gatewatching

The debate about the ethics of naming Katherine Wilson has spilled over to Troppo, where Don Arthur reflects on his own actions, and responds to my concerns. The new registration thingy at Troppo is taking awhile to give me a password, and my lunchbreak is probably my only window for blogging today, so I’ll reply here rather then there. Sorry Troppo folks.

I’ve tried not to personalise my comments at any stage, except when directly replying to people. I know the way that tends to turn out, and I’m really trying to advance some general principles and have a discussion about ethics, rather than trying to offer free character assessments to anyone in particular.

For what it’s worth, I think by the standards I’ve been trying to advance, Don behaved well. He tried to confirm his hunch with Wilson, and his reporting of what other blogs were saying was fairly unembroidered until he did get some confirmation via Margaret Simons. I have said Don was an exception to what I have been saying about bloggers’ treatment of this information (without directly naming him) from my first post on this topic.

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blogging, ethics blogging, blogosphere, Club Troppo, ethics, Hoax, KatherineWilson, KeithWindschuttle, Quadrant

I’ve had to be away from my computer since Friday, as I’ve been entertaining visitors. When I came back the last thread had been transformed out of all recognition. I thought that rather than address everything that had been said there with further comments, and in the light of further posts at The Content Makers and LP, it might be good to post anew.

Over the last few days a mysterious piece of woodwork called the “journalists versus bloggers frame” has kicked around a fair bit. What motivated my original post was, in part, a desire to trouble an idea that seemed to be doing the rounds that comparisons between bloggers and journalists were necessarily uninformative, even misleading - “out of court” as I said initially. I elaborated on this in comments in the last thread. While I don’t think it’s the only lens through which practices of blogging ought to be viewed, I think there are times in which it’s perfectly legitimate and relevant to compare the actions of bloggers and journalists. There are circumstances in which the actions of bloggers and journalists overlap sufficiently for the comparison to be informative. This is one of them.

What’s at issue is a very specific question: when is it right to publish details of someone’s identity, knowing that revealing this information may have damaging effects on the the reputation of the person concerned? This is an ethical question with implications for the practice of anyone engaged in publishing information. My answer to the question is: the appropriate time to name someone publicly is after you’ve had some solid confirmation of the person’s identity, and ideally this should be first-hand confirmation.

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blogging, ethics, media blogging, blogosphere, Club Troppo, ethics, journalism, Larvatus Prodeo, Margaret Simons, media

This is my first post upon re-entry to academic life - I am now lecturing at the University of Wollongong and I am based in the beautiful Illawarra region. I’ll have more time and capacity to devote to my participation in this blog from now on, and I’m able to have a broader view of the issues Gatewatching has always dealt with, now that I’m no longer neck deep in the business of being a full-time practitioner.

The occasion for this post is the wash-up from Katherine Wilson’s hoaxing of Keith Windschuttle. I’m a little late on this, and my only excuse is the trauma of moving cities for the sixth time in five years. Most readers who are familiar with the Australian media and blogosphere will be across the details, so I won’t rehearse them here. If you don’t know what I’m referring to, and want a blow-by-blow account from near the centre of the action, check out the archive over at Margaret Simons’ place. There are also many astute analyses of the situation online.  For mine, Graham Young’s at On Line Opinion is the most sustained and productive reflection on the incident to date, even if I don’t necessarily agree with all of the conclusions.

First, a disclaimer: I enjoyed the hoax immensely, I think it worked, I think Windschuttle had it coming, and I think his excuses exceeded even the hoax itself for entertainment value. Among other things, his explanations show him appealing for slack that he has never been prepared to cut for other scholars. I think Margaret Simons behaved ethically throughout, and in my view most suggestions that the hoax wasn’t worth doing proceed largely from political or personal axe-grinding.

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Graham Young, blogging, citizen journalism academia, blogging, citizen journalism, Crikey, Graham Young, journalism, Larvatus Prodeo, Margaret Simons, newspapers

Another quickie, related to a couple of recent post from me about the monetisation of blogging, and “tipping points” which might mean more people making a living from their political commentary. I spied a couple of pieces today suggesting that Australia’s online ad market - though it’s slowed lately - is projected to grow substantially over the next little while.

It’s pretty boring when bloggers boast and obsess about their traffic, but for those who wish to monetise their work, it might be worth having a chat to the ad agencies who can connect bloggers with this spend. Again, it’s an indication that we’re getting closer to the point where independent “content-makers” may be able to viably make at least part of their living from ad revenue.

If, as its suggested in those pieces, the increasing spend online is coming at the expense of traditional advertising outlets, it may be more bad news for newspaper journalism. Talking about changing shares of a finite advertising spend is maybe the only context where the dumb “bloggers versus journalists” framing of “future of journalism” debates has any application. Even so, while some bloggers may be claiming a small proportion of the advertising spend that used to go to more traditional outlets, but newspapers’ problems are much more extensive than this.

UPDATE: The Oz has picked up on this story, too.

