desperate news outlet cover this crap instead?

"Foursquare is a little bit of everything—a friend-finder, a local city guide, an interactive mobile game," said company cofounder Dennis Crowley, as if reading from the same tired script used by every one of these Web 2.0 or whatever-the-fuck-they're-called startups. "But more than that, Foursquare is an [endless string of meaningless buzzwords we just couldn't bring ourselves to transcribe]." 

And on it goes, gloriously world-weary.

Update: it turns out that Foursquare is real and that some Dutch people used it to set up a site called PleaseRobMe ('showing you a list of all those empty homes out there', based on the idea that social media sites are full of people announcing their whereabouts!

Efficiency increase in Pakistan

Workers in Pakistan today reported a massive surge in productivity while school and university assignments became noticeably better informed, following court orders banning Facebook, Youtube, Flickr and Wikipedia due to 'sacrilegious content'.

OK, I'm being flippant. The Pakistani courts have banned these sites in response to a nasty-minded campaign calling on people to post cartoons of Muhammad, many of which are spiteful and racist. It seems rather confused - you have to search for these things to be offended by them, so the devout could just not log on, rather than using the courts. Most Pakistani's won't be affected anyway - web access is restricted to a tiny proportion of the population.

I also don't quite understand the ban on drawings of the Prophet - it certainly wasn't always banned in every branch of Islam, and Muhammad isn't God: he was a man.

Why can't we all just get along?

Good writing dies at the hands of search engine optimisation

This is a very entertaining and thought-provoking rant about the corporate takeover of music on the internet. His major points: blogging and music magazines are in the business of speed and hits, leading to more and more inconsequential pieces, written worse and worse, and leading to homogenisation. There's no 'stumble culture' any more - finding an odd band by accident. Instead, coverage is predicated on exclusivity, getting there first and statistical analysis: more clicks leads to more advert revenue.

Contains a lot of swearing. He's angry. It's a fascinating examination of the quality/quantity dilemma.

sorry: I've deleted it because it's set to play automatically and it was driving me mad. See it here, especially if you're a media student. 

Downfall's downfall

Like me, you're probably quite bored with the rash of Downfall parodies on Youtube. They started quite amusingly, but soon became tired and unoriginal.

The film makers have started to pursue Youtube to get them taken down, on copyright grounds. Unsurprisingly, this has provoked a reaction amongst the geeks leading to, you've guessed it, a Downfall parody.

This one's actually worth watching - it's witty and informed.


Hitler, as "Downfall producer" orders a DMCA takedown from Brad Templeton on Vimeo.

Down the rabbit hole

Adam sent me this: a taste of what new media can do to literature. This almost makes an iPad worth buying…

How corporations work

I'm no defender of Youtube - it's another big media company - but they're involved in a stunning spat with Viacom at the moment. That company sued Youtube for hosting Viacom's material - while also employing up to 18 companies to post Viacom property disguised as fans to make their shows look cooler! It really is time for copyright law reform.

This is what Youtube had to say (via Boing Boing):

For years, Viacom continuously and secretly uploaded its content to YouTube, even while publicly complaining about its presence there. It hired no fewer than 18 different marketing agencies to upload its content to the site. It deliberately "roughed up" the videos to make them look stolen or leaked. It opened YouTube accounts using phony email addresses. It even sent employees to Kinko's to upload clips from computers that couldn't be traced to Viacom. And in an effort to promote its own shows, as a matter of company policy Viacom routinely left up clips from shows that had been uploaded to YouTube by ordinary users. Executives as high up as the president of Comedy Central and the head of MTV Networks felt "very strongly" that clips from shows like The Daily Show and The Colbert Report should remain on YouTube.

Viacom's efforts to disguise its promotional use of YouTube worked so well that even its own employees could not keep track of everything it was posting or leaving up on the site. As a result, on countless occasions Viacom demanded the removal of clips that it had uploaded to YouTube, only to return later to sheepishly ask for their reinstatement. In fact, some of the very clips that Viacom is suing us over were actually uploaded by Viacom itself. 

The web 2.0 election

Apparently we're all going to spend the election period debunking politicians' claims, campaigning online, satirising their risible attempts to communicate and appear normal, and generally being with-it 21st-century voters.

Not me. I'm just going to take the piss out of Tory Scum from the comfort of my laptop. Here's somebody else's work: they've set up Twitter accounts for northwestern MPs and linked them to TheyWorkForYou so that followers can keep an eye on their representatives votes in real time. It's very clever.

Here's somebody else's work. It's moderately clever.

Your partner disconnected

I'm off to hear Arthur Scargill solve the world's problems tonight. In his honour, it's time for a haircut. I'm thinking bias-cut with highl… no, I'm really not. As usual, it'll be a short back and sides, requiring no further thought or attention until next time.

Has anyone tried this ChatRoulette game yet? I toyed with trying it and live-blogging my encounters as a media studies adventure, but realised that I wouldn't have anything to say to anyone who didn't switch me off immediately. I suspect Ewar would enjoy teasing other players.

In case you've missed the fun, it's a game in which you switch on your webcam and get randomly connected to anyone else on the ChatRoulette website. According to reliable journalistic reports, it's mostly naked men who haven't got the hang of courtship, and think that demonstrating that their genitalia work under digital manipulation is a shortcut to romance. It's interesting as a phenomenon, and a predictable result of making the technology available, but I'm not sure that it's going to transform human relations.

If you don't believe me, have a look at these encounters (all safe for work).

The last word on social media

Thanks to Dan, who spotted these miserable bastards and thought I'd have something in common with them. They do, however, understand new media perfectly:

Nerds + politics = possible Twitter justification

But only because a lot of people following the Irish council elections makes up for the national broadcaster's understandable limitations - follow it here as people Twitter the latest gossip/results.

OK, it's important for my new media teaching. It's Saturday night in the Welsh capital, and I'm thinking about work. What the hell has happened to me? (Answer: nothing. This is, unfortunately, the real me).

Porn by Twitter = Titter?

Pancake recipes (or idiots) = Twatter?

Drunks = Totter

Short, disapproving messages: Tutter.

Pork-based recipes: Trotter

Irish twitter - 'Tater

I'll get me coat…