gatewatching

Opinion piece in the ABC’s Opinion section here.

With the US election likely to be decided today, it’s a good time to have a look at the way social media’s been used in this campaign. From the massive fundraising of Obama’s microdonors, to the fact checking of candidates, to the raving lunacy of the wingnut fringe, this election has really brought social media’s promises and pitfalls to the fore.

The exemplar of a successful political campaign’s use of social media is, barring a sudden upset, Obama’s campaign. Foregoing public funding and the big money of lobbyists, Obama has raised enormous amounts of money from primarily small donors, at last count over $US390 million. Obama claims this will allow him to reduce lobbyist influence in government, though inevitably, the truth is somewhat more complex than that.

Obama’s campaign has also make powerful use of social networking tools such as Twitter, MySpace-style social networking sites and even an iPhone application. This commitment to using tools to engage with a primarily younger, tech savvy audience, combined with an commitment to Network Neutrality and a progressive tech policy (Barack Obama on technology and innovation - PDF) has certainly helped his support amongst younger voters. McCain’s admission that he doesn’t know how to use a computer hasn’t helped his regain any of that support.

Read more…

Uncategorized abc, Barack Obama, democracy, e-democracy, election, McCain, Obama, politics, psephology, QUT, social media, social networking, USA

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

Along with his fellow pseph bloggers, Possum Comitatus made a big splash during the Federal Election campaign, and he now has a loyal, politically literate readership. Now he’s giving some more back to the Australian blogosphere.

On the weekend, he launched a companion site for his blog, the Possum Box, that he’s thrown open as a forum for anyone who’d like to make a start in political blogging. He explains it in the about section of the new blog:

The Possum Box is a spin off from the Possums Pollytics site , providing a means for both occasional political writers and new political bloggers to have their work exposed to a larger audience.

While the internet is often described as having removed the barriers to entry in the broad media space, the obscurity faced by new bloggers and occasional writers is the biggest impediment to a new media landscape where quality can be allowed to speak for itself.

This project attempts to assist in exposing new political writers to a larger audience with the hope of facilitating the underlying meritocratic powers of the internet - letting good stuff rise to the top, relatively quickly, even if only in its own niche area.

From my own experience of becoming an accidental blogger in 2007, readership grows from the charitable actions of larger established blogs in picking up the work of new people and exposing them to a larger audience. After being the beneficiary of such exposure by others and becoming an established high traffic blog in my own right, it’s only fair that I now do the same for new writers in the Australian political blogosphere - perhaps even encouraging the development of a valuable tradition in the process.

Great move, and nice to see someone recognising the lonely, difficult time people have when they’re starting out. The whole initiative is also incredibly refreshing in a space that so often seems consumed by the unlovely imperative to self-promotion. Good luck, Poss, and readers should get over to the site and see if they’d like to support it with their own pearls of wisdom. (There are two great posts there already).

(PS - My only concern is that “The Possum Box” sounds like another name for that place where one’s significant other sends one after a bout of bad behaviour - i.e. the “doghouse”. Never mind.)

blogging blogging, blogosphere, open publishing, Possum Comitatus, psephology, The Possum Box

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

Before, during and after the last Federal Election, psephological bloggers put MSM noses out of joint. They also demonstrated the value of alternative online sources of political information to a lot of people for the first time. Although some blogs like Poll Bludger, Possum’s Pollytics, Simon Jackman and Mumble had actually been around for awhile, an impending, much-anticipated election, and maybe (ironically) the MSM’s very prominent fulminations against them, brought these psephs to the attention of a wider audience.

The audience stayed because these blokes (and they are all blokes) write well, know what they’re talking about, offer comprehensive information archives and/or new and useful interpretations of polling material, and have an infectious enthusiasm for the mechanics of electoral politics and polling. In the last little while, I’ve interviewed both Possum and William Bowe from Poll Bludger. These interviews will be appearing soon in published forms, but what came through strongly in my conversations with both of them was that their main motivations were pretty altruistic. They were driven mostly by a desire to share information and knowledge, t to talk to others with similar interests and (especially in Possum’s case) to correct the grave calumnies in the MSM’s “interpretations” of polling. Of course, they also get kudos, job offers (Possum now writes regularly for Crikey), lots of readers and the pleasure of the odd smackdown, but fundamentally they’re working to educate their audience in a pretty specialised branch of knowledge. (That’s how the blogosphere “gift economy” works, as Margaret Simons book argues far more eloquently than I could.) As a result, many readers, including myself, now have the words “margin of error” forever embazoned on their minds, will never read the Australian’s Newspoll wrap in the same way again, and wonder daily whether their $1.30 is really money well spent.

Read more…

Graham Young, blogging academic, blogging, Graham Young, Margaret Simons, Mumble, Poll Bludger, polling, Possum Comitatus, psephology, What the People Want

Jeff Jarvis smacks down the American media’s love for (and lack of skill at) horse race politics:

It’s amazing that reporters love horse-race coverage since they’re so damned lousy at it…
Any idiot can bet on a horse and lose. And there’s a word for them. Losers.

While we’ve also been quite critical here about the Australian election coverage and its horse-race narratives, we’re very lucky to have an electoral system that is open to good psephological analysis. As Simon Jackman points out in addressing the lack of an American Antony Green:

The United States doesn’t have an Antony Green. I’m not sure it can. It doesn’t have the ABC (the national broadcaster), it doesn’t have the AEC, nor compulsory voting, nor standardized, nationwide election administration (balloting procedures, registration procedures, etc).

Read more…

blogging, citizen journalism abc, blogging, citizen journalism, elections, investigative, journalism, poll wars, psephology

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

In the Outsiders post earlier today, I mentioned that Possum said he was bringing his regular service back online after a short break in the real world. He has delivered immediately with a reply to The Australian’s Dennis Shanahan’s criticism of the psephosphere last week.

Read Shanahan’s column first, then proceed directly to Possum’s post.

We’ve written about last year’s poll wars here, in our ABC column and in some academic publications before. They’ve been ignited again, and once more it seems to be the Oz that’s buying the fight. To repeat our earlier arguments - this is a struggle over cultural capital, and the authority to interpret political information, but it may well turn out to be counter-productive for Shanahan. Possum’s reasoning in this latest reply seems compelling, but the fact that bloggers can actually bring expert knowledge to these topics might well be the very thing that inspires broadsheet snark.

We’ll watch this unfold with interest.

UPDATE: Let the record show that William Bowe at Poll Bludger and Peter Brent at Mumble responded to the Shanahan on the 21st. We would have got to this earlier but we were busy last week

blogging, media blogging, journalism, media, poll wars, psephology