It’s been a tumultuous week in Australian politics - at times for all the wrong reasons -, and social media have played an important role in the events. My take on the impact of Twitter on the Liberal leadership crisis and political reporting has now been published at ABC Unleashed , and I’m reposting it here. I think I like my original title better…

Coalition All Atwitter over Climate Change

The extraordinary events in the Liberal party room over the past few days are destined to enter the annals of Australian politics for a number of reasons - not least because of the unprecedented flow of up-to-the-minute, first-hand, indeed first-person information through the short messaging service Twitter to the waiting journalists and the wider public beyond.

News about the latest statements for and against the CPRS from individual MPs, and updates on the numbers supporting or opposing Malcolm Turnbull were received and retweeted within seconds of their arrival, and at times one could form the impression that those waiting for a resolution had a better sense of Turnbull’s numbers than the Opposition Leader himself.

Finally, Turnbull’s antics at his press conferences, and the statements of politicians and pundits during various subsequent interviews, also found an instant audience of commentators, often responding to blatant inaccuracies and naked spin in the way they wished journalists would.

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Liberal Party, journalism, politics ABC Unleashed, Australia, climate change, Liberal Party, Malcolm Turnbull, politics, Twitter

Courtesy of Club Troppo’s always excellent Missing Link, I was led to read Lyn Calcutt’s view on the climate change blow-up of the last few days. Interestingly, it relates pretty well to the previous two posts on Gatewatching.  She thinks the latest GW spat is pretty unedifying, and writes:

Compare these brawls among a few high profile figures, where expertise is guarded with complexity and specialist terminologies, and the amazing collective intelligence at the psephological blogs before the election where both sides of politics left with more than they arrived with. People who just wanted to know who was going to win came out of it understanding some pretty sophisticated stuff about stats, demographics and strategy, and they could join in and learn even more from one another. The whole became more than the sum of its parts.

Hmmm. I can understand Lyn’s point of view, though I think the comparison has its limits. It should be remembered that the psephs have attracted their share of snark, too, getting some heavying from people in high places, and I have to say that I, at least, had to take some of their statistical reasoning on trust Still, the point is that she feels that the GW discussion is largely a matter of people sniping from entrenched positions, and that she’s not learning anything. For Lyn, the discussion is a little sterile.

I suppose it’s a fine line in all blogosphere stoushes - at what point does fighting your corner become raking over the coals of a stale debate? It’s very difficult to gauge, especially for people at the centre of the action who hold their beliefs passionately. And for some bloggers, on some issues, “agree to disagree” is not an option - there’s too much at stake.

Anyway, let’s hope no permanent damage is done in the current kerfuffle.

Stoush climate change, Lyn Calcutt, psephology, Stoush

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.

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

The latest Club Bloggery is up on the ABC. Here’s is the longer version.

By Jason Wilson, Barry Saunders, and Axel Bruns

Climate change dominated a couple of days of Federal Election campaigning earlier this week, with the major parties both fumbling in laying out their responses. Peter Garrett and Malcolm Turnbull were punished by the mainstream media for, respectively, revealing something approximating a real opinion about how climate change agreements should work, and for being involved in a debate about Government policy before it’s implemented.

Australia’s bloggers have been more nuanced in their coverage of environmental challenges over a much longer period, and unlike the mainstream media, they have been able to carry out analyses and host conversations that reveal the range of community opinions on what kind of shape our environment is in, and what we can or ought to do to remedy it.
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blogging, citizen journalism, government blogging, citizen journalism, climate change, environment, government, journalism