Tag Archive for 'bloggers'

Blogging as a technique for the cultivation of trust

Published
by
Mark
1 year ago
in Blogging, Books, Writers & Writing, Culture, Life, Media, Philosophy, Politics, Sociology, The Web and Urbanism
. 25 Comments

With all the discussion of blogwars around the place recently, I thought it might be apposite to put a different perspective. I was inspired (as I often am) by a couple of comments by Pavlov’s Cat – on a thread here this morning and on one of the many recent threads elsewhere comparing journalism and blogging. Those thoughts meshed in with some work I’ve been doing recently for a couple of interlinked academic projects – one being my ongoing work on social media with Axel Bruns for the Smart Services CRC and the other being a paper for the upcoming ANZCA conference.

In the course of my research, I’ve been reading lots of net history. There are exceptions to the rule, but the same dichotomised themes tend to recur again and again without resolution, and as a number of authors, including the excellent Fred Turner, point out – too many concepts have been taken over from 90s style cyber-utopians and Californian boosters without much reflection on their adequacy. One of those is Howard Rheingold’s “virtual community” (and to be fair to Rheingold, he’s much more nuanced than some of his academic epigones!)… We seem to be stuck in a hermeneutic circle – of the bad kind – suspended between online writing as media substitute and online communication as pure public sphere. If what occurs online falls short of either (heavily) ideal(ised) type, then it appears to fall into the worthless category by default.

Let’s have a look at some antidotes.

Continue reading ‘Blogging as a technique for the cultivation of trust’

The Australian has better pundits than the blogosphere?

Published
by
Mark
1 year ago
in Blogging, Media and State/Territory Elections
. 99 Comments

Well, knock me down with a feather! Taking a leaf out of Tim Blair’s book of selective quotation, The Australian has claimed I was the “last to call” the Queensland election. I must say things must have come to a pretty pass when they’re actually moved enough to name a blog they disagree with, rather than use the usual formulations of “ignorant bloggers”, etc, which conveniently don’t allow anyone to google up the blog in question and make up their own minds.

For the record, there’s a basic difference between my approach to punditry and that of the press wizards at the Oz. They wrote stories almost daily for months claiming the election could be called the next day, or the next week, or was “imminent” or whatever. I waited until I actually had firm information – from Labor sources. Not reading the tea leaves or joining the dots with the latest news story and claiming there was now a “trigger” or the government was “under pressure” (from whom, I wondered?)… I’ll stand by the claim that the final decision to go ahead with an early election hadn’t been made until late last week. Any enterprising journos who doubt that might like to, well, investigate – perhaps by contacting people involved in that decision rather than speculating in retrospect. If there were indeed cunning plans afoot which journos can now reveal, whatever stopped them writing about the said cunning plans when they were actually being made and implemented?

To adopt a phrase that’s been around the traps lately with regard to the distinction between bloggers and journos, I picked up the phone. I’m not so sure the pundits did. End of story. Let’s get on with talking about the campaign!

I’d also point out that the method of selective quotation does produce a real (and intended) distortion in the story about what was being said here. That’s no great surprise, but anyone interested in boring old fashioned stuff like the truth can make their own minds up by reading the posts in question in their entirety. They can be accessed via this tag.

Bloggers journos derivative

Published
by
Kim
1 year, 1 month ago
in Blogging and Media
. 29 Comments

In comments on the post here at LP about John Quiggin’s piece on the “picking up the phone” distinction some have made between journos and bloggers, Jack Strocchi asked:

When have news journos derived their copy off bloggers?

Some people think that the answer is… quite often. I’m with them. Consider this passage here at LP – posted by Mark on Saturday, about the negotiating stances of the government and The Greens and Steve Fielding on the stimulus package’s Senate passage:

I suspect that this manoeuvring might factor more into what comes out of the Budget sausage machine. The government has clearly been shifting its rhetoric on the unemployed, and I would expect the minors to be told that people on benefits will benefit as a result of the Henry Review. So it may be that some commitments might be made for future measures in exchange for current support. That would still, however, give the minor party Senators a real chance to shape the response to the economic downturn.

Then consider this from Michelle Grattan on the same topic, posted on the SMH website last night:

Continue reading ‘Bloggers journos derivative’

“Picking up the phone”

Published
by
Mark
1 year, 1 month ago
in Blogging, Media, Sociology and The Web
. 8 Comments

Folks might recall the criticism from Jason Wilson bloggers were subjected to over the Windschuttle/Wilson hoax. John Quiggin has written an excellent post in response to the implicit claim that bloggers are “lazy amateurs”. In so doing, he also highlights the invalidity of one of the premises of the interminable “journos v. bloggers” arguments – the assertion that journalists report news and bloggers provide opinion. Go read!

LP augmented!

Published
by
Kim
1 year, 3 months ago
in Blogging and Notices
. 6 Comments

As some may have already noticed, we’ve been joined on an ongoing basis by our two resident NZ election bloggers – Deborah of In a strange land and Idiot/Savant of No Right Turn. [Among other things, we're hoping to promote more cross-Tasman conversation, but there's no topic restriction.] As you will notice in the future, after the sad demise of The Road to Surfdom, Helen of Cast Iron Balcony fame will also be cross-posting from time to time here.