Uncategorized advertising

Just a quick one, but I thought it worth noting that Crikey has snagged some of Australia’s best, and some of my favourite bloggers. You can see the line-up on the Crikey blogs page. The great psephs, Possum Comitatus and William Bowe, have now gone full time over to Crikey from their respectiveformer haunts. Andrew Bartlett seems to be there at least part-time, and other bloggers represented include Crikey editor Jonathan Green, Charlie Happel (on sport) and Crikey’s incomparable cartoonist First Dog on the Moon.

It seems like the psephs have successfully taken their audiences with them. I don’t know the details, but I’d wager there might be a retainer in it for the head-counters, and rightly so. Possum has been very productive since arriving at the new site, pumping out more posts than usual, and the Poll Bludger’s comments threads are still in the hundreds.

I posted a little while back about a possible “tipping-point”, where bloggers were perhaps starting to turn over enough dough to make at least part of a living. Obviously Crikey has seen the potential for monetising these bloggers’ audiences, and they have done a great job of putting them on the Crikey site, using Wordpress for a blogging platform.

It’s a much more sympathetic use of blogging than we’ve had so far from any of the big media organisations. It figures. Crikey are much closer to the groundswell of expert political blogging, and have had Possum and William Bowe writing in the newsletter over a long period. They also have more to gain by getting this right. While sometimes its easy to feel like big media are attempting to co-opt bloggers, Crikey has every reason to promote these voices, to develop their audience, and associate them with the Crikey brand.

Anyhow - good luck to all concerned. To one observer at least, it seems a positive, and potentially important development in Australia’s political blogosphere.

Uncategorized Andrew Bartlett, Crikey, Poll Bludger, Possum Comitatus

A bit of overdue housekeeping on some research progress in the project. Even though I’m now at GetUp! almost full time, I’m still engaged with research collaboration at QUT, and I hope to publish something on the experience of building an e-democracy project in the not-too-distant future.

For now, the news is that a few weeks back, Professor Terry Flew and I submitted a paper to an international journalism journal, based on the youdecide2007 experience. It’s called “Journalism as Social Networking: The Australian youdecide project and the 2007 Federal election.” (Obligatory colon ahoy!) You can go to the QUT eprints archive to download it. Academic publishing being what it is, it may be awhile before it appears in a published form, but everyone should feel free to read and discuss this preprint version.

We’re pretty happy with it at this point - basically it combines the stuff I’ve banged on about concerning the four dimensions of the work of the “preditor” - the emerging professional role of facilitating citizen journalism - with a whole lot of context concerning the state of journalism, the state of news media in Australia, and the changing role of journalism education.

The paper feels well-timed, given the consternation and discussion around the future of media careers and institutions in Australia at the moment. (I heard some fascinating versions of this at the “Media in the Pub” event last week in Sydney.)

Anyway, let’s see what the peer reviewers say! Enjoy.

citizen journalism, media citizen journalism, journalism, media, Terry Flew, youdecide2007

As already mentioned on this blog, I left QUT a couple of months ago to help out GetUp! with some e-democracy projects. The first iteration of the biggie, Project Democracy, is now live.

Especially over the last couple of weeks, there have been a lot of long days and nights with the awesome team I’ve been working with - Darren Loasby (GetUp!’s online director), James Ferguson and Charles Lee. A major component of the project - the technology that parses Hansard so that you can keep track of individual parliamentarians - was developed by some hardworking volunteers at OpenAustralia. And the whole GetUp! team have contributed endless ideas and support.

We’ve focussed initially on the Senate - partly because the finely-balanced Senate is a current focus for everyone concerned with Australian politics. But it’s also nice because it’s GetUp!’s third birthday, and the very first GetUp! campaign focussed on the Senate. A little bit of poetry there.

Alongside GetUp!’s traditional campaigning activities, Project Democracy represents a move towards facilitating democratic engagement - we want to help people communicate more directly with their representatives, and to understand better what they do. There’s a lot of functionality embedded in the site - people can follow their Senators’ parliamentary performances, track them in the media with tailored newsfeeds, see the whole chamber or their State’s senators at a glance, or contact their senators directly.

Also - and this is where it’s continuous with earlier projects I’ve worked on - people can sound off about how they think their senators are going on our Action Blogs. The whole thing is an experiment in combining existing capacities in a form which - I hope - will enhance political engagement and social capital.

Having said all of that, we’re really looking for feedback on the whole site, and information on the sort of functions people would like to see on the site in future, especially when we roll out the House of Reps component soon. Gatewatching readers should feel free to discuss it here, but we’re also happy to get feedback through the PD site. I think that we’ll be integrating a whole range of things, but people probably know that my interest is in building community at the hyperlocal level. Watch this space.

I’ll keep posting about this over the next little while. For now, I’m looking forward to a weekend of sleeping in, and the Cowboys at Shark Park on Saturday night.

