gatewatching

The fourth instalment of our Club Bloggery series for ABC Online has now been published. Given all the controversy, we couldn’t go past adding our own thoughts about the ‘worm’ incident which has taken up so much of the media limelight following the leaders’ debate last week. Our piece has already been published on the ABC site, where it has also generated a good deal of sometimes heated debate; here is a slightly longer and more polemic version of the article.

Bloggers Watch as Journalists Turn on Each Other over Worm

By Axel Bruns, Jason Wilson, and Barry Saunders

In spite of the growing evidence of the role of bloggers like Possums Pollytics and citizen journalism projects like our own Youdecide2007 as alternative commentators and opinion leaders in the federal election campaign, mainstream media from print to television remain crucial, of course. Indeed, the two are anything but mutually exclusive, and so - along with 2.4 million other viewers across the three channels broadcasting it - bloggers tuned in on Sunday to watch the ‘great debate’ between John Howard and Kevin Rudd.

Though not necessarily adopting the yoga pose of one of the ABC’s debate watchers, Australian bloggers looked to a number of their own strengths in order to survive suffering through what at times appeared a rather stilted, formulaic contest between the two candidates for the top job; many leading Australian blogs provided live blog coverage of the event, offering a blow-by-blow, distributed running commentary as the debate was aired.

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blogging, citizen journalism, media blogging, citizen journalism, journalism, media

As well as our regular co-written posts, I thought this blog would be a useful space for some timely practice-based reflections on youdecide2007, and my role there.

Youdecide2007 is the project we’re running with some other folks to create a citizen-led coverage of the 2007 Australian Federal Election.

I’m keenly aware that there are scores of people, all over the world, trying to bring citizen journalism projects into being, and I hope that this might be one useful space for discussion around that. What we all find out sooner or later is that “build it and they will come” is just a cute line from a movie. You’ve got to actively bring the produsers to your project, and it can be tough. I’m hoping this will be a good place to reflect on that.

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citizen journalism, media citizen journalism, journalism, media, preditor

The next Club Bloggery for ABC Online is up. Here’s another version of the piece. This one is coming to grips with how issues early in the election campaign have played out in the blogosphere.

Beyond Gotcha: Blogs as a space for debate.

Jason Wilson, Axel Bruns, Barry Saunders.

The mainstream media and critics of Web 2.0’s “cult of the amateur” often suggest that blogs and citizen journalism will never replace their mainstream counterparts because they “don’t break stories”. Notwithstanding the fundamental furphy – who ever said anything about “replacing” the MSM anyway? – there is some truth in this. It goes without saying that most bloggers don’t have the resources, pulling power or proximity to the pollies to do much original political reporting: this is something that most sensible public affairs bloggers concede. (Though how often the mainstream media really break stories – as against exploiting deliberate, calculated ‘leaks’ from party spinsters – is a separate question.)

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blogging, citizen journalism, government blogging, citizen journalism, government, journalism

Well, the next instalment of our Club Bloggery series for ABC Online has now been published. Here’s a slightly earlier, longer version of the piece, which asks quite simply what we know about the real impact of blogging on political debate in Australia, beyond the realm of those already addicted to the machinations of the political scene…

Blogging outside the Echo Chamber

By Axel Bruns, Jason Wilson, and Barry Saunders

In the current political climate, it’s no surprise that a number of sessions at the recent Australian Blogging Conference at Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane focussed on the potential for blogs and other citizen journalism sites to impact on political news and punditry. In a previous article, we’ve already noted the continuing skirmishes between psephologist bloggers and the political commentators, whose rather unscientific interpretation of opinion poll results that some bloggers have challenged fervently.

It is tempting to claim that the growing recognition of Australian bloggers and citizen journalists as alternative sources of news and commentary is a sign that they’re storming the gates of the mainstream media. Many of the comments on our earlier piece seem to support that view - as one reader wrote, “I believe that Possum [Pollytics] and Bryan at Ozpolitics.info have given me more honest and concise information about this year’s political climate than all of the other media websites put together.”

How representative are such voices, though? If the journalistic commentariat in the Canberra press gallery is sometimes accused of constituting an echo chamber - talking, writing, broadcasting mainly to itself and the rest of the political class, but with little significant impact on the wider citizenry - then is breaking into those circuits of discourse anything more than a pyrrhic victory; are the bloggers anything more than a bunch of politics nerds gatecrashing a party of fellow nerds? Put simply, do these blogs matter to the rest of the electorate?

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blogging, citizen journalism, media blogging, citizen journalism, journalism, media

The announcement of the Greensblog is an interesting example for the possibilities of blogging for minority political parties. Clearly drawing inspiration from Democrats Senator Andrew Bartlett’s blog , it shows the value of the blogging format for discussing political positions that fall outside the easy left-right, Labor-Liberal soundbite-based journalism often found in the industrial mainstream. As Greensblog contributor Tim Hollo hopes, it will work for the Greens because their policies aren’t necessarily “soundbite-friendly”, and they welcome the possibility of consultative policy development.

This form of engagement is something the major parties should be watching. For some years now, observers have noted a trend of voters moving away from traditional party affiliations to multi-faceted political perspectives, shifting from party-political to social activism, and forming fluid allegiances that vary across policy areas.

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