"Peter, you've lost the news!"

A new media study by researchers at the University of Maryland brings to mind spoof news show The Day Today, in which Chris Morris’ news anchor shouted at his hapless field reporter Peter O’Hanra-Hanrahan for letting a Minister walk away from him in a live interview rather than answer a crucial question. O’Hanra-Hanrahan let the news “get away” and had to say sorry. The Maryland study indicates that RSS feeds from major news sites such as the New York Times or Guardian don’t actually provide all relevant news that’s on the site. If you checked site, or the newspaper, you’d get stories from wire organisations such as Associated Press (AP) and Reuters as well as the newspapers' own stories, but major news sites’ RSS feeds will only send you some content their journalists write themselves, and not even all of that. The study concludes that RSS feeds might alert you to breaking news, but readers should head to the news sites themselves if they want any detailed information.

Questions have long been raised about Lexisnexis, an archive service providing a database of newspaper stories. At first glance, it allows an apparently failsafe search for keywords in national and local newspapers going back many decades. It seems a brilliant tool for students and researchers. But colleagues have noticed that if you compare your search results for a newspaper edition in 1992 or 2004 with the actual physical newspaper on that day in 1992 or 2004, not all stories in the paper make it into Lexisnexis’ archive. So any studies based on a Lexisnexis search are in fact studies of content Lexisnexis staff has had time to digitise, not necessarily studies of what appeared in the newspapers when published. News has been lost.

If the invention of the train was also the invention of the train crash, as Paul Virilio has suggested, then is the invention of digital archives also the invention of digital data loss? Following his analysis of data transferral at the US National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) in Washington, DC, Barry Mauer argued:

As our society transfers its archives from print and analog media to digital media, an unintended consequence results; we lose a great deal of data. The effects of this data loss are profound; without access to our data, we lose our history, and thus our ability to function in the present is diminished.

Perhaps. Certainly the Maryland study reminds us of the perils of complacently thinking we are receiving comprehensive and reliable news.

Bon Chance Mes Amis!

At last, a fairly imaginative use for the PM's YouTube stream (English version here). Novelty is clearly a winner; this has already been viewed nearly 2,000 times. What would be interesting to know is what proportion of those viewings took place in the UK and what proportion in France.

Update on 2007-05-08 18:31 by Nick Anstead

The hunch about novelty clearly proved to be correct.  Only 24 hours later and this has been watched nearly 150,000 times, by far and away the most sucessful video on the Downing Street stream.

Metrics of success

I always get carried away when I read something that excites me and tend to think, "Oh My God!  That is the future!".   And then I think about it a bit more, and decide it probably isn't after all.  I had one such moment this week when I read about the MySpace Presidential primary.  The idea is very simple.  On January 1st and 2nd, MySpace will give its users a chance to register there support for a particular candidate.  By holding it in the new year, MySpace will pre-empt the votes in Iowa and New Hampshire.

Real caucuses and primaries make two significant contributions to the nomination race.  Firstly, and most obviously, allocate delegates to a party convention, mandated to support a specific candidate.  Obviously, the MySpace primary won't do that.  However, the second contribution of primaries is more open - they generate momentum for candidates (hence the phrase "the big mo"), giving a sense of who is up and who is down.  This has a huge impact on the contests that follow.  Of course, momentum isn't just generated by formal primaries. There are a whole host of metrics that contribute to measuring how well a candidate is doing - financial donations, opinion poll support and whether they have managed to woo big supporters. When I first thought about it, it occurred to me that the MySpace primary could fit nicely into that system, giving it real significance.

However, I then thought about it a bit more.  I have to confess, my views waived when I read some responses to the idea in the blogosphere.  A large number of responses argued the primary would not be secure.  People could vote multiple times, be under the age of 18 or they might not even be an American citizen. Another common comment was that the people who would vote on MySpace would be unlikely to translate that into any other political action.  Actually there is some evidence to suggest the young Americans are more politically active than they have been in a generation (of course, the causation of this is disputable - technology or circumstances?). However, that's not quite the issue.

The real significance of online metrics (and thus how they might come to influence the offline elections) is to be found in the extent to which they are translated into the real world. The problem is that no one really knows what the impact of, for example, having 100,000 MySpace supporters is. Likewise, all the fuss about one million strong for Obama is only meaningful if the people who have signed up for it are actually going to translate that act into other demonstrations of support - for example, going out and canvassing. Some sites are less problematic. For an example of this, let's think about ActBlue, the Democratic fundraising site. The significance of a candidate being at the top of one of their league tables is due to the real money people are donating to put them there.  This money can then be used by a campaign, and therefore, at this moment in time at least, it has more intrinsic significance. We will only really come to understand the significance of social networking sites over the course of the election cycle.

