Tag Archive for 'Pavlov’s Cat'

The Liberals, women and the Mad Monk

Published
by
Kim
8 months, 2 weeks ago
in Media, Politics, Polls and Women
. 79 Comments

Pavlov’s Cat made a very incisive comment here recently, apropos of the silly push for Tony Abbott to be leader of the Liberal Party (which seems to have disappeared ever since Malcolm got ‘back on the front foot’, ‘muscled up’, ‘took the fight up to the government’ blah blah by banging on about debt and deficit – alliteration masks a multiplicity of sins in politics – and buying a debt truck):

The widespread practice of simply ignoring women in male-dominated discussions does not make the fact that we make up 51% of voters go away.

Indeed. Women are nigh on invisible, or at least very radically under-represented in most public discussions of electoral politics. But, as Pavlov’s Cat points out, we constitute more than a majority of the electorate… and that’s reflected in the composition of samples taken for polls. So as Possum reveals (with one of his spiffy graphs), the Coalition trails much further behind where they were at the last election with women voters than with male:

The Coalition is pulling a fairly stable average of 37-39 among male voters, which isn’t crash hot, but it’s not exactly terrible either. The thing about election campaigns is that it’s pretty easy to win or lose a few points with any demographic, so if the Coalition went into the next campaign only 3 or 4 points down among males, it’s a doable proposition for them.

With the female vote however, they’re pulling an average 34-37, which is a staggering 7 to 10 point decline on their result from the last election. Turning around a gap that large simply isn’t a doable proposition over the short time frame of an election campaign. For the Coalition to not go backwards at the next election (let alone win), they have to substantially improve their female voter base before the next election campaign starts, simply to give them some realistic base to launch a final assault on Labor from during the campaign itself.

[By the way, Possum also reveals with customary wonkiness and style, that the puzzle of why the PM is popular - so unintelligible to the press gallery and the Libs - might be explained by the fact that the PM is liked. Circular, I know, but there you have it...]

So, why, exactly, are the Libs so on the nose with women voters? Speculate away…

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’

English language, partisan misuse thereof, etc.

Published
by
Mark
1 year, 2 months ago
in Blogging, Books, Writers & Writing, Culture, History, Howardia, Media and Politics
. 38 Comments

Years ago, I used to read Quadrant – incidentally before Robert Manne became editor, if I recall correctly. Back in the day, there was a sense that there was some sort of contest of ideas, and thus there was some purpose to reading, or at least casting a glance across a range of “little magazines”. I think that time ended a long while ago. Certainly, I stopped reading Quadrant over a decade ago, and I can’t say I feel there’s some huge gap in my life.

After all the brouhaha about the Katherine Wilson/Keith Windschuttle hoax dies down, I suspect the most lasting insight to be derived from all the kerfuffle is that Wilson’s target had already disappeared into a long twilight of irrelevance. For mine, John Quiggin’s point about the saga is among the most telling – Windschuttle’s own credibility on the issue which has been central to the recent stages of his career – Indigenous history – lies in tatters because of his own inability to substantiate the claims he made many years ago now with further research. The biggest hoax, Quiggin argues, is Windschuttle’s own contribution to “the history wars”.

After a number of folks actually had a look at what’s published on Quadrant’s website these days, it’s painfully obvious that there’s very little credibility there to be undermined. Egregious grammatical errors, bizarre rants with scant evidence of an elementary ability to construct a coherent argument, to be sure.

So the other motto we might draw from the hoax affair is that it’s drawn attention to the absence of both standards and relevance in most of what Quadrant has to offer. Continue reading ‘English language, partisan misuse thereof, etc.’

Happy blogiversary, Pavlov’s Cat and Hoyden About Town!

Published
by
Kim
1 year, 5 months ago
in Blogging, Life, Media, Sociology and The Web
. 12 Comments

Spring must be the season when people turn their minds to starting blogs, or at least spring 2005 was when some excellent people did. It’s the three year blogiversary for both Pavlov’s Cat and Hoyden About Town. Warm salutations and felicitations to both!

Pavlov’s Cat also has some interesting reflections on being a sociable blogger, and how addictive it can be. It’s well worth remembering that there is stuff to do other than correct people who are wrong on the internets. Continue reading ‘Happy blogiversary, Pavlov’s Cat and Hoyden About Town!’