Having talked to a few friends over the last few days who aren’t political junkies (but are more taken with politics than perhaps the average voter), I’m not at all convinced that the Liberal leadership shenanigans are of anywhere near the same interest to most folks as they are to those of us who’ve been as transfixed as we become during election campaigns. I’ve already commented that there’s a strange forgetting (or perhaps a return to the default truth) among political journalists that politics – and the nation which will be confronting climate change – exists outside a few rooms in Canberra.
Similarly, we’ve seen a classic case of the calling into being of a phantom public in all the emails and texts sent to Liberal MPs – polarised between categories (“denialists”, etc) which hardly have any resonance in most Australians’ vocabularies or lived experience. Yet it’s taken for reality, and it seemingly has had a real effect in that alternative universe that is the Liberal Parliamentary Party.
So what of the role of the media in all this?
With some exceptions, such as Laura Tingle on Lateline tonight (and, for that matter, Annabel Crabb the other night), the legacy media has intoned very predictable scripts (and as I’ve emphasised, forgotten an alternative one – “strong leader stands up to party dinosaurs and appeals over their heads to public” – which Malcolm Turnbull has been busily reinscribing).
Even in alternative media, such as Crikey, we’ve seen Bernard Keane (aside from his strange obsession with talking up virtues few others can see in Andrew Robb) swing from the standard “dead man walking” talk to “Turnbull is actually going to fight!”… why the latter was a surprise, I have no idea. I’d been suggesting some days earlier it was characteristic of his persona, and also politically rational. Yet the commentariat in their massed battalions seemed to anticipate his folding in the face of the Minchin putsch.
As Andrew Elder asked, could this be the week the journosphere failed?
Let’s not forget Turnbull may win on Tuesday.
What, then, of the frenzied expression of common press gallery wisdom?
Will the shorter Peter Van Onselen still be “Hockey can unify the party because he’s Minchin’s sock puppet”?
Perhaps the only “high level sources” they talk to are the ones who have an agenda. Like I said recently, it’s a bit like Imre Salusinszky having his fill of Chinese lunches at various eateries in and around Sussex Street and then retailing the latest goss on who’s going to overthrow Nathan Rees, only to find that Nathan Rees overthrew his detractors, and no journo saw it coming. Perhaps because something actually happened, as opposed to the endless non-event of leadership talk.
Sometimes politics doesn’t play to script.
Turning to Twitter, as Worst of Perth commented here, it’s been very interesting indeed. For anyone assiduously following this thing, it really has been the best real time news source, and quite amusing and fun too. It’s very well suited to these sorts of fast moving events, and the degree of inaccuracy and rumour is precisely the same as what makes it into the press and the telly. Not least because a fair bit of it is Sky News as it happens…
Interesting also to me has been the fact that a lot of the journos in Canberra who’ve been of greatest value are ones whose bylines are not well known. Maybe they’re working a bit harder than the tv stars and ubiquitous commentators?
On the other hand, as I’ve already alluded to, seasoned, intelligent and insightful commentators such as Laura Tingle prepared to buck the herd, whose work in the Fin Review is only available to those who spend 3 bucks on the paper, and who gets less air time than the show ponies, have shown their worth – as on Lateline tonight.
But, let’s get all this in perspective.
It’s also significant that while #spill is now the most popular tag on Australian Twitter, the fifth is #xmedialab – which is a discussion about a cross media conference that is on in Sydney at the moment. This medium doesn’t have much of a reach, and it has less of a reach than blogs, and slower moving media generally. And that may be because a lot of people are simply not interested in the scoop of the second (83 new tweets since you started searching).
At the same time, the core audience of political junkies, if Twitter is any indication, haven’t been clicking through to MSM stories at all. As Stephen Feneley commented at #spill, journos tweeting is a double edged sword.
That’ll be related to a shift where those who are most engaged around issues are finding their own spaces to interact, often private – lots of the old core of the web is shrinking as people highly attuned to particular communities of interest resort to discussing their own take on stories on social media sites such as Facebook without even looking at actual media reports, preferring to rely on others’ quick summaries of links through social distribution. Whether or not this becomes a wider trend is, at this stage, moot, but something is underway. But it replicates ancient social and cultural patterns – talking about stuff you’ve heard, which is different from silent reading, or even a more organised and structured discussion of what is read. The first is Twitter writ large.
Both practices have their value, but the assumption that reading and reflection is superior has had its day, unless it’s a normative pronouncement as opposed to a description of social reality.
So there may be a role for slow and fast in this fast moving media world. But slow needs to catch up, and fast needs to slow down and be more reflective if it’s to compete with the best of slow.