We’re very excited to have these fine folks on board, and hope everyone will welcome them heartily to LP!

Best blog posts of 2008

Published
by
Mark
1 year, 3 months ago
in Blogging and Notices
. 20 Comments

The Troppo/On Line Opinion best blog posts anthology is now becoming something of a venerable internetty tradition. Nominations for 2008 are open – read all about it over in James Farrell’s post at Club Troppo. And go forth and nominate!

Holidays in blogging hell

Published
by
Phil
1 year, 6 months ago
in Activism, Blogging, Books, Writers & Writing, Developing world, Media and Politics
. 5 Comments

picture.jpg In The Blogging Revolution Antony Loewenstein takes us on a personal journey through some of the more difficult places in the world to blog. Iran, Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Cuba and China.

It’s a timely book on the importance and necessity of blogging and the open web given recent un-informed opinions by writers like Christian Kerr.

The book is also important in that it more thoroughly expands on ideas expressed in David Burchell’s clumsy opinion piece in the Australian in July of this year where he attempted to contrast the “pseudo-expertise and vituperation” of Western bloggers with their counterparts in the less democratic corners of the world; using Cuban blogger Yoani Sanchez as an example.

The most impressive thing about Sanchez is her complete disregard for the bad habits of Western bloggers. She refuses to engage in histrionics, vainglory, pseudo-knowledge or personal posturing. Instead she trades in the gentler arts of allegory and satire.

Sanchez is also mentioned in The Blogging Revolution and Burchell is right. She does not engage in the histrionics of so many Western bloggers (mea culpa) but then again our personal circumstances are different to those that live in repressive states.

Are critics like Burchell and Kerr right? Are non-Western bloggers really better than their western counterparts? Are they less vituperative and undergraduate in their opinion? Does living in an information poor society mean that their views can be nothing more than that of a pseudo-expert? What do non-Western bloggers sound like? The Blogging Revolution gives us a peek behind the government filters.

Continue reading ‘Holidays in blogging hell’

Obligatory Obama acclamation & McCain Veep selection thread

Published
by
tigtog
1 year, 6 months ago
in Foreign Elections, Sociology and USA
. 126 Comments

Bene mentioned last night a desire for some commentary on the cynically timed announcement of McCain’s running partner as Sarah Palin, so here goes: here’s a short bit from the LA Times, who sums her up as a risky choice due to her inexperience, the very charge that the McCain campaign has been harping on with respect to Obama (others don’t buy that line).

How will she fare in the TV debates against the veteran politicker Biden? Will Palin’s history of running for Miss Alaska back when Obama was applying to Harvard Law School help balance the whole “celebrity” schtick? We’ll have to wait and see over the next two months (which could be a very long two months of infuriating sexism levelled against a different female candidate this time (the concept of vpilf.com is especially obstreperating)). But if the McCain campaign has chosen a woman at least partly to appeal to Hillary supporters, well: anti-abortion advocate Palin is not the woman those disaffected Dems are looking for, that’s for sure. How insulting to left-leaning women generally for the GOP to think that she could be: as if all that matters to Hillary supporters is that Hillary was a woman, so Palin is interchangeable just because she’s a woman too.
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The mote in your own eye: civility, community and the MSM online

Published
by
Kim
1 year, 7 months ago
in Authoritarianism, Blogging, Books, Writers & Writing, Culture, Ethics, Levity, Media, Philosophy, Politics, Sociology and The Web
. 44 Comments

There was an interesting discussion on this post on the whole “what is different about blogs and MSM “blogs” theme” with George Megalogenis recently. I generally agree with those who argued that whatever takes place on the bulletin boards of the News Limited and Fairfax online empires, it ain’t blogging. Even the reference to commenters as “bloggers” is jarring to anyone who was actually around the blogosphere before the media tried to appropriate it. It’s the lingo, dude! That’s just a small sign of something different going on, but a significant one. Another is evident from Megalogenis’ blog today.

My concern is not what you argue but how you go about it.

My mind is open on pretty much every issue. It’s what journalists do for a living: keep their minds open in the hope that they catch the next new idea out there.

Sadly, what a significant minority of my bloggers do is begin their posts with an assumption that everyone who disagrees with them is a “moron”.

Here’s why those posts grate: My job as a journalist is to assume that the person who disagrees with me doesn’t know what I know. To increase the sum of their knowledge, I can only tell them what I know on their terms, in their language. Which must begin with an assumption that I am not better than my reader.

Continue reading ‘The mote in your own eye: civility, community and the MSM online’

Who’s hollow?

Published
by
Phil
1 year, 7 months ago
in Blogging and Media
. 10 Comments

An interesting commentary in the bloggers vs MSM (press gallery) argument via The Hollowmen.

Ian: I thought he did rather well.

Tony: Tie worked well as well, bowled, front foot.

Ian: Yeah, a few prickly questions.

Tony: Yeah, bloggers.

Interesting that the view here is of bloggers being prickly; meaning what? Asking the tough questions that the MSN (gallery) won’t? Are there any non MSM ‘real’ or independent bloggers at the PM’s doorstop pressers in Canberra around to be prickly?