"Segoland"

The 2007 French presidential election is just around the corner. There was one and only live debate between the two candidates on TV today yesterday. I didn't have a chance to watch the whole two and a half hours, but news updates on different websites and TV channels seem to generally agree Royal outperformed Sarkozy. I wasn't particularly following French politics when I was there, but as far as I remember, Nicolas Sarkozy was just everywhere. My friends half-joked by calling him Président de l'Intérieur. So I automatically assumed the 2007 election would be his one-man show. He is clearly the front-runner, but I am amazed - and naturally proud ;) - Royal is doing so well.

When it comes to e-campaigning, an aspect I cannot NOT look at, she even seems to be ahead of Sarkozy. I attended a Hansard seminar titled "The internet and the 2005 General Election: political awareness, participation and trust" two weeks ago. In the meeting, Derek Wyatt MP passionately demonstrated how cleverly Royal's camp mobilised bloggers. I had a further look when I came back home. Voilà, Ségoland.

(Original map in pdf is here.)

They actually mapped all blogs that support her. James from the NPCU pointed out in the Q&A session that such networking was a typical socialist-party programme. I understand it is. Still, I find this attempt - what's the scholarly word - COOL.

(Reproduced from the original article on my website) 

Television and Virginia Tech

I’m just back from the US, having arrived the night NBC began to broadcast the videotaped messages of Seung-Hui Cho, who had just shot 32 students and faculty at Virginia Tech. I stayed up watching CNN’s coverage. It was unbelievable viewing, but not as CNN intended.

In its rolling coverage, CNN broadcast large chunks of the video, in which Cho claimed to have been bullied, compared himself to Christ, and attacked what he deemed the hedonistic, pampered lifestyles of his fellow students. Parts of the video are still available from a link on the story’s slideshow on NBC’s website. Next, CNN would show a small segment and allow ‘experts’ to analyse Cho’s words and gestures. Then another segment would be shown, and more speculation. CNN also tantalised the viewer with promises of ‘more footage tomorrow’.

At some point in the next 24 hours, the story changed. Families of those killed by Cho demanded the videos be taken off air. News broadcasters, it seemed, were fulfilling Cho’s wish by spreading THE KILLER’S WORDS FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE (in the words of many news sources that day). Suddenly CNN’s breaking story was: MEDIA MISTAKE. Commentators and experts now began speculating about how NBC, CNN and others could be so callous. And these debates happened on NBC and CNN, creating the spectacle of journalists reporting on themselves.

A collision had happened between news values – the compulsion to broadcast anything live, immediate, and shocking – and the values of American society. The network TV studio became the crucible for a public debate about taste, decency, and responsibility. This media event, in which the expected media coverage was incorporated into the protagonist’s actions, enabled US society to have a family gathering. Here, through television, American values could be re-asserted, 'evil' could be given a name and face, and public mourning could proceed. Network TV was both problem and solution, but how will such a story play out next time? And how far will the genre of suicide martyrdom video spread?

Blogs: the British backlash

Over the last few weeks, a number of articles have appeared in the mainstream media commenting on the attempt by Jimmy Wales and Tim O'Reilly to create a civility code of practice for bloggers. In the UK, this debate was sparked off late last year by Matthew Taylor, outgoing adviser to Number 10. Wales' and O'Reilly's well-meaning article has given it a new lease of life.

One of the things that surprises me about the framing of these articles is how so many of them begin from the assumption that the blog format is 'now a decade old', or how it's somehow 'ten years on' and we need to 'take stock' because blogging hasn't 'taken off'. Victor Keegan writes in The Guardian that Technorati finds that there are 'only' 70 million blogs. I find this incredible. First, Radio Userland was invented in 1997 but had a miniscule user base for the first five years. Blogger.com was founded in 1999 and it too did not take off until 2002-2003. The RSS standard, arguably one of the only things that really defines what a blog actually is, was not even settled on until late 1999. The most successful all-round blogging applications were founded well after the turn of the century: Moveable Type (2001), Wordpress and Typepad (2003). Second, that there are 70 million more people (or groups of people) publishing their thoughts in a globally accessible medium than there were ten years ago strikes me as quite a significant change.

I was presenting at the UK Political Studies Association last Friday in Bath, and Dr Scott Wright made the excellent point that this framing is occurring all over the place now. He brought up the example of the finding that 17 per cent of the british public have visited the Conservative Party's website. This, too, is usually framed as 'only 17 per cent'. But if you turn it around the other way, the very fact that 17 per cent of the British public have bothered to 'lean forward' and use this purposive medium to visit the site is pretty significant, don't you think?

