A bit more of a wrap-up from the Australian Blogging Conference. If anyone missed my piece on where political blogs are and where political blogging is going, it’s been published in an edited version at New Matilda. Somewhat different reaction in the forum thread over there than it received here. You can also download vidcasts of some of the sessions from Barry Saunders’ blog - the introductory plenary, the citizen journalism session and the political blogging session. Most posts which arose out of the conference can be accessed through technorati by searching for the tag blogoz, Des Walsh has put together a very comprehensive links post, and Mel Gregg also has some interesting reflections at Home Cooked Theory.
In other (electoral/political) blogging news, the gang from Gatewatching will be doing a regular roundup of political blogging for the ABC as we segue into the election itself - Club Bloggery, and the ABC’s Poll Vault blog is well and truly up and running. The ABC also has a dedicated election opinion site - Unleashed. I’m aware of a few more election blogging projects, and will write more about them when they’re launched.
Interesting post, Mark. Although, I’m lost by the responses to your piece. Is ‘Scoop11′ claiming that the internet is preventing the Revolution? That takes me back.
I think the blogosphere provides a really important democratic function, by providing a forum for discussion and exchange of views - views possibly not canvassed by the MSM. If it facilitates public discourse, how can it be a bad thing? I’m baffled.
taa for the abc’s Unleashed link.
Interesting mix of contributors tere.
Bruce Hawker will be close to labor’s market intelligence since it’s his firm that 07Kev was effectively outsourced to. Trevor Cook’s firm had Graham Morris, the famous jwh confidant, as a partner at one stage, so he’s prolly worth listening up to for that reason alone. Watching these two PR pros shape up, 2.0 style, could be amusing and instructive.
There’s the obligatory boffin ( term not used pejoritively here btw) -”director of the Australian Election Study since 1987 and chair of the 50-nation Comparative Study of Electoral Systems since 2003″.
And there’s some funsters, like the proto-laboratchick with the soul of an inspired copywriter -”Liberals on Drugs” is her piece. But most fun is the odd couple, the tory tosspots, one ancienne and one nouveau, who show how not to write for the 2.0 platform.
Looking at the comments score tells a story: the other sensible thoughtful contributors, capable of nuance, get a few, generally considered, and in some cases they reply, setting up a genuine discourse, as befits the paradigm.
On the other hand the crude hagiography and bowdlerism of the liberatchicks, snr and jnr, is given long shrift. They attract nearly 5 times the number of comments, mostly unkind, as the other 5 contributors combined.
It’s a bit sad and unsporting really: one would have thought the Cons could have found someone a bit more worthy to front for them. Perhaps it’s another Luvvy plot, a la the Great GW swindle after-show debate, to invite only Cons on that make them look silly?
The saddest part was Barnett not being able to resist having a pathetic dig at his rival, more successful in terms of impact, jwh biographers. It’s as if he’d just found a cuckoo in his nest.
Kymbos, yep, I think it’s that weird “if people are on the internet, they can’t be marching in the streets” thing which I tried to demolish in my Griffith Review article last year but obviously some people are very attached to their cliches!
Danny, I understand there’ll be more contributors to Unleashed in due course.
More counter-revolutionary propaganda from the soi-disant bourgeoise apparatchik Bahnisch, posing as cool analysis yet utterly tangled in the iron soup of class-interest. Bahnisch, noble platoon commander in the war-of-all-against-all seems incapable of realising the true basis of political power lies in the columns of industrial labour not the columns of ‘meta-blogging’ he reels off as he attempts to wave away the objective, actually existing dalectic of the internet — much like a cuttlefish sprays ink to hinder its pursuers.
As a matter of revolutionary honour, I submit willingly to the People’s Tribunal for Proletarian Justice!
This may be the place to ask:
What’s the difference between Karl Marx and a semi-conductor?
One’s a dialectical …., the other’s a …… material.
Thanks for the Unleashed link.
Absolutely gobsmacked by David Barnett’s 4 October piece on our glorious Prime Minister.
Surely he jests.
Helen Razer is onboard (abc unleashed) now.
The link to the David Barnet gobsmackery is [link].
It’s a love letter, the purest expression of Howard Huggery you’re likely to see, if you’ve ever wondered about what makes the species tick, their wiring.
eg In case you thought Hawke and Keating were originals, not so: David disabuses us of the notion, sets us straight that they actually just took over JHo’s economic agenda. The piece has a surreal “Black Knight” quality to it.
No kidding, he actually writes: “(JHo) faces oblivion at the hands of Stalinist historians”.
David clearly thinks his hero deserves purple robes, and the least he can do is give him a wrap with some pretty purple prose. Sounds like they’re working their way through the 58 dozen of the good ones that got put down in 2001, under professional advice, and having a right old laugh as they dream this stuff up.
I think we know when the election will be called: when the good gear runs out.
I think the Labor Victory Front has opened its internet campaign!
Barbara Bennett is stopping academics from getting information about workchoices.