But that needs to be understood, and the limits of the publics who are both being invoked and created through these discourses have to be recognised too.
I will say that it is a bit of a worry that a heap of stuff that needs to have been factored in, including but not limited to the actual policy shift involved in the CPRS amendments, what’s happening elsewhere in the world in the lead up to Copenhagen, the new dimensions of climate change, and even what the government has at stake, has completely dropped off the radar. At LP, we’ve tried our best to keep that stuff in focus. But it’s been slim pickings anywhere else, with only a few distinguished exceptions such as New Matilda.
Some lessons need to be drawn from all this which transcend the tired dichotomies of legacy and social media, and I hope they will be.
Ps: LP can be followed on Twitter here.
Elsewhere: Axel Bruns at Gatewatching.
Update: The Newspoll results analysed tonight certainly suggest a disjunction between press commentary and voters’ sentiments, and indeed, the view from the Canberra political class and Liberal voters in the cities.
Update: The Newspoll results analysed tonight certainly suggest a disjunction between press commentary and voters’ sentiments, and indeed, the view from the Canberra political class and Liberal voters in the cities.
If twitter were more popular it could become useless because it may update too quickly to keep up. The pollbludger blog comments were updating the happenings in the Senate at the same time, so liveblogging complemented #spill and still has a good run if you can find the right blog.
Agree with all of that Mark, only adding that Laura Tingle looked absolutely stunning on telly last night…
For me, this whole schemozzle has been most interesting for the way the media, or certain media celebrities, have become a central players. Mark Colvin on ABC RN PM tried unsuccessfully to put this to an increasingly hysterical Andrew Bolt the other night…and the Parrot is doing his usual thing with the elderly and frightened.
These frothing demogogues are undoubtedly responsible for the “millions of emails flooding into MPs offices”. Is this country about to become the world’s laughing stock because nobody can call this nonsense for what it is?
In the US they have Limbaugh and Glenn Beck, and the “tea baggers” despoiling the health reform debate. Here we have Bolt and the Parrot and their emailers running our parliamentary democracy into the ground with fear and ignorance about climate change.
Pitiful.
I wouldn’t have thought so. The internal ructions of the divided Opposition of a far off country is hardly likely to even be on the radar of the good people of Mongolia or Burkina Faso as they go about their daily affairs.
Think of the competition. Signor Berlusconi’s comings and goings hold the world enthralled. We wait with bated breath for the next revelation about his extraordinarily convoluted domestic affairs and marvel at his oblivious disregard for the separation between public duty and private interest.
France’s vertically challenged President gives him a run for his money by trying to set his twenty three year old son up for a political career in a blatant display of nepotistic arrogance and hubris. In fairness to him he is a model of rectitude compared to the disgusting Jacques Chirac, who for years made France the laughing stock of the world until Signor Berlusconi picked up that mantle.
So calm down Grace and put your feet up and enjoy the show as the Liberal Party gves us the pyrotechnics of its implosion. You may never see the like of it again.
But don’t worry yourself that on the streets of Reykjavík or Montevideo or Barcelona or Seoul people are rolling on the floor as it unfolds.
Ony a very precious mind would do that.
Bolta and the Parrot may be trying, but they aren’t succeeding. The good folk of the electorates of Higgins and Braddon are about to give the Liberal Party a massive clip over their denialist ear if the Mad Monk gets within a bull’s roar of the Liberal leadership.
Bolta and the Parrot mobilise only a sociopathic klatch of keyboard kommandos bunkered down in their mum’s basements, spewing their ignorant bile into the endlessly capacious blogosphere.
Real politicians take infinitely more notice of actual polls, especially their own internal polls, than they do of frothing Boltistas and Lesser Noisy Parrots.
(Braddon > Bradfield)
I think the population at large have pretty much already made their minds up over whether or not AGW is a reality and whether or not we need a CPRS.
There is also a surprisingly large constituency who don’t care about the issue at all, so all of this is washing over them without leaving any sort of impression. They will vote purely with their hip pockets (as always) at the next election – if they bother to vote formally at all.
The actual polls are telling the story about where people sit. The Bolts and the Parrots can carry on as much as they like but they are essentially irrelevant on this issue: their core constituency are the hard right (ie people who would never vote Labor or Greens in a pink fit) whose numbers are diminishing rapidly and who are, therefore, increasingly irrelevant in the political landscape.
This issue not a positive vote-changer for the Libs and if anything, it has the potential to damage their small “L” liberal base very badly. A lose-lose.
Nice wedge, Mr Rudd.