Politicopia

Politicopia is a new e-democracy initiative founded by Steve Urquhart and Utah citizens. It is a simple wiki based setup which enables debate on real and potential state legislature bills and other issues. As the site says, "Users create summaries of bills, pro and con arguments, comments, links, and more." My first impression is that the rigid formula for presenting the items might work against it, but it seems to working well so far. The idea of presenting contextual links is a good one.

YouTube user removes clip mocking Thai king

The anonymous creator of a 44-second video clip mocking Thailand's revered king removed it from the YouTube video-sharing Web site on Thursday after torrents of abuse from outraged Thai viewers.

The relevant page on YouTube said simply the video had "been removed by the user".

However, Communications Minister Sitthichai Pookaiyaudom said Bangkok's army-backed administration would continue to block YouTube (www.youtube.com) as two images deemed offensive remained.

"We want those photos off the site too," he told Reuters.

Earlier, Sitthichai accused YouTube, owned by Internet search engine Google, of being heartless and culturally insensitive for refusing to remove the file.

"We have told them how deeply offended Thais were by the clip, but they said there was much worse ridicule of President Bush on the site and they kept that there," he said.

"I don't think they really care how we feel. Thailand is only a tiny market for them."

The video showed grainy pictures of King Bhumibol Adulyadej, the world's longest-reigning monarch whom many of Thailand's 63 million people regard as a semi-divine "father of the nation", with crude graphics superimposed on his face.

The most offensive image to Thais was the imposition of a pair of woman's feet, the lowest part of the body, on his head.

YouTube, which has dominated the user-generated online video market since it was founded in February last year, said it was disappointed by Bangkok's move and was "looking into the matter".

"YouTube reaches a wide global audience and strives to provide a community where people from around the world can express themselves by sharing videos in a safe and lawful manner," the company said in an e-mail response to Reuters.

Criticising or offending royalty is a serious crime in Thailand. Those found guilty of lese majeste can be jailed for up to 15 years.

Last week, a 57-year-old Swiss man was sentenced to 10 years in jail for spraying graffiti on pictures of the king on his birthday in December, a rare prison term for a foreigner.

However, the generals who ousted elected prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra in a coup last September have also used the lese majeste laws to stifle criticism of themselves or their actions.

Several Web sites calling into question the southeast Asian nation's 18th coup in 75 years of on-off democracy have been shut down by the army-installed government.

When reports of the offending royal YouTube clip emerged in Thailand, the number of views rocketed by 50,000 in less than 24 hours, according to the site's own data.

It generated a lively debate about freedom of expression although the main reaction from Thais was shock and outrage -- and torrents of abuse at the clip's creator, "paddidda", who is based in the United States.

Source: reuters.com

International Working Group on Online Consultation and Public Policymaking

I'm currently at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard for the opening conference of the new, NSF-funded International Working Group on Online Consultation and Public Policymaking led by Peter Shane of Ohio State and Stephen Coleman of Leeds. The group consists of 17 members from around the world; a great mix of senior and junior colleagues with a diverse range of interests and concerns. The meeting has been extremely interesting and fruitful so far, with an excellent programme of future events and concrete outputs, including a special issue of the journal I/S and a jointly-authored book to follow. A list of the participants:

Professor Peter M. Shane, The Ohio State University, Moritz College of Law
Stephen Coleman, Professor of Political Communication, University of Leeds
Steven J. Balla, George Washington University, Washington, D.C.
Patrizia Bertini, independent practitioner and Researcher, European Internet Accessibilità Observatory, Manerbio, Italy
Andrew Chadwick, Royal Holloway College, University of London
Sungsoo Hwang, Ph.D. Candidate, University of Pittsburgh
David Lazer, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University
Jeffrey Lubbers, Washington College of Law, American University, Washington, D.C.
Laurence Monnoyer-Smith, University of Technology at Compiègne, France
Beth Noveck, New York Law School
Kerrie Oakes, Ph.D. Candidate, Griffith University, Queensland, Australia
Oren Perez, Faculty of Law, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel
Vincent Price, Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania
Alicia Schatteman, Ph.D. candidate, The State University of New Jersey at Newark, NJ
Polona Picman Štefancic, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia
Peter L. Strauss, Betts Professor of Law, Columbia University
Scott Wright, De Montfort University, Leicester, England.

See also David Lazer's blog entry at the Kennedy School Program on Networked Governance

Open Source Policy Making

An interesting experiment being organised by Demos, the left of centre think tank, as explained on their blog.  They have produced the skeletal structure of a document and then posted it onto a wiki. Anyone can register on their website, and then edit the wiki, and so contribute to the creation of policy ideas. It will be really interesting to follow the project and see how it works out. The idea of open source policy making follows on from the release of a Demos publication last Friday, The Collaborative State.

Incidentally, for a theoretical take on how such processes work, this post on my own blog may be of interest.