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.

Read more…

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

I’ve been invited to speak at Media 140 in Sydney tomorrow. It’s now sold out so I can’t encourage readers to come along, though the ABC will be streaming it. This is an international event, which is focussed on exploring

the disruptive nature of ‘real-time’ social media looking at tools such as Twitter, live-blogging, facebook and other social networking tools as they rapidly transform the media in real-time.

I’ve been invited by way of the good people at newmatilda.com, where I occasionally pass comment on such topics.

Each speaker gets five minutes, and below the fold I’ve reproduced the text of something like what I’ll say tomorrow. Actually, this is more like what I would say I had the chance - there’s another couple of hundred words that need to come out of there by my calculations.

Comments and feedback most welcome - I was asked to speak on the Iranian elections and social media, and I’ve tried to address myself to what I saw as an overemphasis in some assessments on the specific role of Twitter in those events.

For those who are going - I’ll see you there.

Read more…

journalism abc, media140, Sydney, Twitter

Cardiff.
Taking time out briefly from the Future of Journalism 2009 conference here in sunny (really!) Cardiff (you can follow my liveblog here), I notice that the ABC has picked up on the developing story around Joe Hockey’s tweeting from the parliament floor. This ties straight into our discussion of political uses of social media in the paper Jason and I wrote for the e-Democracy conference in Vienna earlier this week, of course. For more on this, see the ABC story, which includes some insighful commentary from Jason. But be warned: it also contains a photo of Hockey… Read more…

politics e-democracy, Jason Wilson, Joe Hockey, parliament, politics, Twitter

Sorry to be absent for a while - the whole teaching thing tends to get in the way of blogging.

I’ve offered my take on Twitter and Iran over at the ABC’s Unleashed site. A sample:

It seems the whole world is talking about the role Twitter has played in the aftermath of the Iranian elections. Although some have claimed that this is the “big one”, and “the first revolution that has been… transformed by social media”, it may be best for the time being to be a little more measured in assessing the difference Twitter is making.

For the rest, head over and join the fray at Unleashed.

politics, social networking ABCUnleashed, Iran, politics, Twitter

UPDATE - FINAL VERSION (SENT TO STUDENTS) AVAILABLE FOR DOWNLOAD.

Hi folks - an update to the last post - the latest version of the “tweaching” resource, which includes a guide to using Twitwall and criteria for the students’ blog-based assessment.

Once again feel free to use under the CC attribution-noncommercial-sharealike license.

Comments, corrections and complaints to the usual places.

citizen journalism citizen journalism, LearningResources, Teaching, Tweaching, Twitter