Uncategorized e-democracy, GetUp!, Project Democracy, Senate

It’s been awhile between drinks here on Gatewatching. My excuse is that I’ve moved jobs, and things have been (and remain) frantic here at GetUp! (Not sure about Axel and Barry’s excuses )Big news soon, but the job has been something of a continuation of my work on youdecide2007 and queenslanddecides, with a little bit of open australia mixed in, and some other spesh features. Watch this space.

Anyway, I’m inspired to post today by what seems to me to be indications of a definite move into a second “wave” or “phase” of Australian political blogging. A lot of bloggers seem to be moving towards group blogging, underwritten by advertising revenue - higher-traffic political bloggers are moving towards long-term, monetised and (hopefully) more sustainable models of content-making. (This is apart from those bloggers - the Bolts, Blairs and Dunlops - who are already operating successfully within MSM sites).

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Uncategorized advertising, blogosphere, business, journalism

I’m packing up my cubicle at Gatewatching HQ today, getting ready for the big move to Sydney for the new job at GetUp!

I’m excited about the new challenge, but it’s a sad moment, and the conference that Axel’s been liveblogging here has been, for me, an occasion to catch up with the colleagues who have made this job such a valuable and fascinating experience. My Gatewatching comrades Axel and Barry are included in this, but there’s also Terry Flew (who’s been a valued mentor and friend for many years), and OLO’s Graham Young who’s also become a good mate as a result of this job. I have active collaborations with all these folks that I’m looking forward to delivering over coming months.

Perhaps it’s ironic that my last act in the job before coming onto campus to pack up was attending an excellent plenary by Mark Deuze on the accelerating impermanence of life and work in contemporary culture. Mark’s presentation is part of ongoing research that extends the arguments offered in his book, Media Work. In the presentation, he was thinking through the mobility and liquidity of modern life. It was food for thought for me personally - after less than a year here, and a little over two years in a previous job in the UK, I’ll now have had more employers in half a decade than my father has in his whole career, which he’s spent happily in the city he was born in. What’s gained and lost in the move towards contant mobility?

Other people will be packing their offices today, and thinking about impermanence, including the outgoing Senators of the Australian Democrats. The Democrats have been an important part of Australian political history, but in particular bloggers and blog-watchers will be wishing Andrew Bartlett all the best in post-political life. It’s a great shame that the boldest experiment in Australian political blogging is now coming to an end. Lots of stuff about this around the blogs - I’ll leave it at linking to Andrew’s own post detailing the last question asked by a Democrat in the Senate, on child protection.

It’s also worth noting that Andrew was representing Queensland in the senate, the state in which I’ve lived my entire life (apart from the sojourn in Britain). Suddenly, there is a brace of Queenslanders at the highest echelons of public life, but people like Andrew have been central in incrementally changing the image of the State in the minds of other Australians. I think many of my friends and colleagues have been helping out there, too. I’ll be leaving the State for an extended period now, and I’ll miss it terribly, but I expect to be amazed each time I return at the rapidity of the changes happening Statewide, not least to the landscape of Brisbane.

I guess nothing lasts forever any more.

Uncategorized Andrew Bartlett, Mark Deuze, Milestones

Gary Sauer-Thompson alerts us today to a very, very peculiar piece by David Burchell on something he calls the “political blogosphere”. Burchell’s version doesn’t much resemble the one I know. I’ll quote a little:

At other times it seems the wheels of the political blogosphere are greased with the oil of personal vitriol.

Indeed, on one view the chief purpose of the political blog isn’t the production of argument, but rather the staging of ceremonies of degradation and purification. The blogger’s goal is to solidify a tribe of acolytes around them, and to ritually degrade those who are seen as renegades from the cause.

Now, some of Burchell’s past work I’ve enjoyed, including his book Western Horizon, but this is pretty glib, to say the least. It’s an utterly sweeping comment to make about political bloggers, and anyone who reads political blogs regularly knows that right across the political spectrum, there are bloggers who do much more than engage in flame-baiting. Even those who do specialise in snark will usually have more interesting and considered things to say from time to time.

It’s hard to know who he means. Is Burchell including his colleagues at the Australian in this (whose work is often now presented online in “blog” form)? What about News Limited colleagues who are active bloggers, like Tim Blair, Andrew Bolt, Tim Dunlop and Jack Marx? Is he saying that they are all just “staging ceremonies of degradation and purification”? Or does he just mean independent bloggers? If so, is it really the case that blogs from Ambit Gambit to Club Troppo to LP to the psephs are all just engaging in personal abuse? These don’t seem to me to be sustainable claims. Also, whose “view” is he quoting here? None of it makes a lot of sense, or rather, it’s hard to make sense of because it’s at such a high level of generality.

One of Sauer-Thompson’s commenters suggests that Burchell’s really just “trolling in a column”, and the lack of specificity or generosity in his comments makes that conclusion tempting. P’raps he needs someone to offer him a guided tour of Australia’s blogosphere - from left to right, and from MSM to independent bloggers - in order that he might come to appreciate the diversity that’s out there.

More on this from Kim at LP.

citizen journalism blogophobia, blogosphere, citizen journalism, David Burchell