Mark,
fantastic post. I worry about this, because IMO reading, thinking and reflection are critical to understanding wikkid problems. Climate change is especially complex where it gets into risk perception and management (re the current meltdown ovr the CPRS), and the mass psychology of what is happenin is fascinating. Where can we get mature discussions of this? For example, Rudd is hiding the fact that a carbon price needs to be spread through the economy and this can be managed. Perhaps it’s because the CPRS is such a regressive mechanism for doing so in its current form, but in theory, can be done effectively and with equity. I think asking for efficiency and getting all three is too much, partly because the accounting is never going to be that simple. I think explaining where it might impact on the household budget would be useful. Jobs need to be handled by specific plans (e.g., industrial transformation plans for the La Trobe and Hunter Valleys). Equity can be managed by green power to health-card holders and suchlike being underwritten by the sale of permits/taxes. Also for public sector adaptation and so on.
So the public discussion actually needs information and reliable info is in very poor supply.
Tweeting might be good sport, but it needs to be balanced with something deeper and wider.
Few people take an interest and even fewer are properly informed. The End.
Blogs are the perfect venue for interested citizens to participate in grass roots political discussion. How many people out of 20 million contribute meaningfully? A couple of hundred? Half of whom are crazy.
So yes, most people couldn’t give a continental about emission trading schemes or the Liberal Party leadership.
The Libs need to settle down, all the productivity losses arising from people following #spill is going to kill our competitiveness – they need to start thinking about the country and the economy. We’ll be RUINED.
In other news, I’m thinking of setting up an offset scheme, for a small fee I am prepared to look busy on behalf of all those people who are twittering the Lib crisis.
KL: “A couple of hundred? Half of whom are crazy.”
You can say that again.
I prefer reading comments here than following the #spill fest, on a signal to noise basis. Twitter is mesmerising and can give the illusion of reportage, but after a coupla hours how much of the gonzo speculative goss steadies into fact?
It was a day when I would have turned to the radio – the ABC is after all, our emergency services broadcaster – and radio seems the place to go for the xtrem news events. A (mediated) place for the topical, local and live.
Alas, cricket.
The next day I was thinking the cricket was probably a good thing. There’s only so much of the nano-moves of politics that you can take, and no doubt the dust will settle as the track dries out.
@8, thanks Roger.
This sounds like the political epitaph, self-authored, of a very lightweight person:
Hey Team re The ETS. Give me your views please on the policy and political debate. I really want your feedback.
Except for thee and me. Natch.
There is an obvious difference in quality between the swarming incoherence of Twitter and the reasoned, refined input you get from forums such as this.
Never used Instant Messaging myself, and Twitter is just collective Instant Messaging.
Inanity gives me a headache. And a lot of people are clinically inane.
grace, agree Laura not only scrubs up well on screen she is also a very astute political reporter and her comments were generally pretty sound imo.
I’ve only looked at Twitter once or twice, and have no desire to become a ‘user’.
I wonder if part of the appeal of Twitter is that it gives the writer more control over the responses he/she is forced to endure, and it’s easier to censor the responses there than the responses on regular blog threads?
Perhaps the whole ‘no need to think before you tweet’ angle is overblown, and what’s really important is that Twitter allows people to import their personal gatekeeping strategies from non-political social media into a medium that some are already calling ‘micro-blogging’?
Not too sure about you FX.
Anyone who wants people to be interested in what they’re tweeting would certainly not subscribe to a no need to think before you tweet approach.
I see it sort of like a really huge party, where some of it is good conversation with like-minded or interesting people, and some of it is being amused by someone who’s great with the one liner. You just ignore the idiots, like you do anywhere where people gather en masse.
AW: “You just ignore the idiots, like you do anywhere where people gather en masse.”
Do you refer here to the Reps, or the Senate?
Yes.
Reminds me of the barber man from Banjo’s Ironbark. “Keen at repartee” and the dull flat-headed youths “that had no brains at all.” Speed of reply or wit varies but hardly equates with intelligence. At another thread Van Onselen is accused of missing the point on twitter but getting it right when he has time to think.
Do you operate from memory or the unconscious? Are you on dial-up or broadband. And is the answer any better?
Heh Anna
Twit, Twitter, Twest,
We will never rest,
Until the twits have twittered,
And got it off their chest.
boom boom Mecurius
Anna, yes we need our inbuilt twitter filters 
Some more random thoughts (not tweets) here.
GregM@4: “So calm down Grace and put your feet up and enjoy the show as the Liberal Party gves us the pyrotechnics of its implosion. You may never see the like of it again.”
I was not referring to the Liberal Party ructions being of interest internationally, GregM (and thanks for detailing why we are just a pimple on the world’s bum), but it might be of interest internationally if we end up without an ETS prior to Copenhagen, and it looks like the denialists are in charge of our national debate.
Capiche?