gatewatching

Newspoll Tuesday has become a bit of an occasion in the Australian blogosphere. The influence of the pseph bloggers, the moments of antagonism between the blogosphere and the Oz last year, the motivation to enter into further fruitful dialogue with Dennis Shanahan, and the urge to take Dr Nelson’s temperature have meant that most of the major blogs will offer some opinion on the latest numbers.

Today’s no exception. The headline news, which even Mr Shanahan has forced himself to read out, is that Nelson’s surge is over for the moment, and that Labor has boosted its support at the Coalition’s expense. Nice takes include Tree of Knowledge’s snarky rhetorical questions and disturbing photoshopping, Kim at LP’s questions about the media’s real influence on public opinion, Andrew Bolt’s call for Dr Nelson’s head, and Tim Dunlop’s scepticism about the whole concept of a “Honeymoon”. Pride of place, as always, goes to the psephos takes - Pollbludger’s discussion thread, Mumble’s spin smackdowns, and Possum’s detailed analysis (including wonky graphics and a Pollytracker update).

Yes, Newspoll Tuesday gives a warm fuzzy feeling of regularity for the blogosphere connoisseur. But it may be more important than that. Even though it’s based on an MSM poll, it might show that the Australian blogosphere is developing it’s own news cycles and temporality. The peculiar trajectory of the development of political blogging here (as well as the features of Australian democracy) mean that, at least once a fortnight, everyone is talking about the same thing.

Uncategorized blogosphere, Bolt, Dennis Shanahan, Larvatus Prodeo, Mumble, Newspoll, Poll Bludger, Possum Comitatus, psephology, The Australian, Tree of Knowledge

Update: For those prepared to contemplate the erotic allure of blogspot profile photos in relation to the Henson debate, the NSFW (language) Grodsthink for this week should provide some food for thought.

This week, in the tissues and the blogosphere, there has been a lot of discussion of art, and its “evil twin” pornography, in relation to some photos. A lot of it’s been that simplistic - either Bill Henson’s photos are art or porn, either we should plump for “freedom of expression” or the “protection of children”. In this sense, many responses have amounted to little more than a less-than-helpful jerking of the knees.

For mine, neither one side’s claims to be speaking for common decency and the Law, nor the other side’s gratuitous displays of cultural authority or browbeating dismissals of “philistinism” have been particularly enlightening. The whole debate so far has caused nothing but confusion for some people, not least pollsters in some metropolitan tabloid newspapers.

(Image from Yesterday’s Crikey) Read more…

Daily Telegraph academia, art, Bill Henson, Bolt, Crikey, criticism, Daily Telegraph, Larvatus Prodeo, Mentalization-Positive, Sorrow at Sills Bend

One of the topics that consistently exercises the Australian blogosphere is global warming. What’s at issue, of course, is whether or not human, industrial activity is contributing to an increase in global temperatures, and possible environmental catastrophe.

There is an orthodox scientific view on this, as expressed in documents like the IPCC Report, the Stern Report, the Garnaut Report etc. It’s fair to say that most left-leaning bloggers and many centrists accept this view. But there are prominent blogospheric voices - including very popular bloggers like Tim Blair, Andrew Bolt and Jennifer Marohasy - who hold to a minority opinion that not all is as it seems in climate science.

Variously, they argue that climate change is not happening (or it isn’t as severe as we’re told it is), and/or that it is happening but it has nothing to do with human activity, and/or that the scientific orthodoxy is really just groupthink/counter-enlightenment propaganda/institutional capture by leftist scientists/scientific careerism.

The debates in this area can, of course, be quite heated. Each side has been ranging its favoured experts and arguments in tetchy exchanges for years. What’s fascinating is that it amounts to precisely the kind of thing that has come up in recent discussions here - an intra-elite debate, for which there is only so much space in a gatekept MSM, being carried on and maintained on a range of prominent and not-so-prominent blogs, which has ongoing implications in terms of its possible influence on public debate and policy. I’m not concerned here to take a position on global warming - I’m more interested in how it’s playing out on A-list blogs and prominent independent news spaces.

Read more…

blogging blogging, Bolt, Brisbane, climate change, Graham Young, intra-elite debate, Jennifer Marohasy, John Quiggin, On Line Opinion, public sphere, Tim Blair

UPDATE: Grodscorp’s weekly podcast, this time including discussion of the Blair move, is here. NSFW - frequent coarse language.

I think it’s fair to say that we here at Gatewatching have had an… interesting relationship with Tim Blair’s blog since we started posting here last year. I won’t go over the details of our spat - you can check out the archives if you like. In some ways a fight with Blair has probably become a rite of passage in the Australian blogosphere. Anyway, news is that he’s moved his blog onto the site of his main employer, the Daily Telegraph.

Blair’s blog has been one of the most successful Australian efforts in terms of traffic, not least because he’s been able to draw an international readership. He’s moved through several hosting set-ups - first on blogspot, then spleenville, then to the place he was blogging until today, timblair.net. All of this, apparently, has been independent of his work on the Bulletin and then the Tele as an editor and columnist. Now his blog has been integrated on the paper’s main site, and it esembles those of his News Limited colleagues Andrew Bolt, and Tim Dunlop (author of Blogocracy).

Read more…

Blair, Daily Telegraph, blogging Blair, blogging, Blogocracy, Bolt, Daily Telegraph, Dunlop, Grods, Larvatus Prodeo, MSM, news.com.au

Among the consequences of the emergence of the opinion-led blogosphere are, on the one hand, news organisations bringing prominent bloggers “inside the tent”, and on the other, presenting their op-ed writers work in a “blog-like” format. Whether you think that’s just due recognition of the affordances of blogging and the ’sphere’s emerging talent, or lip service and the co-optation of alternative voices will depend on what you think blogging is for.

What’s interesting to me is that, in turn, this allows differences of opinion within media organisations to emerge pretty well instantaneously. Today, for instance, Blogocracy’s Tim Dunlop has done a long post about his disagreeement with the underlying logic of a column by Malcolm Colless, published in this morning’s Australian.

Read more…

blogging, media blogging, Bolt, Dunlop, journalism, media, news.com.au, poll wars, psephology, The Australian